This content was published: March 8, 2012. Phone numbers, email addresses, and other information may have changed.
Human rights activist to speak about Islam, women rights
Photos and story by Kate Chester
Rafia Zakaria, the first Pakistani-American woman to serve as a director for Amnesty International USA, is coming to the Sylvania Campus on Thursday, March 15.
Sponsored by the Women’s Resource Center, Zakaria will speak on Muslim women, sharia law, minority rights, and the politics of Islam as part of International Women’s Day: Women Build Bridges for Peace. The presentation – which is free and open to the public – will take place from 4-6 p.m. in the Spruce Room, College Center Building.
Human rights activist Rafia Zakaria is coming to Sylvania on March 15.
Zakaria’s background is diverse. She teaches constitutional law, political theory, and the politics of Islam at Indiana University, where she is completing a doctorate in political philosophy and writing a dissertation about Muslim women, multiculturalism, and sharia law.
Zakaria co-founded the Muslim Women’s Legal Fund which represents victims of domestic violence in family and immigration law cases, and has authored the forthcoming, “Silence in Karachi: An Intimate History of Pakistan” (Beacon), which focuses on transformations in private relationships during times of political tumult.
She is a blogger for “Ms.” and also writes weekly columns for DAWN, Pakistan’s largest and oldest English newspaper; her articles have appeared in the New York Times, The Nation, Dissent, and American Prospect.
For more information about the presentation, contact the Sylvania Women’s Resource Center at (971) 722-8101.