Asian Studies Review

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Studying Female Islamic Authority: From Top-

Down to Bottom-Up Modes of Certification

David Kloos & Mirjam Künkler

To cite this article: David Kloos & Mirjam Künkler (2016) Studying Female Islamic Authority:
From Top-Down to Bottom-Up Modes of Certification, Asian Studies Review, 40:4, 479-490, DOI:
10.1080/10357823.2016.1227300

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Asian Studies Review, 2016
VOL. 40, NO. 4, 479–490
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10357823.2016.1227300

Studying Female Islamic Authority: From Top-Down to

Bottom-Up Modes of Certification
David Kloosa and Mirjam Künklerb
a
KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies; bSwedish Collegium for
Advanced Study

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
This article introduces a special issue on female Islamic authority Islamic authority; women’s
in contemporary Asia. It provides an overview of the literature on religious authority; fiqh;
religious authority in Islam and briefly lays out which modes of Indonesia; Tajikistan;
Singapore; preachers; muftis;
female religious authority have been more accepted than others in gender
the schools of jurisprudence. Based on the articles included in this
issue, the introduction makes two chief observations. First, in contrast
to the overwhelming consensus among experts of Islamic law that
women may serve as muftūn (plural of muftī), in most Muslim-majority
societies today women are either seldom found in this role, or where
there are muftīyāt (female muftūn), their role is confined to women’s
issues. Second, while a growing body of academic studies has drawn
attention to the recent phenomenon of state-instituted or -supported
programs that train women in Islamic authority, little attention has
been paid to the question of how communities react to such programs.
The special issue is a call to study female religious authority from the
bottom up, in order to better understand why believers, whether men
or women, ascribe religious authority to women in some contexts and
situations, but overwhelmingly still prefer male religious authority
over female, despite the permissiveness for female juristic expertise
in Islamic law.

This special issue looks at forms of, and changes in, female Islamic authority in comparative
perspective, with particular focus on contemporary Asia. The significant role of women in
participating in, and shaping, Islamic scholarly traditions through the centuries is still hardly
reflected in either scholarly or public perceptions. Nearly all classic accounts of religious
authority in Islam proceed from the assumption that this authority is male (Hallaq, 2001;
Humphreys, 1991; Keddie, 1972 [with the exception of the chapter by Fernea & Fernea];
Krämer & Schmidtke, 2006; Zaman, 2002). The possibility that women might exercise var-
ious aspects of religious authority is usually not discussed. Yet, when we dissect religious
authority into its various manifestations (leading prayer, preaching, providing religious
counselling, issuing fatāwā, transmitting ḥadīth, judging in court, shaping the Islamic schol-
arly tradition), nuances emerge that call the exclusively male character of religious authority
in Islam into question.

