Conference: Women in Islam - Between Oppression and (Self-)Empowerment

This conference is our first step to convene Muslim women who have been committed to questions of `Women in Islam` for a long time and therefore influenced the critical discourse on what we might term `Islamic feminism` (as a working definition). We are quite aware of the broad range of conceptions in different geographic and cultural contexts. As the feminist movement in Europe proudly looks back to undis-putable achievements in promoting women’s rights and participation in politics and society - though there is a lot of work left to do - we would like to link our experiences to those of Muslim women living and working under totally different social conditions.

We are most interested in the question as to how `Islam`as a religion and culture has a direct impact on rights and living conditions of muslim women. In con-clusion we hope to set up a continuous conference se-ries to provide a forum for critical debate.