Don asks women to pursue scholarship in Islamic Law

 

A professor of Islamic Law at the University of Ilorin, Azizat Amoloye-Adebayo, has asked Muslim women to have the courage to pursue scholarship in Islamic Law despite men’s domination of the field.

Delivering the university’s 274th inaugural lecture, titled ‘Islamic Law and The Woman’s Agency’, Professor Amoloye-Adebayo said pursuing scholarship in Islamic Law would enable women to grow out of limiting factors to their self-actualisation.

She said the protection of the rights of women occupies a central place in Islamic Law, noting that “the narratives of women inferiority are dangerous because they seek to dehumanise women, rob them of agency and legitimise the channels of perpetration of violence against women.”

Professor Amoloye-Adebayo, who is the Head of the Department of Islamic Law, pointed out that the Judeo-Christian and Islamic origin of creation is biased to the extent of depicting the creation of woman as an after-thought, inferior or mere helpers to men, arguing that the woman is the other half of creation, the opposite of the man.

She buttressed her view with a quotation from the Holy Qur’an, “O People! Reverence your Guardian-Lord, who created you from a single being and created from it, its mate and spread from these two, many men and women.”

While stressing the need for synergy between man’s agency and woman’s agency, Professor Amoloye-Adebayo said that most contemporary interpretations of Islamic law are informed by colonial androcentrism.

She, therefore, called for equitable relations in matters of Islamic Law and private affairs between men and women, and Islamic Law and public affairs between men and women, concerning leadership, spiritual and temporal.

According to the first Professor of Islamic Law at the University of Ilorin, “The emphasis on equitable relations is the bedrock of regulations in Islamic Law, as provided in Q57:25 that: ‘We sent aforetime our messengers with clear signs and sent down with the Book and the Balance (of Right and Wrong), that human beings may conduct themselves with equity.”

For women to grow out of unnecessary limiting factors to their self-actualisation, Professor Amoloye-Adebayo called on women to have the courage to pursue scholarship in Islamic Law despite men’s domination of the field, so that they don’t use their life experiences to validate the toga of women inferiority.

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The inaugural lecturer, who is the first female Faculty member in the University of Ilorin’s Department of Islamic Law, described herself as a woman agent in the study of Islamic Law, and expressed concern that it could take such a long time to produce a female professor in Islamic Law.

Professor Amoloye-Adebayo, who is also a member of the editorial board of the institution’s bulletin, said women should be encouraged to exercise the courage needed in a male dominated area of Islamic Law.

She also called for the amendment of the provisions of the Child’s Right Act, 2003 “to bring the Islamic law position on early marriage within its purview.”

The don said, “It is believed that if the idea of the best interest of the child is given more prominence than the prohibition of marriages of young persons under 18. It will provide a religiously authentic basis for review of such marriages.” 

Professor Amoloye-Adebayo, who has so far supervised 300 undergraduate projects, 23 Master’s degree dissertations, has also graduated a PhD student, served her department, faculty and the university community in various committees in the past two decades.