Living Hadith: The Dialectics of the Mahram Hadith and the Discourse on Women's Leadership in the Contemporary Era

The mahram hadith is frequently invoked as a theological basis to restrict women’s mobility and subsequently extrapolated into a justification for rejecting women’s leadership in the public sphere. A literal and ahistorical reading of this text in the classical canon has helped construct an image of women as inferior, emotional, and incapable of bearing socio-political responsibility, thereby providing patriarchal structures with doctrinal support. In contrast, contemporary Islamic thought advances contextual hermeneutical approaches that foreground socio-historical factors and the higher objectives of the law (maqāṣid al-sharī‘ah), suggesting that the mahram hadith is better understood as a form of protective policy (wiqāyah) specific to its time rather than as a perpetual universal prohibition. This article examines the relationship between the mahram hadith and the discourse on women’s leadership through the lens of the living hadith approach, focusing on the dynamics of textual reception, social practice, and the re-actualization of meaning in modern Muslim societies. The findings reveal a clear polarization of interpretation: conservative groups maintain a restrictive literal reading and treat the hadith as an absolute barrier to women’s public authority, whereas progressive scholars and activists adopt contextual and purpose-oriented interpretations that open space for women’s full participation and gender equality in leadership. In this way, the living hadith paradigm provides a productive methodological framework for deconstructing patriarchal biases and fostering more gender-responsive, humanistic, and emancipatory readings of hadith, in harmony with Islam’s vision as a mercy for all creation.