CONTACT David Kloos kloos@kitlv.nl; Mirjam Künkler mirjam.kuenkler@gmail.com

© 2016 Asian Studies Association of Australia
480 D. Kloos and M. Künkler

In recent years several case studies of women exercising such roles have been published
in different academic disciplines, including history, sociology, anthropology, politics and
law. Publications have focused on female teachers, scholars, preachers and judges, women’s
mosque and study groups, ritual leadership, and Islamic feminism (Bano & Kalmbach, 2012;
Künkler & Fazaeli, 2012; Hammer & Spielhaus, 2013). These studies give attention to the
role of the state and higher educational institutions in training women as female religious
authorities, highlighting top-down processes of recognition and certification: how univer-
sities and training programs, grand muftis and bureaucrats in state ministries of religion
develop curricula to train women in various roles of Islamic authority and certify those
who have successfully graduated from these programs.1 Given their top-down approach,
such analyses have focused on questions of where and how these women are trained, what
kind of ijāzāt (certificates of study) and academic degrees they have collected, and how they
establish their expertise in iftāʾ (the granting of legal opinions).
Case studies of bottom-up processes of certification are still rare in the literature. How
do communities react to women functioning as religious leaders? What modes of female
religious authority are more likely to be accepted than others (providing counselling versus
leading prayer, for example)? What modes are actively being encouraged? What patterns
and local variations can be discerned in bottom-up processes of certification? Are gene-
alogical characteristics (stemming from a locally recognised ʿulamāʾ family) or personal
charisma sometimes more important than expertise in fiqh in order to gather a following,
for example? Finally, how do different modes of certification interact with other factors
relevant to the production of religious authority, including gender, class, affiliation with
particular political or religious groups, and transnational connections?
This introduction establishes our approach to bottom-up processes of certification and
its fit with the extant literature, and draws comparative conclusions from the six articles that
are part of the special issue. The articles deal with case studies from Indonesia, Singapore
and Tajikistan, and provide analyses of how female religious leaders and authorities have
made a career for themselves and gathered a following by building a religious community.
The next section gives a brief outline of the separate contributions. We then highlight cen-
tral themes that emerge from the articles, including various approaches to studying female
Islamic authority, and how social change impacts career options, notions of community
and gender. We close by placing the current reorientations on female Islamic authority and
bottom-up certification in a broader theoretical perspective.

Organisation of the Articles

The concept of religious authority in Islam that is prevalent in the relevant literature is
that of juristic authority. The quintessential bearers of religious authority in Islam are the
ʿulamāʾ, religious scholars trained in (interpreting) Islamic law, as laid out in the Qurʾān
and the sunna (the collections of prophetic traditions, or ḥadīth) (Abou El Fadl, 2001a;
2001b; Hallaq, 2001; Zaman, 2002). Certainly, their education in the Islamic Sciences usu-
ally includes classes in mysticism, gnosis, theology, logic, rhetoric, grammar and Islamic
history, but in most contexts, the primary qualification of an outstanding Islamic authority
depends on his or her ability to interpret Islamic law, and therefore to issue fatāwā. Fatāwā
constitute recommendations that are issued on the basis of Islamic legal sources in response
to an inquiry of a believer on a question of Islamic law. They are not binding on the inquirer,
 Asian Studies Review 481

and they are not enforceable, but depending on who has issued them, they may carry great
moral weight.
The first article in this special issue, by Nor Ismah (2016), tackles the concept of religious
authority as juristic authority. It deals with a program specifically set up to train Indonesian
women in Islamic juristic authority with the goal of qualifying them to issue fatāwā. While
women in most contemporary Muslim societies typically do not function as muftīyāt, Islamic
law in all major Sunni and Shia schools of jurisprudence (madhāhib) does permit them
to do so, and Islamic history features hundreds of examples of women providing legal
opinions (iftāʾ) (Bauer, 2010; Schneider, 1997; Abou el-Fadl, 2012). Confronted with the
dearth of female muftūn today (which by and large is due to societal reservations about
following a woman’s advice in legal questions), several states and societal organisations
have over the past ten years set up muftīya-training programs (see, e.g., Basarudin, 2016;
Hassan, 2011; Islam, 2012; Rausch, 2012). The “Female Ulama Cadre Program” established
by the Indonesian non-governmental organisation Rahima, surveyed in Ismah’s article, is
one such initiative. In 2005, Rahima started to train women from pesantren backgrounds
(traditional Islamic boarding schools) in both juristic knowledge and gender activism. The
group encourages female Islamic scholars to reach out in religious teaching and discussion
groups to their own (mostly rural) communities. Developing a concept of community-based
authority, Ismah explains that the achievements of the scholars trained by Rahima are
based, unsurprisingly, for an important part on their strong commitment to the (material
and spiritual) wellbeing of their respective communities.
The next two articles, by Anna Cieślewska and David Kloos, discuss women exercising
the roles of Islamic teachers-cum-spiritual-leaders. Both do so by analysing in particular the
relational character of authority – that is, the extent to which it is generated and shaped by
the community of believers it serves. Cieślewska (2016) discusses the bibi otuns of Tajikistan,
female teachers of Islam who endow daily practices and traditions with spiritual guidance
by leading a range of local religious rituals (some of which are exclusive to women): prac-
tices of storytelling, reciting poems (ghazals) and religious counselling. A resurgence of
religious life in post-Soviet Tajikistan has prompted recent governments to increasingly
regulate and control expressions of religious authority. Growing transnational mobility
in the Muslim world has in turn intensified attempts by political and religious leaders to
purify Islam of its perceived innovations and superstitions. Meanwhile, religious services are
becoming increasingly commercialised. These developments affect the position of the bibi
otuns. Many of them engage, besides teaching, in mystical and healing practices, and their
authority depends for an important part on trust between them and their communities. As
Cieślewska observes, the diversification of modes of religious authority provides the bibi
otuns with new possibilities.
Kloos (2016) discusses the lives and careers of two ʿālimāt in Aceh, Indonesia, and their
engagements with both state institutions and local communities, in the context of the recent
implementation of Islamic criminal law in the province. The position of these women as
religious teachers and leaders of religious schools is based on a combination of ijāzāt from
prestigious traditionalist religious institutions and diplomas obtained from state institutions
of religious higher education. The basis of their religious authority, then, does not differ
fundamentally from that of their male counterparts. At the same time, their authority is also
derived from careful negotiations and challenges of established gender norms embedded
in local customs, state ideologies and institutions, and (local formulations of) Islamic law.
482 D. Kloos and M. Künkler

