Original Research - Special Collection: Women Theologies

Women generating, reproducing and disseminating texts in a Deobandi madrasa in South Africa

Zahraa McDonald
HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies | Vol 79, No 1 | a7750 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v79i1.7750 | © 2023 Zahraa McDonald | This work is licensed under CC Attribution 4.0
Submitted: 18 May 2022 | Published: 31 January 2023

About the author(s)

Zahraa McDonald, South African Research Chair in Teaching and Learning, Faculty of Education, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa

Abstract

   

Religion moves into the realm of the rational the moment when specific and specified texts are generated, reproduced and disseminated according to Weber. As such, the capacity to generate, reproduce and disseminate concepts from texts is shown to be consequential. In Weber’s work, the presence of women is not overt. Scholarship has explored how women are positioned in religious texts, but comparatively little scholarship has engaged with how they generate, reproduce and disseminate texts. This article interrogates the position of women in relation to a religious textual generation, reproduction and dissemination within an Islamic tradition. Ethnographic data from a Deobandi-aligned education institution or madrasa was drawn on. Data were analysed with regard to how the texts used in the institution of Islamic learning are generated, reproduced and disseminated and the position of women in this regard.

Contribution: Findings illustrated that women are key disseminators of particular forms of Islamic (religious) texts. As such, there are opportunities for women to generate and reproduce their own meaning of the texts. The article enhanced scholarship with regard to how women are able to maintain, extend and expand theologies. In this way, it demonstrated how women might be empowered to do so.


Keywords

rationality of religion; Max Weber; Deobandi Islamic education; madrasas; religious texts.

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