Maria Chin Abdullah
Dr. Abdullah is the Executive Director of the Women’s Development Collective (WDC), a non-governmental organization in Malaysia focused on research, education, and training. Established in the early 1980’s, WDC’s programs focus on gender analysis, worker health and safety, awareness and understanding of Malaysian laws, and leadership and grassroots organizing.
Contact her through wlp [at] learningpartnership [dot] org
Aziza Abemba
Dr. Abemba is the Executive Director of the Women’s Self-Promotion Movement (WSPM) in Zimbabwe. WSPM provides training and education for Zimbabwean women and girls and for refugee women from African countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, and Burundi. Their programs promote women’s leadership, micro-enterprise, and political participation, as well as provide training in conflict resolution skills and domestic violence prevention.
Contact her through wlp [at] learningpartnership [dot] org
Mahnaz Afkhami
Dr. Afkhami is Founder and President of Women’s Learning Partnership (WLP), Executive Director of the Foundation for Iranian Studies, and former Minister of State for Women’s Affairs in Iran. Born in Kerman, Iran, she founded the Association of Iranian University Women and served as secretary general of the Women’s Organization of Iran prior to the Islamic revolution. Ms. Afkhami has lectured and published extensively on the international women’s movement, women’s human rights, women in leadership, women and technology, and women, civil society, and democracy.
Email: wlp [at] learningpartnership [dot] org
Asma Afsaruddin
Dr. Afsaruddin is Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies in the Department of Classics at the University of Notre Dame. She is a member of the advisory boards of the Crescent University Foundation and Karamah, a women’s and human rights organization based in Washington DC, and is a fellow of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy. Her fields of specialization are the religious and political thought of Islam, Qur’an and hadith studies, and Islamic intellectual history.
Access selected publications via: http://www.nd.edu/~col/faculty/index.html
Email: asma [dot] afsaruddin [dot] 1 [at] nd [dot] edu
Leila Ahmed
Dr. Ahmed is Professor of Women’s Studies in Religion at Harvard Divinity School. Her areas of expertise include women in Islam, Muslims in America, and Islam’s internal pluralism.
She can be contacted via email at leila_ahmed [at] harvard [dot] edu
Azizah al-Hibri
Dr. Al-Hibri is Professor of Islamic Jurisprudence at the T.C. Williams School of Law, University of Virginia. She is also the founding editor and current president of Karamah�Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights, Washington, DC. Her research is in the area of Muslim women’s rights, especially the Islamic worldview on gender, and the marriage contract. Since September 11, she has become more involved in the area of American Muslim civil rights.
Read her articles and learn more about Karamah at: http://www.karamah.org
Contact Dr. Hibri at aalhibri [at] richmond [dot] edu
Vivienne Sm. Angeles
Dr. Angeles is Assistant Professor of Religion at LaSalle University, Pennsylvania. She is also a board member of American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies. Her research pertains to the relationship between Philippine Muslims and the government, Philippine Muslim women and their participation in Muslim movement, and the cultural side of Philippine Islam.
Email her at angeles [at] lasalle [dot] edu and view her current research project via http://www.pluralism.org/affiliates/angeles/index.php.
Mucha-Shim Q. Arquiza
Ms. Arquiza is the Secretary General of the Asian Muslim Action Network (AMAN), an Asia-wide network of Muslims working for human rights, peace and social justice through inter-cultural and inter-faith dialogue. She is also the Executive Director and senior researcher for an all-women, mostly-Moroland (an indigenous community in the Philipines) research collective. The aim of the organization (HAGS, Inc.) is to work towards indigenous women�s empowerment.
Contact her at: mucha-shim [at] eudoramail [dot] com
Jamal Badawi
Dr. Badawi is a professor in the department of Religious Studies at Saint Mary�s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He is the Founder-Chairman of the Islamic Information Foundation, a non-profit foundation seeking to promote better understanding of Islam by Muslims and non-Muslims. Presently, he is the Vice-Chairman of the Islamic American University in Missouri. He has written on topics such as the status of women in Islam and gender equity.
