Fundamental Themes in Religious Intellectualist Approach on Women's Issues

Islamic feminism is deeply connected to the discourse of religious intellectualism. By entering the field of women's issues, religious intellectualism not only gave scientific credibility to the theoretical literature of this field but also found more social extension for itself. At first, it did not indicate a sense of belonging to women's issues. Iranian egalitarian and feminist currents, especially Women magazine, have played a prominent role in paving the way for the infiltration of religious intellectualism into women's issues. In fact, with the innovation of this magazine, religious intellectualism, which may not have been prominent in its work on women's issues before, entered this domain and began to produce theoretical literature in the foresaid field. Therefore, the four main figures of the modernist movement, namely Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari, Abdolkarim Soroush, Mostafa Malekian and Mohsen Kadivar, who have dealt with the issue of women in the light of epistemological, theological and jurisprudential debates, were selected. Hence, all their published interviews and works as well as materials related to them in Women magazine from issue 57, November 1999 and on websites until 2017 were studied and analyzed by applying content analysis method and of course with a critical approach. The results of the research indicated some important themes in the discourse of intellectualism in dealing with women issues including: justice and the signatory condition of social rules (according to Shabestari), historical reason and plurality in understanding of religion (according to Soroush), moral individualism, rationality and spirituality (according to Malekian) and equal justice and intellectual benefit (according to Kadivar).