Engaging with the concerns of the communities of which they are part, these women pro-
vide important religious services while at the same time entering, and influencing, arenas
of moral and social contestation about the position of women in Acehnese society. Kloos
elaborates on this argument by posing urgent questions about the increased salience of
gender in Southeast Asia more broadly and its implications with regard to the different
grounds on which women may claim religious authority.
The next two articles turn to the contexts in which female Islamic authority emerges. Why
do women choose to become female religious leaders? And why do women turn to female
Islamic leaders for advice, guidance and education? Nurhaizatul Jamil (2016) examines this
question in the context of a new religious landscape in Singapore – populated primarily, if
not exclusively, by the emergent (upper) middle class – that increasingly merges elements
of consumerism and piety. Singaporean Muslim graduates of Egypt’s al-Azhar University
have pioneered a new wave of religion classes that combine self-help rhetoric with moral
lessons from the Qurʾān and ḥadīth. Based on a combination of religious authority and
entrepreneurial skills, these activities tap into a significant new religious growth market. The
vast majority of students are relatively affluent professional women, graduates of Singapore’s
secular universities, who desire to fashion ideal Muslim selves while pursuing their careers.
Jamil explores how religious authority takes shape in informal settings, in a predominantly
non-Muslim context marked by state authoritarianism, a suspicion of public Islam, and a
broadly shared and deeply inscribed neoliberal rhetoric of individual responsibility as a
prerequisite for social and economic development.
While Jamil describes how the pursuit of secular careers and social mobility has
simultaneously increased women’s demands for religious guidance, a seemingly oppo-
site trend is discussed by Claire-Marie Hefner (2016) in her article on Madrasah
Mu’allimaat Muhammadiyah, an elite religious boarding school in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
Muhammadiyah is Indonesia’s largest modernist Islamic organisation and has an active
female membership (cf. van Doorn-Harder, 2006). One of the main aims of Mu’allimaat
is to train Muhammadiyah’s future women leaders, but as Hefner observes, in practice
the students increasingly aspire to careers outside the religious sphere because these are
generally seen as more prestigious and conducive to upward social mobility. While this
development is indicative, she argues, of a broader identity crisis within the organisation,
in fact the aspirations of these female students – most of whom belong to the upper seg-
ments of the urban middle class – are a direct result of the religious values cultivated by
Muhammadiyah. Female religious authority, according to these values, is grounded not
just in religious knowledge and skills, but also in a broader set of aspirations and ethical
dispositions related to family, career and social prestige.
Finally, Daniel Birchok’s portrayal of the religious authority of two deceased women in
Aceh, Indonesia, discusses an example of posthumously ascribed female religious author-
ity. While these women also actively exercised religious authority during their lifetimes,
Birchok’s focus is on the (new kinds of) authority ascribed to them after their passing.
Some residents of the local (Seunagan) district suggest that the two buried women transmit
preternatural powers to their descendants, despite the fact that transmission in this Sufi
family has previously been thought to be exclusively patrilinear. While it seems tempting to
explain such suggestions of ambilineality on the basis of local, partly pre-Islamic traditions
of matrilocality, Birchok (2016) argues that these expressions are cast in a Sufi (and thus
explicitly Islamic) idiom. The case study raises questions about the liminal conditions of
 Asian Studies Review 483

