Ziba Mir-Hosseini - Journeys Toward Gender Equality in Islam

Acknowledgements

This book has been in the making since 2009, when I began the conversations without which it would not exist. I am deeply grateful to Abdullahi An-Naim, amina wadud, Asma Lamrabet, Khaled Abou El Fadl, Mohsen Kadivar and Sedigheh Vasmaghi for their willingness to become my interlocutors, in our shared quest for gender equality and justice from within Islamic tradition. Thank you all for your generosity with your time, patience, and trust, and for speaking so honestly and reflectively about your own journeys to knowledge of Islam and its sources. If I have in any way misrepresented your stories and views, please forgive me.

I have the great good fortune to be part of a community of activists and scholars working toward the same ends. My colleagues in Musawah are unfailingly supportive, kind and generous. I owe special thanks to Zainah Anwar, Jana Rumminger, Mulki Al-Sharmani and Sarah Marsso for invaluable comments on the parts of the manuscript that they have read, and to Lena Larsen, Lynn Welchman and Marwa Sharafeldin for their comradeship and support. Homa Hoodfar has long insisted that I write a book such as this, to help make reformist approaches in Islam accessible to a wider audience of non-specialists. Thank you, Homa jan, for your faith in me and for your friendship and encouragement all these years.

My special gratitude goes to Sarah Hobson for her friendship and her encouraging comments on an early draft, and to Muhammad Khalid Masud, who mentored me for many years, sharing his vast insight and knowledge. He is one of the best teachers I have ever had.

In the first decade of the new century I spent four semesters as Hauser Visiting Professor Global Law at New York University; it was during this time, and the year I spent as Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (20045), that I developed the notion of this book. During two more recent semesters at NYU I had two outstanding research assistants Maliheh Zare in 2017 and Shirin Shahidi in 2019 who helped with the transcription and translation of the two conversations conducted in Persian. Shirin also checked all the transcriptions against the recordings, and edited each of them diligently for which I am truly grateful.

An invitation to give the 2020 British Society of Middle Eastern Studies Annual Lecture came as I was putting the final manuscript together, and I am extremely grateful for the opportunity this gave me to share the main ideas in the book and to receive some helpful comments from the organizers and our virtual audience. Thank you to John Chalcraft, Nicola Pratt and Zahra Tizro for making this possible.

Above all, I could not have finished this book without Richard Tappers help; thank you, Richard jan, for patiently reading various drafts, for your wonderful edits that improved the book in ways that were beyond me, and above all for your love and support.

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