Asma Barlas

Who is Asma Barlas?

Asma Barlas is an academic educated in Pakistan and the United States. She is the Director of the Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity of the department of politics at Ithaca College, New York. Her specialties include comparative and international politics, Islam and Qur'anic hermeneutics, and women and gender. Barlas was named to the prestigious Spinoza Chair at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands for "her prominent contributions to discussions about women and Islam".

Barlas rejects the designation of her views and interpretations of Islam as "Islamic feminism," unless that term is defined as "a discourse of gender equality and social justice that derives its understanding and mandate from the Qur’an and seeks the practice of rights and justice for all human beings in the totality of their existence across the public-private continuum."