Norwegian Muslim and Christian Feminists Reading the Hagar Narratives

This essay discusses the findings of a 2010 Norwegian research project that explored the hermeneutical strategies of Norwegian Muslim and Christian feminist readers as they read the Hagar narrative together. Interestingly, the women employed distinct interpretative reading strategies to develop meaningful interpretations. In their conversations the women addressed religious identity politics, fears in the majority Christian and post-Christian population about Muslims and Islam, feelings of alienation among the Norwegian Muslim minorities, or worries about gender justice in the neoliberal global world. Some readers limited the conversation to the canonical texts of their respective religious tradition whereas other readers explored the intertextuality of relevant Christian and Muslim texts. The women readers understood that their particular religious understanding of the Hagar story was incomplete if they did not know the interpretative tradition of the other religious community. Overall, then, the study yields important insights about interreligious readings of the Bible, Qur’an, and the Hadith for a religiously and socially diverse society such as Norway.