Sexualising the Sacred, Sacralising Sexuality: An Analysis of Public Responses to Muslim Women’s Religious Leadership in the Context of a Cape Town Mosque

Abstract

This paper analyses the discourses of sexuality that can be gleaned from debates on Muslim women’s religious leadership in Islam. In order to present a focused discussion on this topic, I pay particular attention to the public responses and commentaries that emerged in the wake of Amina Wadud’s delivery of the Friday khutbah (sermon) in a Cape Town mosque in 1994. Although this event took place twenty years ago, the discourses on sexuality that unfolded in these public debates continue to inform contemporary public engagements on this topic. This paper is not concerned with the vexed question of prohibition or permission of women’s religious leadership in Islamic legal traditions and/or Muslim history, but rather with the kinds of assumptions regarding women’s sexuality that inform the politics of religious inclusion/exclusion. In conclusion, the paper offers a discussion on women’s religious leadership through the lens of Islamic feminism in order to foreground some of the distinct voices that shift the focus of public debates—from an emphasis on women’s sexuality to questions of women’s spirituality and humanity.