Women as Imams

There is a long and rich history of opinion centred on female prayer leadership in Islam that has occupied the minds of theologians and jurists alike. It includes outright prohibition, dislike, permissibility under certain conditions and, although rarely, unrestricted sanction, or even endorsement. This book discusses the ways in which scholars in the formative period of Islam engaged in debates on female prayer leadership. Simonetta Calderini critically analyses these debates, puts them into their historical context, and then, for the first time, tracks how they have informed current views on female imama (prayer leadership). In presenting the variety of opinions discussed in the past by Sunni, Sh'i and some Sufi scholars, the book uncovers how those differing opinions are, at present, being used selectively and depending on modern agendas and biases. The research offers readers the opportunity to address the question of female imama today in a less polarised manner, thus offering the opportunity for discussion and change, if not necessarily in practices then at the very least in attitudes. Rather than being a book about women or gender issues, this is the history of how pre-modern Muslim theologians and jurists discussed female prayer leadership, the ways in which contemporary ideas about gender informed their opinions and what this means for us today. It discusses both the cases of women, who are reported to have led prayer in the past, and the voices of current women imams, many of whom engage with those women of the past to validate their own roles in the present and so pave the way for the future.