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women and islamic law 275– ‘By [the al-rij§l] whom neither traffic nor merchandise candivert from the remembrance of God, nor from regularprayer…’ ( Al-Når 24:37). Can only men, in their prayers, notbe distracted by traffic and trade? Does this mean, by logicalinference, that women are constantly distracted by these thingsand thus cannot pray properly? Of course not! Al-rij§l in thiscontext again includes both male and female believers!– [ al-rij§l] are the [qaww§mån] of women [ al-nis§"]. Given theabove examples of an ungendered usage of al-rij§l, we maintainthat the same term, used in 4:34, must refer to both sexes! 30In contrast, other verses of the Book do have a gendered meaning;the term rij§l refers to male adults and the term nis§" to female adults,as we can see in the following three examples:– …and if there are not two men, then a man [ fa-rajul] and two women[imra"at§n]… ( Al-Baqara 2:282)– …Had there not been believing men [ rij§l] and believing women[nis§"] … ( Al-FatÈ 48:25)– Would you really approach men [ al-rij§l] in your lusts rather thanwomen [ al-nis§"]?... ( Al-Naml 27:55)The point we want to make is that the terms rajul-rij§l (sing.-pl.) aresemantically not exclusively restricted to denote maleness. Thegeneric sense of the term is ‘to walk’ or ‘to go on foot’ which is inneither case a prerogative of the male sex. As we have seen in theverses quoted above, the context will tell us whether rajul-rij§l is usedin the generic, ungendered sense of ‘walking’ / ‘going on foot’ orwhether its derivative, gendered sense ‘male adult’ is implied. Thefact that in public life in the past men did all the walking to earntheir living for family and wife (who stayed at home or did not walkwhen on travel), might explain why the generic sense (on foot) is30Here, MS’s interpretation of al-rij§l is unique; no translator renders ar-rij§l differentfrom either ‘men’ (AA, MP, AhA, AB, MF) or ‘husband’ (AH). Lane gives thesame derivatives as MS and lists as the only possibility whereby al-rajul can connoteboth sexes as al-rajul§n, i.e., the dual of sing. rajul, ‘sometimes means a man and hiswife’ [my emphasis] but adds that ‘predominance being thus attributed to theformer’; or al-rajula, ‘a woman who is, or affects to be, or makes herself, like a man insome of her qualities, or states, or predicaments’ adding that #$"isha was called rajulatal-ra"y, ‘meaning she was like a man in judgement’. It seems that the term is predominatelymasculinised and that MS relies here on the gender-neutral meanings ofall the other derivatives of r-j-l in order to render al-rij§l as unisex.