Islamic feminist perspectives on gendered fiqh: A historical-narrative analysis of marriage, divorce, inheritance, testimony, and women’s leadership

This article examines how Islamic feminist scholarship reinterprets gender-related juristic constructions in marriage, divorce, inheritance, testimony, and female leadership. It distinguishes Sharīʿah as a normative-ethical horizon from fiqh as a historically situated juristic enterprise and uses this distinction to avoid treating all inherited legal formulations as identical to divine normativity. This study employs a structured qualitative library research approach. Contemporary literature was identified through Publish or Perish searches of Google Scholar and Scopus for 2018–2026, while no date restriction was applied to foundational works by major Muslim feminist scholars. Sources were selected for relevance, scholarly traceability, engagement with Islamic legal reasoning, and representation of competing interpretations. Historical-narrative analysis proceeds through five stages: textual basis, juristic construction, socio-historical context, feminist or contextual reinterpretation, and contemporary legal implications. This comparison shows that gender asymmetry in fiqh is neither uniform nor reducible to a single cause. It frequently reflects the interactions between scriptural interpretation, juristic methods, and historically gendered social functions. This article contributes a cross-issue analytical framework that clarifies where Islamic feminist readings revise, contest, or retain classical legal reasoning, rather than treating Islamic feminism or classical fiqh as monolithic traditions.