Asma Barlas

Asma Barlas, is currently a professor of Politics as well as the director of the Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity in Ithaca College, New York. Her research interests vary quite a bit and have changed over time. In graduate school, she focused on the politics of military rule and representative democracy (Democracy, Nationalism and Communalism, 1995); for the last several years, however, she has written about Qur'anic hermeneutics, Muslim sexual politics and the relationship between "Islam and the West" (Re-understanding Islam, 2008; Islam, Muslims, and the U.S., 2004; "Believing Women" in Islam, 2002). These days, she is exploring issues of religious embodiment and violence.

Her work on the Qur'an has been translated into many languages (Bengali, Indonesian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Urdu), and I have also been invited to speak about it in several venues in the U.S. and abroad (Indonesia, Egypt, Pakistan, India, Spain, Portugal, Canada, Germany, Finland, Iceland, Italy, U.K, and the Netherlands).