The Qur'an depicts fluctuating relations between Muslims and non-Muslims. While at times such relations can be conciliatory and harmonious, at others they are inimical, uneasy, or distant. Still, the Qur'an acknowledges the necessary ontological reality of the human difference. This is evidenced in many verses. Thus, I will argue that an ''attentive'' and ''worldly'' reading of the Qur'an is crucial to curb misunderstanding of the way 'difference' is perceived in Islam by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. A close reading is primarily a multiple form of communication. It is needed to resist the networked systems of power and control dominated by images and mass media in the Arab world and Western. It is exceptionally important to free the interpretation of Qur'an from the grip of Muslim and non-Muslim extremists and Islamophobes who read some of its verses as evidence of essentialized enmity harbored by Muslims towards all non-Muslims.
. Women's studies and transformative politics: an Arab-Muslim perspective. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: Gulf Perspectives 9(2). http://lthe.zu.ac.ae page 63 maintained by MacCabe (1987) in his foreword to Spivak's In Other Worlds, "the problem is neither the micro-political conservatism of any institution nor the genuine problem of elaborating an educational programme which emphasized both individual specificity and public competence. It is that such a project will encounter powerful macro-political resistance" (p. xviii).
Necessary definitionsBefore proceeding, some terms used in the present paper need to be framed. I begin with the term 'women's studies', which I use to refer to either departments of women's studies, or women's studies courses, or to the body of knowledge and scholarship on women. The context determines which of the above is intended. However, I use the term with capital letters to denote Women's Studies as an independent unit in the university. Mainstreaming gender and women's studies in school curricula and relevant cultural performances is a crucial initiative towards a heightened "feminist" consciousness; still, it is not the specific concern of this paper.
Julia Kristeva, an influential 20th-and 21st-century thinker, adopts an approach to religion that distinguishes between Islamic and Christian belief systems. She argues that, unlike the Christian God, the God of Islam is preeminent and abstracted from worldly affairs and human experience. This thesis reinforces a general notion that Europeans typically defend Western culture against the assumed assault of others/Muslims. This article examines Kristeva's acclaimed universal and ethical positions and their relevance to other cultures, particularly Islamic cultures. Notwithstanding the fact that Kristeva's approach is informed by postmodern psychological and religious terms, she continues to refashion an orientalist discourse that colonial powers utilized in the era of high colonialism to rule and disempower others/Muslims. The inconsistencies in many of her statements show that the transcendentalism she unfavorably attributes to Islam is germane to many aspects of her thought.
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