Studium Generale Groningen: Does the Qur'an support gender-equality? by dr. Asma Barlas
Studium Generale Groningen
Does the Qur’an support gender-equality?
Asma Barlas
DATE, TIME, LOCATION
Thursday 23 November 2006
8.00 – 9.30 p.m.
Academiegebouw
Broerstraat 5, Groningen
ADMISSION
€ 2,-
For students, SG-members and -ambassadeurs admission is free, but a ticket is required.
Does Islam call for the oppression of women? Non-Muslims point to the subjugation of women that occurs in many Muslim countries, especially those that claim to be ‘Islamic’, while many Muslims read the Qur’an in ways that seem to justify sexual oppression, inequality, and patriarchy. Taking a wholly different view, Asma Barlas develops a believer’s reading of the Qur’an that demonstrates the radically egalitarian and antipatriarchal nature of its teachings.
Asma Barlas will show how reading inequality into the Qur’an serves a function for those who choose or were taught to read that way. Contrary to what both conservative and many non-Muslims believe, Muslim women do not have to abandon islam to liberate themselves, but can struggle for equality within the framework of Qur’an’s teachings.
Asma Barlas is professor of Politics and Director of the Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity at Ithaca College, New York. Her research focuses on how Muslims interpret and live islam. In “Believing Women” in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’an (University of Texas Press, 2002) she proposed a liberatory Qur’anic hermeneutics that allows Muslims to argue on behalf of sexual equality and against patriarchy from within an Islamic framework. In her current and on-going research, she studies Christian-Muslim encounters from both a theological and a historical perspective with a view to analyzing their views on Otherness (i.e., the idea of difference).
Other publications: Islam, Muslims, and the US: Essays on Religion and Politics (India: Global Media, 2004) and Democracy, Nationalism, and Communalism: The Colonial Legacy in South Asia (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995).
Ulises A. Mejias is married to dr. Asma Barlas and has his own weblog: i d e a n t
