Review and Critique of the Book Justice, Women, Gender

The primary objective of this article is to provide an analytical review and critique of the book Justice, Women, Gender authored by Fariba Alavand. The issue of gender justice constitutes one of the most complex and significant topics in the field of women's studies, possessing an inseparable connection with the distribution of power, opportunities, and social rights. The author of the book has endeavored to present a theoretical and practical framework based on Islamic teachings for achieving justice between the two sexes by critiquing Western feminist and liberal approaches. However, the present article has been written with the aim of clarifying conceptual and theoretical boundaries within the domain of gender justice studies to demonstrate that, despite the author's valuable efforts and use
of primary sources, the book's approach suffers from theoretical distortions, conceptual reductionism, and methodological inconsistencies. The critic attempts to illuminate the theoretical weaknesses and gaps in this work by meticulously examining the book's claims regarding the definition of justice, the semantics of the term "gender," its criteria, as well as the relationship between religious rulings (ahkam) and justice, thereby drawing a clearer horizon for explaining the justice of Islamic rulings related to women. The article employs an "analytical-critical" method. To evaluate the book's claims, the author has utilized a document review approach and content analysis of texts. In this regard, the formal structure and logical organization of the book's topics were first assessed. Subsequently, the critic conducted a comparative study by directly referring to authoritative Shi'a jurisprudential and hadith texts and other library sources (to trace the general and specific meanings of justice and to examine whether justice serves as the criterion in religious rulings), as well as international and English-language documents (to evaluate the author's claims regarding the universal application of the term "gender justice"). In this process, the critic decomposed the book's arguments into premises and conclusions, employing logical principles and the rules of Usul al-Fiqh (Principles of Jurisprudence) to assess the validity of these propositions, thereby demonstrating whether the author's inferences possess the necessary scholarly support. The results of this critical examination reveal six fundamental challenges in the book. First, formal defects and stylistic weight that impede understanding of the logical coherence of the discussions. Second, the reduction of the definition of justice to the specific meaning of "granting rights" and neglect of the general meaning of "placing things in their proper place," which has caused the author to experience confusion and contradiction in analyzing justice as a macro-policy tool (sais am). Third, the book's resolute opposition to the term "gender justice" and its proposal of "justice between women and men" as an alternative. The article demonstrates that the book's claim regarding
global consensus on the feminist meaning of this term is invalid due to opposition from international documents and other sources that emphasize only gender equality; moreover, changing the wording does not resolve the paradigmatic confrontation. Fourth, the book introduces "gender" as the criterion for feminist justice, whereas gender is the subject of their discussion, and the criterion in their views is merely "absolute equality"; moreover, gender, due to its evolutionary nature, fundamentally lacks the capacity to serve as
a criterion—a point which feminists themselves do not explicitly acknowledge. Fifth, severing the connection between individual religious rulings and the concept of justice: the author of the book maintains that since the word "justice" is not explicitly used in the hadiths related to women's issues, justice is therefore not the criterion for each of these rulings. The article proves that the governing spirit of the hadiths is the realization of justice in its general sense, even if the word "justice" is not employed in them. Sixth and most importantly, the book's reliance on a "doctrinal submission" (gharayeh ta'abbodi) approach in dealing with women's jurisprudential issues; whereas it appears that one cannot, in the face of differential rulings for women and men, rely solely on submission and equating jurisprudential verdicts with divine revelation, for this approach deprives society of the possibility of perceiving justice and blocks the path of critical thinking. Despite its concern for defending the domain of Islamic rulings, the book Justice, Women, Gender has failed to present a comprehensive theory in the field of gender justice due to its reliance on narrow definitions of justice, incomplete analyses of international concepts, and resort to Ash'ari-style approaches in justifying rulings. Denying commonly used terminology and resorting to submission in matters directly related to women's social rights and status will not address the challenges facing contemporary humanity. The article emphasizes that religious texts and explicit scriptures are indicators of revelation, but revelation itself is not directly accessible to us; therefore, the fundamental strategy for resolving existing conflicts in the field of women's issues is not to erase the problem and call for unconditional obedience, but rather requires updating the methods of jurisprudential knowledge, recognizing the authority of independent reason in understanding the criteria of rulings, and engaging in methodical and ijtihad-based reflection on religious sources in order to enable the true spirit of Islamic justice to be implemented within the framework of women's legal rights.