muslim feminist quran tafsir council!?

so i saw this article on y! news about muslim feminists in new york wanting to start a quran interpretation council - their goal being to break streotypes involving terrorism and women being oppressed in islam.

i don’t know why, but something strikes me as odd about this… “muslim feminists” might be the start of oddity - islam is the first religion that gave women rights and elevated women to a status that is many times higher than that of men. the examples are innumerable, but just one example is that one of the top narrators of ahadeeth who taught the great men of the ummah and whom many of the great scholars took their knowledge directly or indirectly was sayida 3a2isha (ra).

secondly, a “shura council of women to interpret the Quran?” – i mean what do they think this is, “everyone interpret the Quran the way they wish?” – its not about men and injustice as they claim it is - the great islamic universities are open to women just as they are for men - no one stopped any woman from studying islam at al Azhar or Madinah Unniversity and publishing great works on Islam if they want to…

so i don’t get it, how is a group of random women (which is what i think of when reading this article, of course i could be wrong…) simply going to decide that “men are unjust, we are going to make a council to interpret the Quran?”

i have no problem with women writing tafseer of Quran - as long as they are qualified to do so. however, a group of random women (or men for that matter) writing a tafseer? i think not…

does anyone else see this, or is it that perhaps i am reading too much into this article?

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