Negotiating Gender Justice in Indonesian Pesantren: Muslim Women’s Reception of the Qur’anic Interpretations of Husein Muhammad and Zaitunah Subhan

Abstrak

Research on gender justice in Qur’anic interpretation has largely focused on textual analysis and normative debates, with less attention to how progressive interpretations are received and negotiated by Muslim women in pesantren. This study examines how Muslim women in seven pesantren in Probolinggo Regency, East Java, Indonesia, receive and contextualize gender justice ideas developed by K.H. Husein Muhammad and Zaitunah Subhan. Using a qualitative case study design, it draws on interviews, observations, and documentary sources, with participants comprising nyai, ning, female religious teachers, and senior female students. The data are analyzed through Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding framework and Hans-Robert Jauss’s reception theory, complemented by the Living Qur’an approach. The findings indicate that participants articulate gender justice through the concepts of reciprocal equality (musāwah mu‘ādalah) and human dignity (karāmah insāniyyah). Their responses involve negotiating contemporary gender discourses with the scholarly traditions of pesantren, particularly the kitab kuning, and with established practices of religious instruction and institutional life. These negotiations are reflected in how women’s roles in religious interpretation, education, and institutional leadership are understood and articulated. Building on these findings, the study proposes a Contextual Reception Model of Gender Justice to explain how women in traditional pesantren engage with gender justice ideas through context-sensitive negotiations with Islamic scholarly traditions. The study contributes to gender and Qur’anic studies by conceptualizing reception as a social and religious process through which interpretive ideas are negotiated and translated into pesantren life.

Kata kunci

• Gender Justice
• Epistemic Dualism
• Living Qur'an
• Pesantren
• Reception Theory