The Making of Spiritual Feminist Authority: Rethinking Women’s Religious Authority through Theological Anthropology

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Published: Jun 1, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15642/teosofi.2026.16.1.247-279
Keywords:
Spiritual Feminist Authority; Lived religion; theological anthropology; women’s religious authority; symbolic mediation; Islamic feminism.

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Sulaiman Sulaiman
Universitas Islam Negeri Walisongo Semarang
Suparman Syukur
Universitas Islam Negeri Walisongo Semarang
Muhibbin Muhibbin
Universitas Islam Negeri Walisongo Semarang

Abstract

Existing scholarship on Muslim women’s religious authority has predominantly explained legitimacy through institutional leadership, scriptural expertise, or charismatic influence, while paying limited attention to transcendental experience as a source of public religious authority. This study examines the writings of Nyai Masriyah Amva through documentary research, thematic content analysis, and Ricoeurian hermeneutics, integrating lived religion with theological anthropology to analyze how divine intimacy becomes socially recognized authority. The findings demonstrate that sustained encounters with the Divine are progressively translated into ritual discipline, symbolic mediation, ethical embodiment, and communal recognition, forming a recursive process through which religious legitimacy is constituted. Rather than functioning as private spirituality, transcendental experience becomes an epistemic resource that generates enduring moral credibility within the pesantren. The study advances the concept of spiritual feminist authority, repositioning transcendence as a constitutive dimension of women’s religious authority and offering a transferable analytical framework for understanding how lived spiritual experience is transformed into publicly recognized religious leadership across diverse religious contexts.

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Sulaiman, Sulaiman, Suparman Syukur, and Muhibbin Muhibbin. “The Making of Spiritual Feminist Authority: Rethinking Women’s Religious Authority through Theological Anthropology”. Teosofi: Jurnal Tasawuf dan Pemikiran Islam 16, no. 1 (June 1, 2026): 247–279. Accessed August 9, 2026. https://jurnalfuf.uinsa.ac.id/index.php/teosofi/article/view/3904.
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Vol. 16 No. 1 (2026): June
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Articles
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© The Author(s). Published by Department of Aqidah and Islamic Philosophy, Faculty of Ushuluddin and Philosophy, Sunan Ampel State Islamic University Surabaya, Indonesia.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).

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