the concept of authority. What does female challenge to male authority mean if the ʿālima
is no longer alive, her leadership based on the perceived transmission of an intangible,
divine substance, and the challenge therefore expressed by her followers, rather than the
authority in question herself?
Overall, the articles in this collection foreground how female Islamic leaders negotiate
the spheres of organised religion, the state, local and (trans)national communities, and the
family. Exploring how local initiatives reinforce, clash with, or otherwise relate to the ways
in which (state and religious) institutions enable and constrain various forms of female
Islamic authority, they open up space for new questions, analytical frameworks and com-
parisons within the developing field of female Islamic authority. The next section draws
out the following four themes: the grounds and exercise of female religious authority; class,
aspiration and the making of careers; the relationship between female religious leaders and
local communities; and the question of gender as a salient category.

Common and Comparative Themes: Authority, Careers, Communities,

Gender
Constituents of female Islamic authority
A number of factors contribute to whether an individual is accepted as a religious authority
or not. These include formal training, family background, charisma and access to particu-
lar social networks, among others. A striking observation among the case studies is that
formal training – the rise in self-proclaimed preachers notwithstanding – still functions
in most contexts as an entry point: charisma alone is not sufficient. In the Indonesian case
studies, nearly all of the women portrayed had undergone training at the local State Islamic
Institutes (IAIN and UIN), which are also the foremost training institutes for male religious
scholars and preachers. In the case study on Singapore, the preachers are Azharis (graduates
of Egypt’s al-Azhar University). Furthermore, the fact that these formal qualifications are
tied to institutions rather than individuals reveals the transformation in the production of
religious authority. In many ways, university degrees have replaced the traditional ijāzāt
(certificates of study) issued by individual teachers. In the case of Indonesia, this trans-
formation also means that the state takes a prominent place in the production of religious
authority, as the IAIN and UIN are state institutions, whose curricula are drafted in the
Ministry of Religious Affairs and whose personnel are state employees. The fact that the
state has opened all study courses in the IAIN and UIN to women, including for example
training courses for judges of the Islamic courts (which in most other Muslim countries
are reserved for men), has facilitated the great presence of female Islamic authorities in
Indonesia: as preachers and teachers, but also as principals of Islamic schools, judges in the
Islamic courts, and experts of Islamic Law in the Ministry of Religious Affairs.
Besides the prevalence of formal training among the women portrayed, family back-
ground emerged as a category of secondary importance. Most of the women portrayed
came from renowned ʿulamāʾ families, and were the daughters or sisters of influential
preachers, teachers and Islamic school principals. (The case study on two teachers in Aceh
is an exception in this respect.)
The exercise of religious authority is highly dependent on both the qualifications of the
preacher or teacher in question, and the community to which she caters. In the example of
484 D. Kloos and M. Künkler

