A Reinterpretation of Women’s Leadership in Political Jurisprudence: The Response of Nusantara Scholars to the Global Discourse on Islamic Feminism
Keywords:
Women’s leadership, Fiqh siyasah, Islamic feminism, Indonesian ulamaAbstract
Women’s leadership in Islam remains one of the most contested issues in contemporary Islamic scholarship. Classical fiqh siyasah (Islamic political jurisprudence), largely formulated by male jurists, imposed restrictions on women’s participation in public and political leadership, while global Islamic feminism, advanced by scholars such as Amina Wadud, Fatima Mernissi, and Asma Barlas, offers alternative hermeneutics that foreground gender equality as a Qur’anic value. This study examines how Indonesian ulama from the country’s two largest Islamic organizations, Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah, position themselves between these two discourses and identifies the distinctive features of the reinterpretation model they have developed. Unlike prior studies that tend to treat NU and Muhammadiyah separately, or that frame Indonesian Islamic feminism merely as a derivative of Middle Eastern Islamic feminism, this research offers a comparative reading of both organizations while foregrounding the historical precedent of female rulership in the Malay-Indonesian archipelago as an indigenous argumentative resource. Using critical discourse analysis of fatwas, congress resolutions, and scholarly writings, the study finds that the response of Indonesian ulama is not monolithic but forms a spectrum ranging from selective-critical acceptance in NU to more open acceptance grounded in direct ijtihad in Muhammadiyah. Both organizations have developed a strategy of “reinterpretation from within the tradition,” drawing on the internal resources of Islamic jurisprudence rather than imported feminist frameworks, to construct arguments for gender equality. The article concludes that this model offers a viable middle path within global debates on Islam and gender, even as a substantial gap persists between normative discourse and the empirical reality of women’s representation in leadership.
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