First and foremost, as someone with limited knowledge of religion in general I really appreciate the detail put into this book. The author’s expansion on different vocabulary terms that reader’s may not be familiar with was extremely helpful. Another thing I really enjoyed about this chapter and reading thus far was the in depth breakdown of why Islam is not inherently anti-woman. Rather, it is double-talk and manipulation of different practices that are anti woman.
Despite the concept of double talk being incredibly relevant in a variety of other religions, the Tawhidic Paradigm contextualized the relationships between women, and men and Allah in Islam. As postulated by the author, creations come in pairs (woman and man) and are both equal to the other. The pair is in relationship then to Allah. I found Wadud’s argument incredibly intriguing and found that it made a lot of sense in relation to the arguments against women’s equality. In other words, Wadud’s contextualization of the Tawhidic Paradigm broke down double talk by using another form of rhetoric against them informed by the same “divine” sources.