the ʿālimāt discussed by Ismah, religious authority is exercised by issuing a fatwā. In most
other cases portrayed in this special issue, the consulted authorities provide advice with-
out basing it explicitly on Qurʾānic exegesis. They help by explaining particular religious
teachings or examples from Islamic jurisprudence and relating these to everyday situations,
by invoking stories about the Prophet Muhammad, or by drawing analogies from Islamic
history. In nearly all cases, the advice is provided in spoken word, and in direct commu-
nication with students or those seeking advice. In the case of the two saints portrayed by
Birchok, religious authority reveals itself through ritual practices. Finally, the religious
leaders discussed in Kloos and Cieślewska supplement their religious authority by mobi-
lising the community for common purposes and goals, and by addressing the community’s
developmental concerns. In other words, their profile as community leaders complements,
and presumably strengthens, their ability to exercise religious authority.
Issues of innovation and religious renewal come to the fore most strongly in the articles
by Jamil and Hefner. Much has been written about the extent to which the Indonesian IAIN
and UIN have been engines of religious innovation and pluralistic approaches to studying
Islam, but only few accounts have also highlighted how truly avant-garde these institutions
have been with regard to the training of women (see Hefner, 2009; van Doorn-Harder,
2006). When the IAIN began to train women as judges for the country’s Islamic courts, this
was unique in the Muslim world and “judging Islamic law” as a mode of female religious
authority is still a phenomenon largely absent in case studies outside Indonesia. Jamil shows
how the rising pervasiveness of commodification and consumerism has prompted female
religious authorities in Singapore to model themselves simultaneously as successful career
women and also pious believers, leading to novel definitions not only of religious authority
but also of modest appearance. Women here are not leaving the field to the increasingly pop-
ular hair-gelled male preachers and Qurʾān reciters on Southeast Asia’s TV programs, but
claiming that combination of piety and pizzazz themselves. Hefner discusses how changes
in educational opportunity, class relations and lifestyles have made aspiring to religious
authority less attractive for Muhammadiyah girls, who increasingly regard their training
in Madrasah Mu’allimaat Muhammadiyah not as the end point, but as an intermediate step
in their education, and in growing numbers seek professions outside the religious sphere.

Social change and careers

Aside from diversifying modes of authority, the combination of social change, initiatives to
educate women and technological innovation has led to new options for religious careers.
The teachers central in Jamil’s paper are successful entrepreneurs who combine religious
lessons with (often expensive) workshops on how to balance the demands of career, fam-
ily and religion. As such, they are part of a broader trend of (male and female) popular
preachers catering to the rising (sub)urban middle class in Muslim Southeast Asia (see, e.g.,
Hoesterey, 2015). Meanwhile, the style of “modern” Muslim femininity cultivated by the
students of Mu’allimaat studied by Hefner clearly constitutes a means of social distinction.
Many of these girls do not aspire to a career as a religious leader. It is probable, however,
that after their graduation they will benefit from their expertise in addressing the specific
moral anxieties of the (upper) middle class (cf. Fischer, 2008). As Hefner and Jamil both
argue, studies of religious authority must not be limited to formal settings such as al-Azhar
 Asian Studies Review 485

or Mu’allimaat. Graduates from such institutions may play a range of authoritative roles
in other, more informal settings such as local study groups, the work floor or the family.
Transformations of authoritative forms through changing consumption patterns and
lifestyles are not limited to metropoles such as Singapore or Kuala Lumpur. As Cieślewska
explains, in Tajikistan some popular bibi otuns have remodelled their profession into prof-
itable businesses. She shows a rather different side of this process, however, as many ordi-
nary believers think that this development undermines the traditional authority of the bibi
otuns, who are expected to live a modest life as servants of God, and who should not ask for
(excessive) payments from the people they serve. At the same time, professionalisation is
a feature of the development of female Islamic authority across social classes. The religious
teachers studied by Kloos are self-consciously engaged in building careers, while they remain
part of the traditional village leadership, providing a host of basic religious services, from
leading rituals to practices of counselling and mediation.
More generally, the articles in this special issue show that careers constitute an important
entry-point for studying female religious authority, for the latter depends not just on changes
taking place within the domain of organised religion (and thus, the extent to which women
are able to accumulate religious knowledge and skills [cf. Nesbitt, 2007]), but also on the
ways in which these women are able to develop themselves professionally in the wake of
the possibilities and limitations posed by both formal institutions and wider audiences and
mentors. In particular, a focus on careers allows one to consider the various motivations that
guide women to choose (or reject) the path of religious authority. While religious leaders
are often pious people, religious expertise also constitutes an important means for both
men and women to earn a living, develop themselves intellectually, and gain a position of
social recognition and prestige.

