Asma Barlas
Professor/ Program Director
Ithaca College
Bio/C. V.
I am currently Professor of Politics and Director of the Center for the Study
of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity at Ithaca College, New York. I completed
my Ph.D. in International Studies at the University of Denver, a masters in
Journalism at the University of the Punjab (Pakistan) and a B.A. in English
Literature and Philosophy at Kinnaird College for Women (Pakistan).
For the past several years, I have been studying Islam, in particular, how
Muslims interpret and live it. In my earlier work, I proposed a Qur'anic
hermeneutics that allows Muslims to argue on behalf of sexual equality and
against patriarchy from within a scriptural framework. These days, I am
studying Qur'anic views of difference with the intent, partly, of exploring a
theology of mutual recognition based in scriptural teachings.
Among my publications are three books (Islam, Muslims, and the U.S.:
Essays on Religion and Politics, "Believing Women" in Islam: Unreading
Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur'an, and Democracy, Nationalism, and
Communalism: The Colonial Legacy in South Asia); a monograph
(Re-Understanding Islam: A double critique), and several book chapters and
journal articles. For a full list, please see my c.v.
I've been invited to present my work on the Qur'an in several countries
(Indonesia, Egypt, Pakistan, India, Spain, Portugal, Canada, Germany,
Britain, the Netherlands) and it has also been translated into Bengali,
Indonesian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Urdu.