Email him at jamal [dot] badawi [at] stmarys [dot] ca.
Nimat Hafez Barazangi
Dr. Barazangi holds a Research Fellow position for Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Cornell University, New York. There she specializes in curriculum and instruction, Islamic and Arabic Studies, and adult and community education. She is a board member of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID). Her areas of expertise include Muslim women�s education and human rights and her current research work focuses on (1) Islamic education in North America (2) self-identity and Educating the Muslim Women, (3) literacy and women development, and (4) research-based computerized curriculum of Arabic as a first and a foreign language.
Email her at nimat [at] islam-democracy [dot] org.
Lucie Coulibaly
Dr. Coulibaly is a Program Coordinator at the Ivorian League for Human Rights (la Ligue Ivoirienne des Droits de l’Homme – LIDHO). From 1990 to 1999, Coulibaly acted as Secretary of External Relations for LIDHO. In this capacity, she initiated a number of training projects, seminars, conferences, and roundtable discussions on such topics as human rights, women’s rights, religious tolerance, and planning and managing nongovernmental organizations. She also coordinated and participated in a number of conferences that instructed on methods for investigating, researching, and reporting human rights violations.
Email her at: luciecool [at] caramail [dot] com
Alan Godlas
Dr. Godlas is Associate Professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Georgia. His award-winning website on Islam, Islamic studies, and religion is acclaimed for its comprehensive collection of links and resources documenting Islam’s history and scripture, information on Islam’s place in the modern world, its stance on women’s rights, Islamic art and architecture, and its history of mysticism. He has conducted extensive research in manuscript libraries in Egypt, Morocco, and Turkey. His areas of research include Qur’anic commentary (tafsir), hadith, Islamic mysticism (also known as Sufism) and consciousness transformation, and the relationship between Islam, modernism, and postmodernism.
For more information, visit http://www.uga.edu/islam/profbio.html
Email Dr Godlas at godlas [at] uga [dot] edu
Riffat Hassan
Dr. Hassan is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Louisville, Kentucky. She is the founder of The International Network for the Rights of Female Victims of Violence in Pakistan (INRFVVP), a non-profit organization with a worldwide membership and reputation for playing a noteworthy role in highlighting the issue of violence against girls and women, particularly with reference to “crimes of honor.”
Visit her website at http://www.inrfvvp.org
Send an email to inrfvvpe [at] athena [dot] louisville [dot] edu to contact her.
Ayesha Imam
Ayesha Imam has been a woman’s rights activist for over two decades.� She is founding director of BAOBAB for Women’s Human Rights in Nigeria.� BAOBAB was formally established in 1996 as an organization focusing on women’s legal rights issues under customary, statutory and religious laws.� Dr. Imam is a core group member of the international solidarity network, Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) in Africa and the Middle East.� She has also worked on gender training, evaluation and research for activists in NGOs, for mid-level planners and functionaries in government, and for researchers.� She is currently Chief of the Culture, Gender and Human Rights Branch of UNFPA.
Dr. Imam has lectured and carried out research in women’s studies and gender analysis at universities and research institutes in Nigeria, the U.K., Canada and Senegal.� She has published widely for both academic and activist uses.�� Her work on women�s rights in Muslim laws and practices include the widely reprinted articles “The Muslim Religious Right (�Fundamentalists�) and Sexuality,” and� “Women�s Rights in Muslim Laws (Sharia),” as well as contributing to the introduction and chapter on “Legal Systems and Change” and conceptual editing of Knowing Our Rights: Women, Family, Laws and Customs in the Muslim World (WLUML 2003).� Her formal publications include editing and writing chapters for Engendering African Social Sciences (CODESRIA 1994, also published in French 2002) and two special issues of Africa Development, Re-Visiting Gender I and II, as well as numerous journal articles, training modules and research reports.