Community
Religious authority depends on the ability to gather a following or audience. Indeed, one
of the primary aims of this special issue is to show how interactions with (local) commu-
nities are, in themselves, constitutive of female religious authority. As Ismah argues, com-
munity-based authority is particularly important for women, who often need to be more
proactive, for example in terms of addressing local needs and concerns, to see their formal
qualifications translated into practical authority. The articles collected here show that bot-
tom-up certification takes different forms, responding to different kinds and perceptions
of community, based on the intersection of gender and religion with factors such as class,
locality, kinship and family.
New forms of community are based, for example, on online interactions, which provide
female religious leaders with opportunities to engage in activities and religious debates in
ways that are difficult or impossible within the (generally male-dominated) confines of
physical religious spaces (see the articles by Hefner and Jamil; cf. Le Renard, 2012; Piela,
2012; Sanyal, 2015). At the same time, female Islamic authorities are certified through the
reconfiguration of established forms of community, such as villages, religious schools, infor-
mal study groups and religious congregations. The teachers and spiritual leaders discussed
by Cieślewska and Kloos derive much of their authority from the social status ascribed to
them as community leaders. The claims regarding the transmission of spiritual power by
female saints, as discussed by Birchok, seem possible only because local communities have
486 D. Kloos and M. Künkler

been engaged in the practice of visiting their graves for many years. This is not to say that
local communities are always, necessarily or univocally, supportive of the roles of female
religious authorities. In both Aceh and Tajikistan, conservative views and local customs –
as well as longstanding traditions of gender segregation – impose limits on female Islamic
authority, and female assertiveness may be (or may become) a source of disruptive local
conflicts (as discussed most explicitly by Kloos).

Gender and agency

This raises a final point – namely, to what extent gender must be regarded as a salient factor
in the constitution of (female) Islamic authority more generally. This section began with the
observation that formal training counts. In some cases, male and female religious leaders
are trained in the same institutions and women are taught the same knowledge and skills
as men. The goal of the Indonesian ʿālimāt training program discussed by Ismah is that
women are able to issue fatāwā, just like men. Explaining differences in roles and prestige
between male and female religious authority requires a consideration of dominant (and
often place-specific) gender norms and ideologies. It is equally important, however, to take
into account factors other than gender, such as class or local contingencies (cf. Ortner,
1996), thus allowing for incisive analyses of when, how and why, in particular instances,
gender becomes a (more or less) dominant factor. Consider, in this respect, the Singaporean
religious teachers studied by Jamil. The combination of scripturalist authority and self-
help rhetoric is not, in itself, gender-specific (see Hoesterey, 2015). Yet, processes such as
demographic and technological change, social mobility and religious commodification do
affect men and women in different ways, providing particular opportunities to particular
groups of men or women. The present collection provides different views on the salience
of gender and how it varies across social and geographic contexts.
Most of the female religious authorities discussed in this special issue cater primarily, if
not exclusively, to female audiences. This comes with constraints as much as with possibil-
ities. It remains difficult for women to enter and influence institutional spheres controlled
by men. Yet, the opposite is also true: activities in girls’ schools, informal women’s study
groups or women-only ritual gatherings take place largely outside the control of men.
That said, the articles also point out significant constraints, ranging from the impediments
placed on women’s access to the highest levels of religious education (Hefner and Kloos),
to the “extra” effort required in order to be recognised as religious leaders (Ismah), to the
reduction of women to “advisory” roles (Cieślewska), to a situation in which a woman may
be seen by some as a transmitter of divine grace, but never as the leader of a tarīqa (Sufi
order) (Birchok).
An important question implicit in this collection is whether women actively seek new
modes of religious authority compared to men, or whether they are ascribed different
modes of authority. In most cases portrayed here, the latter is still the case. Where women
have become most influential in changing gender norms within Islam, it is in places where
they have aimed to break beyond the segmented world of speaking or preaching only to
women. And to do so seems to have been easier in those cases in which their authority was
more formalised – that is, when they had acquired qualifications from formal institutions
of learning. We will conclude by placing the phenomenon of female religious authority, and
its limitations, in a broader theoretical framework.
 Asian Studies Review 487

