Please join us for a virtual lecture — featuring Dr. Zahra Ayubi — on Gender in Islamic Philosophical Ethics: Metaphysical Tension Between Equality and Hierarchy of Being.
Abstract
Dr. Ayubi explores the way in which medieval Islamic philosophers forged a hierarchical virtue ethics that exalted the status of men over women. In doing so, they often ignored or contradicted conceptions of equality in Islam’s original scriptures. Dr. Ayubi argues that reading medieval Islamic philosophy through a feminist perspective offers resolutions to the contradictions introduced by philosophers such as Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Nasir al-Din Tusi, and Jalal al-Din Davani.
Bio
Dr. Zahra Ayubi is a scholar of gender in premodern and modern Islamic ethics and a Greenwall Foundation Faculty Scholar, currently serving as an assistant professor of religion at Dartmouth College She specializes in feminist philosophy approaches to the Muslim intellectual tradition and the akhlaq genre, in particular. Her work includes a serious look at masculinity and gendered childhood, in addition to studying more “traditional” gender topics such as constructs of femininity, women’s experiences, marriage, divorce, sexuality, feminism, etc.
Presented by the Al-Ghazali Program in Islamic Studies.
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