Modernity and Discourse Changes in Shiite Jurisprudence in the Field of Women (1340-1390)

Modernity and the changes that resulted from it caused the issues of women, which were understood in the traditional context of religion, to face serious questions from religious activists and put jurists in a new position to answer. This study, which analyzes the emergence and formation of new women’s issues in the modern context in relation to jurisprudence by constructing the meaning of “discourse jurisprudence”, seeks to answer the question of how Shiite jurisprudence deals with women’s issues (in the period from the 1340s to the 1390s). Explains the new requirements of the modern period? The “Esteftaat” of Religious authority as neglected social data were analyzed in two parts: imitators ‘questions and religious authorities’ answers to answer this question. At first, six religious authorities were selected by purposive sampling method and abstract concepts were discovered by open and axial coding technique. Due to the length of the text of the Esteftaat in most cases, in the open coding section, the Esteftaat were represented as “indexes” in the tables. In other words, the author expressed the central sign and the question phrases in the form of quasi-sentences or short sentences. In axial coding, more abstract concepts were discovered by juxtaposing concepts. After that, text analysis was followed by qualitative content analysis at two levels: First, a descriptive analysis of abstract concepts was performed and in the second part, the concepts were analyzed in relation to the socio-cultural context, discourse approach and theoretical framework of the research. Findings of the research based on qualitative content analysis method are presenting that the approach of jurists after modernity has changed its position towards explaining and justifying or understanding cultural and social of traditional rules. Some jurists have taken the approach of dialogue with issues that have arisen in the modern context and some have adopted the approach of rejection. This group either implicitly denies the differences between men and women or, by accepting the differences, does not consider gender as an independent variable in understanding and studying women’s issues. In addition, the semantic formulation in solving the issues of modern construction is based on traditional jurisprudential presuppositions, and this indicates the lack of acceptance of modern concepts by the jurist. In such a way that the modern concept is understood and analyzed in the traditional context and the solution is presented accordingly.