​Is misogyny part of Islam? In the Quran, the Prophet Muhammad took pains to address both male Muslims and female Muslims, because both have the same religious duties. The Five Pillars of Islam apply to both of them. The Quran states explicitly that men and women are equal before God. During the seventh century, women could own businesses and fight battles. Muslim feminists throughout the world today are advocating a return to Prophet Muhammad’s vision of an egalitarian religion for an equal society. In Medina where Prophet Muhammad lived in the last ten years of his life, men and women prayed together, side by side, as a single religious community. After Prophet Muhammad died, a dispute about who should succeed him as leader of Muslims led to a split around the year 661 between Sunni and Shia. Iran is the main follower of Shia Islam. However, for almost 14 centuries, Iran was not run by the clergy. The present Islamic Republic of Iran adheres to a concept of the Guardianship of the Clerical Jurist, a concept which was invented by Ayatollah Khomenei in 1970 designating a religious cleric as Supreme Leader. The tendency of splitting off occurred frequently in the long history of Islam. In the 1700s, about 1000 years after Prophet Muhammad had lived and died, Muhammad Abdul Wahab founded the Wahhabi sect, also known as the Salafi sect and Shah Walli Ullah’s teachings led to the establishment in the 19th century of a religious institute at Deoband, a town in North India, giving rise to the sect known as Deobandi. The Wahhabi or Salafi sect and the Deobandi sect are very influential in the 21st century to the extent that the general public often mistake these sectarian interpretations as ‘Islam’. A term used by academics to refer to such sects is ‘Islamism’, which refers to ideologies that extract and interpret verses of the Quran and the Hadith of relevance to a political objective. Whereas the Islam of Prophet Muhammad in the 7th century aspired to be egalitarian, misogyny is found in the various types of Islamism. Such misogyny derives from patriarchy justified as Islam even though such misogyny contravenes the Islam of Prophet Muhammad. Feminism asserts women’s right to be social equals in every way, contrary to the dictates of patriarchy. Is there a difference between feminism and Islamic feminism? The difference lies in the content of the arguments made. Islamic feminism draws its content from the Quran and from the history of Islam since the 7th century. In addition, Islamic feminism needs to engage with the current discussions in the world, including discourses on human rights and women’s rights. Although Prophet Muhammad lived almost 1400 years ago, it is possible that he would have approved of the women’s rights recognised in CEDAW

​Dr Vivienne Wee obtained her PhD in Anthropology from the Australian National University, MSocSc in Sociology from the University of Singapore, and Bachelor’s degrees  in Music and Anthropology from the University of Minnesota. She was Associate Professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong and City University of Hong Kong, after having lectured at the National University of Singapore. She played a key role in initiating the Master’s Programme in Development Studies at City University of Hong Kong and the Master’s Programme in Community Leadership and Social Development at the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS). She is currently teaching at SUSS in the Non-Profit Management Programme. Her decades-long field research has been conducted with Muslims in the Riau-Lingga Islands of Indonesia. In Singapore, she is a founder member of AWARE (Association of Women for Action and Research) and is currently Senior Adviser there. From 2013 to 2016, she led the project ‘Gender Equality is Our Culture!’, which was supported by UN Women and implemented among Muslims in Singapore and in Indonesia. She is an active member of the Institute for Women’s Empowerment (IWE), a regional organisation for gender equality. In that capacity, from 2006 to 2019, she has been involved in several multi-country programmes with organisations in China, Indonesia, Pakistan as well as countries in the Middle East and Africa. In addition, she has had extensive discussions with leading teachers of Islam in Indonesia. 

Rozana Isa is currently the Executive Director for Sisters in Islam, a Malaysian NGO working on women’s rights within the framework of Islam. She joined the Malaysian women’s rights movement in 1999 to address violence against women. This exposed her to the challenges women face to have their rights recognised and exercised in the context of Islamisation within a democratic nation with parallel legal systems. While gender, ethnic, and religious diversities are celebrated in society yet negated at different levels of policies and laws. Before taking up SIS’s helm, Rozana worked with several national, regional, and international women’s rights organisations.

