Households in the context of the Qur’an

How does the Qur’an speak to the social structures of the people to whom it was revealed? Dr Karen Bauer and Prof Feras Hamza discuss how the Qur’an acknowledges societal structures in early Muslim history in their new book: Women, Households, and the Qur’an: A Patronage of Piety, available now. www.iis.ac.uk/...
Transcript:
Dr Karen Bauer: Of course, the Qur’an, it presumes a certain social structure. It presumes male-headed households and it presumes a social structure of patronage by which there would be a pater familias in a house (a male head of household) who would be patron for poor and disenfranchised people in the society. So, women become a prime example of vulnerable people who are cared for within those social structures of households.
Feras Hamza: And I think, just to build on that, once the Qur’an establishes its ambition to recalibrate the role of the patron or the head of the household as a role of looking after vulnerable individuals, not just the women, but of course everybody else in the household. I think the really subtle move that is not appreciated that the Qur’an makes is that once it speaks to those heads of household, the elites of the time can say: your duty is one of care, because what’s involved in that care is potentially a mutual or reciprocal benefit, which is that of doing pious acts and gaining in piety which then has a reward in the hereafter. Then that becomes a paradigm for anybody. And so, then anybody can become a patron of piety. And that’s the effect of the subtitle of our book: “A Patronage of Piety”.