Contact her at AyeshaImam [at] earthlink [dot] net
Azza Karam
Dr. Azza Karam is the Program Director of the Women’s Department at the World Conference on Religion and Peace (WCRP). She has worked since the 1980s in the fields of gender, development, human rights, democratization, conflict, and political Islam.
To learn more about the World Conference, visit the website at http://www.wcrp.org/RforP/RFP_1_MAIN.html
Email Dr. Karam at akaram [at] wcrp [dot] org.
Asma Khader
Dr. Khader is the Coordinator of the Sisterhood Is Global Institute (SIGI), where she is the coordinator of SIGI’s human rights education program. A leading advocate of the campaign to strengthen legislation outlawing honor killing, She is the former President of the Jordanian Women’s Union and is a member of the Permanent Arab Court as Counsel on violence against women.
Contact her at sigi [at] qc [dot] aibn [dot] com.
Amina Lemrini
Amina Lemrini is a Founder of the Moroccan Human Rights Organization, and an Executive Committee member of the Association D�mocratique des Femmes du Maroc (ADFM), a non-governmental organization working on the promotion and defense of women’s rights in Morocco. She is also on the Board of Directors of Collectif 95 Maghreb-Egalite, a women’s regional NGO working in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. Ms. Lemrini has lectured and published on a variety of issues dealing with human rights, particularly on the rights of the child and women’s rights.
Email her at: adfm [at] mtds [dot] com or at Lemrini [at] iam [dot] net [dot] ma
Sindi Medar-Gould
Sindi Medar-Gould is Executive Director of the Nigeria-based organization BAOBAB for Women’s Human Rights, a non-profit organization working for women’s human rights and legal rights under customary and religious law in Africa. BAOBAB also coordinates programs for Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) in Africa and the Middle East. Ms. Medar-Gould has been a women’s human rights activist for over 20 years, and is an experienced teacher, trainer, and researcher.
Contact her at sindi [at] baobab [dot] com [dot] ng.
Ebrahim E.I. Moosa
Dr. Moosa is Associate Research Professor in the Department of Religion and Co-director of the Center for the Study of Muslim Networks at Duke University, North Carolina. His research interests include issues in ethics and law and cover topics such as human rights, women’s rights, Muslim family law, and historical studies that deal with questions of Qur’an exegesis and medieval Islamic law and philosophy.
Learn more about Dr. Moosa at http://www.duke.edu/religion/home/moosa/moosa.html
Contact him via email at: moosa [at] duke [dot] edu.
Azar Nafisi
Dr. Nafisi is a Visiting Fellow and Professional Lecturer at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, Washington D.C. She researches subjects such as the Middle East, Iran, culture and politics, democracy, human rights in Muslim societies, and women’s rights.
Email her at anafisi [at] jhu [dot] edu
Thoraya Obaid
Dr. Obaid, of Saudi Arabia, is the Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). She holds the rank of Under-Secretary-General of the UN. A leading advocate for the advancement of women’s rights, she is the former Director of the Division for Arab States and Europe at UNFPA and Deputy Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA).
Email her at ryanw [at] unfpa [dot] org.
Loretta Ross
Loretta Ross is the founder and Executive Director of the Atlanta-based Center for Human Rights Education, a training and resource center for grassroots activists which uses human rights criteria to address social injustice in the United States. She is an expert on human rights, women’s issues, diversity, hate groups, and bias crimes.
Visit the Center’s website for more information at http://www.nchre.org/.
Mai Yamani
Dr. Yamani is an Associate Fellow in the Middle East Programme at the Center of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law (CIMEL) and a Research Associate at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), London. She has taught at King Abdul Aziz University in Saudi Arabia, and lectured widely in Middle East, Europe and the United States. She has a particular interest in women’s rights in the Middle East. Her areas of expertise include social, political and human rights issues in Arab States, particularly the Gulf Cooperation Council States.
Contact her via email at myamani [at] riia [dot] org