​Yasmina Sahir is a University of Iowa undergraduate majoring in Criminology and Social Justice. As a Moroccan American, her career focus is to advocate for the Southwest Asian, North African, Arab (SWANA) community through identifying disparities facing this group in the United States.
The research presented tonight was funded by a Summer 2022 Iowa Center for Research by Undergraduates (ICRU) grant and advised by UI Associate Professor Yasmine Ramadan. In her years at UI, Yasmina has written and presented work on disproportionate incarceration and arrest rates, rights for immigrants, decolonization, and consequences of demographic mislabeling while highlighting the need for SWANA representation in academic discussions on these topics. She hopes her work will help bridge divides between an often-misunderstood world region and non-SWANA Americans.

Asel Nasr is a dual degree student at the University of Iowa majoring in Global Health and pursuing a Master's in Public Health. She engages with public health research with the intent to advocate for the Southwest Asian, North African, Arab (SWANA) community in the United States. Her current research is centered around maternal mental health outcomes during postpartum which will be presented in her graduation thesis this May. Asel hopes that throughout her career she can continue to promote health equity by exploring social and structural barriers that individuals from the SWANA community face in a healthcare setting.

Karen Edwards, Dean of International Student Affairs at Grinnell College, has dedicated 30+ year to supporting international students. Since 2007, she has led Grinnell’s Office of International Student Affairs (OISA) -- helping students navigate and find community in a new country; managing compliance with the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP); and helping to create an international-student-friendly campus infrastructure. Karen is an active leader and presenter in NAFSA: Association of International Educators and co-founder of the ACM/GLCA Advisors Roundtable. She has traveled in 30+ countries across five continents, holds a MA in Higher Education from the U Iowa, and a BA degree from Luther College.  ​

When: ​Wednesday , February 1st, at 12 noon CDT
Where: ​Online via zoom
Speaker: Sarah Glaser ​

The nexus of oceans, geopolitical tension, conflict, crime, and societal instability is becoming increasingly important. World Wildlife Fund is entering this space of research and applied conservation because a robust ocean conservation agenda must include natural resource conflict resolution, peace building, and law enforcement capacity building. This talk will present the growing threat of conflict over fisheries, the consequences for geopolitical relationships between the world’s major powers, the impacts on coastal fishing communities, and the potential solutions. Seemingly small incidents (such as a recent interaction between a Chinese squid fishing vessel and the US Coast Guard off the coast of South America) can escalate unpredictably. As fish populations decline and move due to climate change, overfishing, and habitat destruction, competition and conflict over this critical blue food resource will grow. Additionally, the fisheries sector provides an attractive option for organized criminal activity at sea, including trafficking in humans, arms, drugs, and wildlife. Finally, as fish populations decline, communities are destabilized through lack of employment and food security. Fortunately, the world’s policy makers and conservation groups are increasingly paying attention to this emerging threat, and there are hopeful solutions in the novel application of satellite technology, big data analysis, interagency and international cooperation, and capacity building.  
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Dr. Sarah Glaser leads the newly formed Oceans Futures team for which she is developing programming around ocean and climate security. The Oceans Futures technology platform will engage maritime stakeholders around the security implications of climate change for marine ecosystems. She is interested in exploring—and preventing—conflict between marine resource users where it will be most likely or most impactful. She has experience working with a wide range of stakeholders, including those in international militaries, foreign government ministries, academic institutions, and coastal fishing communities. Her geographic expertise is in coastal East Africa, the Horn of Africa, and the California Current.
Sarah joined WWF from One Earth Future, a peacebuilding foundation, where she directed the Secure Fisheries program. Secure Fisheries worked on fisheries conflict prevention in Somalia, and Sarah led their efforts at establishing conflict-sensitive fisheries co-management, collecting fisheries data, and quantifying IUU fishing in the Horn of Africa. Her favorite accomplishment was starting a university engagement project in Somalia that brought together students at four universities for online marine science courses and field-based fisheries data collection. Before working at OEF, she had academic appointments at the University of Denver, College of William and Mary, Virginia Institute of Marine Science, the University of Kansas, and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Sarah was raised in Kansas but fell in love with sharks through the books and TV series of Jacques Cousteau. She earned her PhD from Scripps Institution of Oceanography where she studied the food web ecology of North Pacific albacore, racking up hundreds of (seasick) hours aboard commercial and recreational fishing vessels.