Women and the Sacred in Ibn Taymiyyah's Fatwas on Women

Abstract

The function of the fatwa is to draw the boundaries between the permissible and the forbidden in Islamic culture, which makes it closely linked to the sacred, the core of which is based on the idea of the limit, which is respected by conforming to the reasons for purity and leaving defects and shortcomings. In this context, women's fatwas are an important reference that allows us to understand the anxiety felt by the mufti and the questioner when the point of control is linked to women and the mythical symbolism of evil and sin that they carry in the religious imagination, so that the sacred manifests itself in the form of a transcendent moral model that responds to the demands of this gender-related anxiety, regulating the circle of haram that respect for the sacred requires and offering women preventive measures to avoid as far as possible falling into the image of the evil woman.