Islam and Women’s Rights: Abu Zayd’s Hermeneutical Reading of the Quran

This paper examines the scholarly works of one of the most prominent Arab thinkers and Islamic reformists of the last two decades, Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd.While his writings cover a number of issues central to contemporary Islamic thought, this paper aims to address Abu Zayd's hermeneutical approach to the study of the Quran in relation to its historicity and applicability to women's rights, which he considers to be 'one of the most important issues' in contemporary Arab societies.This study employs a critical analysis method to evaluate and question the plausibility of Abu Zayd's thoughts around the issues of polygamy and inheritance.This paper concludes that there are critical weaknesses in his overall argument concerning these issues, notably in regard to the origins of polygamy prohibition, which had arisen much earlier than Islam itself; the contextual determinants employed by Abu Zayd are only relevant to seventh-century Arabia.Another weakness is Abu Zayd's view of arriving at an objective understanding of the Quran when it comes to assigning a fair inheritance share for both the man and the woman, when he never specified the conditions of this objective end.