This paper argues that gender hierarchy in Islamic tradition is more meaningfully understood not merely as a matter of social custom or legal doctrine, but as a deeper psychological and ontological formation of the self. Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, author of the most philosophically sophisticated account of the soul (nafs) in classical Islam, provides a rich resource for theorizing the Islamic self in a way that both exposes and resists gender hierarchy. His exegesis of Qur'ān 4:1 in Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb destabilizes previous exegetical claims of inherent ontological or moral hierarchy between men and women, exposing the interpretative moves through which such hierarchies were introduced in the tradition. His emphasis on intellective self-knowledge (maʿrifat al-nafs) and purification (tazkiyah) allows us to argue that gendered restrictions on agency contradict the soul's telos, and that classical interpretations that limit women's moral autonomy because of a presumed ontological deficiency violate the very metaphysics of the nafs that al-Rāzī articulates. This makes al-Rāzī a compelling figure for rethinking gender within Islam without abandoning the classical intellectual tradition itself.