Comparative Conclusions
In her volume on Women, Leadership and Mosques: Changes in Contemporary Islamic
Authority (co-edited with Masooda Bano), Hilary Kalmbach (2012, pp. 31–36) suggests
a tripartite approach to analysing how women emerge as Islamic leaders, comprising the
factors of female agency, male invitation and state intervention. Most contributors to this
special issue focus on the first: the ways in which women have achieved authority predomi-
nantly due to their own agency – their decision to seek training and eventually preach, teach
or interpret Islamic law. That does not mean that the other two factors are unimportant,
however. In many cases, the careers of these women have been supported or facilitated by
men, and state initiatives are evident as well, as in Indonesia’s institutions of higher Islamic
learning (the IAIN/UIN), where all Islamic study programs are open to women. Moreover,
the contributions to this special issue suggest a fourth lens – namely, the communities
served by these Islamic authorities. While female agency, male invitation or state interven-
tion may no doubt be crucial in facilitating female Islamic authority, no leader can exist
without a following. As is suggested here, the interactions between religious leaders and
their communities may be as constitutive of Islamic authority as formal qualifications are.
This special issue further demonstrates the importance of ethnographic research in
revealing and investigating these interactions. As Dale Eickelman and James Piscatori (1996,
pp. 58–59) have argued, religious authority (or “sacred authority” as they call it) may be
analysed at different levels, and the authors single out three as especially fruitful: ideolog-
ical, functional and locational. The articles collected here are particularly concerned with
“locational” and “functional” levels of analysing female religious authority. Ethnographic
research allows the authors to examine both the locus of religiously learned women in
various social, institutional and ritual contexts, and the social functions (such as providing
religious guidance to local communities) from which they derive their authority.
A theme that emerges clearly is the place of women in the tension – prevalent through-
out the Muslim world – between attempts by state elites to centralise and regulate religious
authority and religious organisations on the one hand and the persistently (and arguably
increasingly) decentralised nature of religious authority on the other. A top-down perspec-
tive that privileges formal institutions would lead, inevitably, to a conclusion on the margin-
alised position of female Islamic leaders. It is, however, precisely the fact that many female
leaders operate within and on the basis of informal, relatively unregulated, institutions and
settings that allows them to compete with male dominated religious establishments (cf.
Eickelman & Piscatori, 1996, p. 79, citing Tapper & Tapper, 1987). We should underline,
moreover, that our emphasis on studying bottom-up processes of certification through
ethnographic methods is relevant not only for the study of female Islamic leaders but also
for the study of male Islamic leaders, particularly those who do not hold powerful positions
within mainstream religious organisations, state bureaucracies or other centralised bodies.
A great variety of juristic opinions exists on whether and under what conditions women
may exercise various modes of religious authority (Bauer, 2010). Most Sunni and Shīʿī legal
madhāhib prohibit women from issuing the call to prayer or delivering the khutba (Friday
sermon), as well as from leading men and mixed congregations in prayer. As far as giving
legal opinions (iftāʾ) is concerned, most Sunni and Shi’a schools of jurisprudence recog-
nise the eligibility of women to serve as muftīyāt, and interestingly so, not only in issues
of particular relevance or interest to women, but on any issue on which a believer might
488 D. Kloos and M. Künkler

