A Research Note on Islam and Gender Egalitarianism, Essay Example

In Jamie Kucinskas’s article “A Research Note on Islam and Gender Egalitarianism: An Examination of Egyptian and Saudi Arabian Youth Attitudes,” the author examines Islamic youth’s religious attitudes toward gender egalitarianism.  Indeed, the author draws on numerous sources to conceptualize the cultural and religious milieu of Shia Islam, and the different strands of Islam in the two countries.  In particular, she draws on the work of Nancy Davis and Robert Robinson. In their seminal article “The Egalitarian Face of Islamic Orthodoxy: Support for Islamic Law and Economic Justice in Seven Muslim-Majority Nations,” the two authors explore if individuals with different theological beliefs (orthodox and liberal) have diverging views relating to government economic distribution policies and gender roles.

Kucinskas quotes the Davis and Robinson three times in the article. First, the source is cited on page 762 when Kucinskas introduces the main points of the 2008 article including the “moral cosmology thesis”- a thesis positing that Muslims who ascribe to a more “orthodox” faith have more traditional beliefs in a number of different areas (Kucinskas, 2010).  Kucinskas uses the source again as the main theoretical evidence to test the second hypothesis of the paper: In both countries (Egypt and Saudi Arabia), orthodox believers are less gender egalitarian (Kucinskas, 2008).  Finally, the source is used a third time on page 765 in presenting the statistical results of the second hypothesis.

The role of the Davis and Robinson source plays a crucial role in the Kucinskas article; that is, Kucinskas is attempting to examine the potential relationship between religious beliefs in young Islamic adherents and beliefs in gender equality. An explicit assumption used in the hypotheses tested is that a difference may exist between those individuals who believe in a more “orthodox” type of Islam versus those who believe in a “more” liberal type of Islam.  In some ways, the “moral cosmology” thesis proposed by Davis and Robinson is directly imported into Kucinskas’s theoretical framework.

While acknowledging the importance of the moral cosmology source in Kucinskas’s article, there may be existing questions regarding the compatibility of the thesis in the two different contexts.  That is, each author uses and operationalizes “orthodox” in a different manner that might not be complementary.  Davis and Robinson posit that Islamic “orthodoxy” is best operationalized through measuring “degree of support for implementing the shari’a” (Davis & Robinson, 2006).  The question used to differentiate “orthodox” from “modern” Islamic believers in the source is: It (a good government) should implement laws of shari’a- along with a 5-point scale that is not Likert compatible (Davis & Robinson, 2006).  This method of differentiation using Shari’a  is likely preferred because Davis and Robinson’s study is on seven “Muslim majority nations” which includes both Shia and Sunni Muslims, as well as other religious minorities.  In contrast, Kucinskas uses a different way to operationalize religious orthodoxy: the author uses an index aggregated with four-point Likert items.[1]  While some may argue that Kucinskas’s measures are more comprehensive, they are also different than Davis and Robinson’s because she is operating in a different religious milieu: that is, she is trying to define “orthodoxy” between a country with a Shia majority (Saudi) and a Sunni majority (Egypt).  Thus, the methods to operationalize “orthodoxy” are different and more nuanced.

I am not suggesting that the difference in any way invalidates Kucinskas’s use of Davis and Robinson’s work as a touchstone for her analysis; however, because her analysis heavily depended on the “moral cosmology” thesis, an explanatory note outlining the differences in how orthodoxy is measured, as well as the difference in the samples used in the study, would have been appreciated.

References:

Kucinskas, J (2010). A Research Note on Islam and Gender Egalitarianism: An Examination of Egyptian and Saudi Arabian Youth Attitudes.  Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. 49(4):761–77. 

Davis, N.J. & Robinson, R.V. (2006). The Egalitarian Face of Islamic Orthodoxy: Support for Islamic Law and Economic Justice in Seven Muslim-Majority Nations. American Sociological Review, 71(2), 167-190.

[1] To lead the best, most meaningful life, one must belong to the one, fundamentally true religion”; “Whenever science and religion conflict, religion is always right”; “The fundamentals of God’s religion should never be tampered with, or compromised with others’ beliefs”; “The only acceptable religion to God is Islam”; “God will punish most severely those who abandon the true religion.”