In late October 2005, a conference on Islamic Feminism was organized by the Junta Islamica Catalan with the support of the UNESCO Catalan Center in Barcelona. Dr. Moghadam, chief, Gender Equality and Development Section (GED) was invited in her capacity as a UNESCO staff member and as a sociologist of women’s movements whose work has addressed the discourse and emerging movement known as Islamic feminism. Islamic feminism is a discourse of educated urban women (and a few men) who re-read the Qur’an and early Islamic history to recuperate their religion from patriarchal and violent interpretations and to make the case for women’s participation and rights in a religious idiom. GED is pleased to post one of the presentations, by Zainah Anwar of the Malaysian women’s group Sisters in Islam.

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