seek an answer. Although this field of research is still in its infancy, a growing number of
works documents cases in which women functioned as influential muftīyāt in the history
of Islamic societies (Schneider, 1997; Abou el-Fadl, 2012; Hassan, 2015). One observation
emanating from this growing literature as well as the articles in this collection is that in
contrast to the overwhelming consensus in Islamic legal thought that women may serve as
muftīyāt, in most Muslim-majority societies today women are either seldom found in this
role, or where muftīyāt do exist, their role is confined to women’s issues. Both the scholarly
and the societal consensus among Islamic communities were for long periods of time more
permissive than in contemporary societies.
A further comparative observation is that as a growing number of state and society-in-
itiated programs trains women as muftīyāt and preachers today, the obstacles to reaching
a status and position comparable to those of their male counterparts do not always lie
primarily in limited educational opportunities. On the contrary, most articles included in
this collection attest to the nearly egalitarian access to attaining religious expertise women
enjoy today. The obstacles lie elsewhere: in most communities, women are confined to
female audiences not because political or legal factors prevent them from reaching out to
men, but because believers by and large still prefer male religious authorities. Not only do
men usually choose a male preacher or male scholar to provide legal advice, but female
believers, too, regard men’s interpretations as more authoritative.
Bottom-up certification therefore still faces considerable obstacles in societal attitudes
that accord men more authority than women in religious issues. Contrary to much focus
in the relevant literature on the needed reinterpretation of scripture, in the realm of reli-
gious authority, misogynist interpretation (although certainly prevalent among parts of
the – male and female – religious establishment in many contexts) is often not the primary
challenge. As noted, even in as specialised a task as issuing fatāwā, most strands of Islamic
law accord women full equality. The real challenge, as far as specialised Islamic authority
is concerned, lies in changing societal attitudes to come into line with Islamic law, not the
other way around.
For female Islamic authorities not only to become more numerically prevalent but to
attain a status on a par with that of their male counterparts will depend on whether believers
accept women in such roles. Community-based acceptance, what sociologists would refer
to as bottom-up “certification”, is therefore a crucial element in that process. The studies in
this collection have aimed to re-focus the study of female religious authority in that light:
to re-orient our gaze away from the top-down training programs to how female Islamic
authorities negotiate the relationship with their audiences and how this in turn constitutes
and re-shapes their authority in the first place.

Note
1. 
Charles Tilly (2005, p. 222) defines certification as the validation of actors, their performances
and their claims by external authorities.

Acknowledgments
This special issue is the result of a workshop titled “Female Islamic Authority in Comparative
Perspective: Exemplars, Institutions, Practices”, which we convened at the Royal Netherlands Institute
of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) in Leiden on 8–9 January 2015. We thank the
 Asian Studies Review 489

following institutions for their financial and/or logistical support of the workshop: KITLV, the Asian
Modernities and Traditions (AMT) Research Program, the International Institute of Asian Studies
(IIAS), and the Leiden University Centre for the Study of Islam and Society (LUCIS). We are also
grateful to the following colleagues who acted as discussants during the workshop and/or commented
on parts of the special issue separately: Martin van Bruinessen, Ahmed Fekry Ibrahim, Mahmood
Kooriadathodi, Bart Luttikhuis, Annemarie Samuels, Irene Schneider, Henk Schulte Nordholt, Fritz
Schulze, Benjamin Soares and Devin Stewart. Finally, we thank the participants in two panels on
female religious authority in modern Asia we convened at the Association of Asian Studies Annual
Meeting in Chicago, in March 2015, and the European Association of Southeast Asian Studies
Conference in Vienna, in August 2015.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding
This work was supported by the KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean
Studies.

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