Application

Margot Badran

Professor, Department of Religon

Northwestern University, United States

Research: Islamic Feminism in Africa, a Nigerian Case: Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women

Margot Badran, a historian of the Middle East and Islamic societies and specialist in gender studies, is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Muslim Christian Understanding, Georgetown University. She is currently Edith Kreeger Wolf Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Religion and Preceptor at the Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought at Northwestern University. She has a diploma in Arabic and Islamic religious studies at Al Azhar University in Cairo in addition to M.A. in Middle East Studies from Harvard University and a D. Phil. in Middle East history from Oxford University. She calls both the United States and Egypt home. She is author of Feminists, Islam and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt, co-editor of Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writing (appearing in a new expanded edition in April 2004), and translator, editor and introducer of Harem Years: the Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist, Huda Shaarawi. Her writings on secular and Islamic feminisms have been translated into Arabic and several other languages. She is now finalizing a book on comparative Islamic feminisms. She also writes on feminism and gender for Al Ahram Weekly in Cairo.

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Islamic Feminism in Africa, a Nigerian Case: Gender Equality and the Empowerment
of Women

My research proposal concerned with Islamic feminism in Africa takes a specific look at the case of Amina Lawal who was accused of zina (sexual activity outside the parameters of marriage, according to Islam) and threatened with death by stoning if found guilty. Amina Lawal was acquitted in a shar`iah (Islamic law) court through Islamic argumentation. Lawal was strongly supported by women from Baobab for Human Rights and other feminist activists who used religious discourse in promoting their cause. This can be seen as a triumph for Islamic feminism (a discourse grounded in Islamic religious sources, especially the Qur'an and related modes of activism) whether or not explicitly labeled as such. My research project centers around collecting narratives about the case and related issues from women belonging to three major Nigerian NGOs: Baobab for Women's Human Rights, Women of Nigeria (WIN) and the Federation of Muslim Women Associates of Nigeria (FOMWAN). I shall also interview women and men from a "second tier," including legal specialists, scholars (religious and secular), public intellectuals, media professionals, and ordinary people. I am interested in ways the activism around the Lawal case forms an important chapter in the story of Islamic feminism in Nigeria, Africa-wide, and globally. I argue that the women's narratives themselves perform a feminist function and in so doing further the enjoyment of gender equality and the empowerment of women. The narratives as "insider stories" can also help concerned women as "outsiders" help meet the challenge of supporting Muslim women as part of the world's women. The narratives of the "second tier" further illuminate the way the case was perceived in Nigeria and its internal legacy.

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