Nevin Reda al-Tahry is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Toronto, specializing in the Qur’an, with a major in Arabic and minors in Islamic Thought and Biblical Hebrew. She is an active member of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women, a national non-profit organization established to assist Muslim women in participating effectively in Canadian society and to promote mutual understanding between Canadian Muslim women and women of other faiths. Nevin has set up a discussion forum on the CCMW website mainly to promote dialogue between various groups within the Muslim community, but also including interested non-Muslims, where she has presented two papers: “Shari’a Tribunals” and “Long-Term Strategies.” She has published online a paper in support of women imams.
Nevin is originally from Egypt and has lived in Canada for over 15 years with her husband and four daughters.
Laila al-Zwaini was born in The Netherlands to a Dutch mother and Iraqi father. She earned her law degree (LLM) from Leiden University and her Master’s degree (MA) in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. Between 1997 and 2000, she resided extensively in Yemen, conducting field research for her Ph.D. thesis on the functioning of law, shari`a, and tribal custom in courts and among tribes. From 2000 to 2005, she was affiliated with the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) in Leiden, where she co-initiated the action-research project, “Rights at Home.”
Ms. Al-Zwaini has worked as an independent scholar and advisor to international organisations and government institutions on judicial reform, human rights, shari`a, tribal custom and arbitration, constitutional process, access to justice, and rule of law programs. In 2007, she joined the Rule of Law Unit of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, of which she was appointed Acting Head from February 2008 to March 2009. She has co-authored two books: A Bibliography of Islamic Law, 1980-1993 (1994) and Legal Pluralism in the Arab World (1999).
Irshad Manji is the author of The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in her Faith, which has been published in more than thirty countries, including Pakistan, India, Lebanon, and Afghanistan.
Manji, daughter of Egyptian and Indian parents, was born as a refugee in Uganda during the rule of Idi Amin. She escaped with her family to Vancouver, Canada, where she attended public school and Islamic school. She was expelled from her Islamic school for, she says, “asking too many questions.” From that point on, she studied Islam with Arabic tutors and in libraries. Manji graduated from the University of British Columbia in 1990.
Manji has worked as a legislative aide in the Canadian parliament, press secretary in the Ontario government, and speechwriter for the leader of the New Democratic Party. In 2002, she became a writer-in-residence at the University of Toronto, where she began writing her book, The Trouble with Islam Today. In 2005-2006, she served as a Visiting Fellow at Yale University.
Manji is currently the director of the Moral Courage Project at New York University. She is also a senior Fellow with the European Foundation for Democracy. She is the creator of the PBS documentary, Faith Without Fear which documents her journey to reconcile Islam with human rights and freedom.
Manji founded Project Ijtihad, which aims to popularize Islam’s tradition of critical thinking and unites Muslim reformers and non-Muslim allies. As a result, the World Economic Forum has recognized her as a Young Global Leader. Her articles frequently appear in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Times of London, and Al-Arabiya.net. She writes a regular feature on Canada’s Globe and Mail.
Thoraya Ahmed Obaid served as the first Saudi Arabian to head a UN agency. She was appointed head of UNFPA in 2001 with the rank of Under-Secretary General of the United Nations. Previous to this position, Obaid was Director of Division for Arab States and Europe, UNFPA.
Obaid was also the first Saudi Arabian woman to receive a government scholarship to study in the United States. She has a doctorate degree in English Literature and Cultural Anthropology from Wayne State University in Michigan. She received a B.A. in English Literature and Sociology from Mills College in California.
A few years later, in 1975, Obaid established the first women’s development programme in Western Asia. This program helped build partnerships on women’s issues between the United Nations and regional NGOs. Between 1984 and 1985, she was a member of the League of Arab States Working Group for Formulating the Arab Strategy for Social Development. From 1992 to 1993, she was Chief of Social Development and Population Division, ESCWA and Social Affairs Office, responsible for the advancement of women from 1975 to 1992. In 1996, Obaid chaired the UN Inter-Agency Task Force on Gender in Amman and in 1997 she was a member of the UN Inter-Agency Gender Mission to Afghanistan.
She lives with her husband and two daughters.
In 1993, Tansu Ciller became the first female leader of a Middle Eastern Muslim country.
She was educated in both Turkey and the United States, earning her doctorate in economics from the University of Connecticut. In 1990, she left her career as a professor and entered politics, joining the True Path Party. In 1991 she was elected deputy of Istanbul and Minister of State for Economics within the coalition government of Süleyman Demirel.
In 1993, she was elected the head of the True Path Party and Prime Minister of the coalition government. During this time, she was credited with transforming Turkey’s army into a modern fighting force that could effectively handle the threat faced from the Kurdish separatist group, the PKK. She also attempted to liberalize Turkey’s economy and increase individual rights for its citizens. In 1996, the coalition government collapsed, terminating Tansu’s term as Prime Minister. However, she continued to serve in government as Minister of Foreign Affairs until 1997.
She retired from politics in 2002 and is currently a member of The Council of Women World Leaders.
Nafis Sadik was born in Jaunpur India to parents, Iffat Ara and Mohammad Shoaib. She was the first woman to head one of the United Nations major voluntarily-funded programmes and has made significant contributions to improving the health of women and children. Fom 1987 to 2000, Sadik served as Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) with the rank of Under-Secretary-General from 1987 through 2000.
Sadik received a Doctor of Medicine degree from Dow Medical College in Karachi and has been the recipient of several honorary degrees from universities such as Brown, Duke, and Johns Hopkins. Her work as a doctor in Pakistani military hospitals shaped the rest of her professional career. She then went on to work in the health section of the Pakistani government’s Planning Commission where she held a major role in the development of the country’s first population policy.
In 1971, she joined UNFPA in several different capacities. In 1994, the Secretary General appointed Dr. Sadik as Secretary-General of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD).
In addition to her work with UNFPA, she is a member of the Board of Governors of the Foundation for Human Development and a member of the South Asian Commission on the Asian Challenge. Dr. Sadik was the President of the Society for International Development (SID) for the period 1994-1997.
Sadik has written several articles and edited many books, including Population: The UNFPA Experience (1984), Population Policies and Programmes: Lessons Learned from Two Decades of Experience (1991) and Making a Difference: Twenty-five years of UNFPA Experience (1994).
Monica Ali is the author of Brick Lane, the novel which brought international attention to the Bangladeshi immigrant experience in the UK.
Ali is the daughter of a Bangladeshi father and an English mother. Her family moved to the UK when she was three years old. She grew up in a poor area in Britain and later moved when she was accepted to Oxford University. After graduating with degrees in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, she worked in the fields of publishing and marketing. In 2003, after the birth of her second child, Ali began writing and published her first novel, Brick Lane.
Following publication, Ali was named one of the “20 best young British novelists” by the literary magazine, Granta, and the novel was shortlisted for the 2003 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. It was later made into a film and released in 2007. Her other work includes Alentejo Blue (2006) and In the Kitchen (2009). Ali lives in southeast London with her husband and her two children.
Irfana Hashmi is an Islamic Law Consultant for the Shari’a Index Project (SIP) at Cordoba Initiative, a global non-profit that works on Muslim-West Relations. Hashmi is also pursuing doctoral studies in Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies and History at New York University. Her focus is Islamic law and Gender in the medieval Mediterranean.
She has been a Henry MacCracken Scholar for academic excellence during her tenure at NYU and a recipient of numerous awards and fellowships. She received her B.A. in English and Religious Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. Hashmi also holds an M.A. in English Literature from City University of New York: Hunter College and an M.A. in Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies from New York University.
