Riffat Hassan facts for kids
Riffat Hassan (born 1943) is a Pakistani-American theologian and a leading Islamic feminist scholar of the Qur'an.
Early life and career
Hassan was born in Lahore, Pakistan, to an upper-class Sayid Muslim family. Hassan's maternal grandfather was Hakim Ahmad Shuja, a Pakistani poet, writer and playwright. She lived a comfortable childhood, but was affected by the conflict between her father's traditional views and her mother's nonconformism. For most of her life, she hated her father's traditionalism because of his views of sex roles, but she later came to appreciate it because of his kindness and compassion. She attended Cathedral High School, an Anglican missionary school, and later St. Mary's College at Durham University, England, where she studied English and philosophy. She received her Ph.D. from Durham University in 1968 for her thesis on Muhammad Iqbal, who she has written about frequently.
She taught at the University of Punjab at Lahore from 1966 to 1967 and worked in Pakistan's Ministry of Information and Broadcasting from 1969 to 1972. In 1972, she immigrated to the United States with her daughter. She has taught at schools including Oklahoma State University and Harvard University, and is currently a professor of Religious Studies at the University of Louisville, Kentucky.
Theology and activism
Hassan's theology is an example of Progressive Islam. She says the Qur'an is the "Magna Carta of human rights", prescribing human rights and equality for all, while the inequality of women in many Muslim societies today is due to cultural effects. Hassan claims the Qur'an upholds rights to life, respect, justice, freedom, knowledge, sustenance, work, and privacy, among others.
She supports a non-rigid interpretation of the Qur'an, arguing that while it is the word of God, words can have different meanings, so there are theoretically countless possible meanings of the Qur'an. She believes the meaning of the Qur'an should be determined through hermeneutics — examination of what its words meant at the time it was written. She also speaks of an "ethical criterion" that rejects the use of the Qu'ran to perpetrate injustice, because the God of Islam is just.
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In February 1999, she founded The International Network for the Rights of Female Victims of Violence in Pakistan, which works against so-called honor killings. She has argued that honor killings are a distortion of Islam, and further, that the whole idea that women are inferior is a result of the mistaken belief among Muslims that Eve was created from Adam's rib, when, in the Islamic creation story, they were created at the same time.
Hassan is not only a scholar, she is also an activist. In her capacity as an activist, Hassan developed and directed "Islamic Life in the U.S." (2002-2006) and "Religion and Society: A Dialogue" (2006-2009), two peace-building programs which created a standard for interfaith discussion and peace-building, following the 2001 attacks.
She also wrote the eleventh chapter of Transforming the Faiths of our Fathers: Women who Changed American Religion (2004), edited by Ann Braude.
See also
