Join us on October 22nd from 1:00-2:00pm EST for a Book Talk on Dr. Ziba Mir-Hosseini's book Journeys to Gender Equality in Islam.
Abstract
If justice is an intrinsic value in Islam, why have women been treated as second-class citizens in Islamic legal tradition? Now that the idea of gender equality has become inherent to contemporary conceptions of justice, is it possible to argue for equality between men and women in Shari‘ah-based laws? If so, how and through what processes?
For over three decades these questions have been the centre of my work. In Journeys to Gender Equality in Islam, in conversations with six influential Muslim intellectuals – Abdullahi An-Na’im, Amina Wadud, Asma Lamrabet, Khaled Abou El Fadl, Mohsen Kadivar and Sedigheh Vasmaghi – I explore how egalitarian gender laws might be constructed from within an Islamic framework.
About Dr. Ziba Mir-Hosseini
Dr Ziba Mir-Hosseini is a legal anthropologist, specializing in Islamic law, gender and Islamic feminism, and a founding member of Musawah. She is Professorial Research Associate at the Centre for Islamic and Middle Eastern Law, SOAS, University of London. She co-directed two award-winning feature-length documentary films on Iran: Divorce Iranian Style (1998) and Runaway (2001). The author of books on Islamic family law in Iran and Morocco, Iranian clerical discourses on gender, Islamic reformist thinkers, and the revival of zina laws, she co-edited Gender and Equality in Muslim Family Law (2013) and Men in Charge? Rethinking Authority in Muslim Legal Tradition (2015). Her latest book is Journeys Towards Gender Equality in Islam (2022). She received the American Academy of Religion’s 2015 Martin E. Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion.
Journeys to Gender Equality in Islam
If justice is an intrinsic value in Islam, why have women been treated as second-class citizens in Islamic legal tradition? Now that the idea of gender equality has become inherent to contemporary conceptions of justice, is it possible to argue for equality between men and women in Shari‘ah-based laws? If so, how and through what processes?
For over three decades these questions have been the centre of my work. In Journeys to Gender Equality in Islam, in conversations with six influential Muslim intellectuals – Abdullahi An-Na’im, Amina Wadud, Asma Lamrabet, Khaled Abou El Fadl, Mohsen Kadivar and Sedigheh Vasmaghi – I explore how egalitarian gender laws might be constructed from within an Islamic framework.