Died 23 September 2008 | ||
Mona Abul-Fadl (died 2008) was a scholar of contemporary Western thought and women studies and a researcher associated with the International Institute of Islamic Thought IIIT and later with what is now known as Cordoba University.
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Education
Born in 1945 to physicians, philanthropists and activists, Zahira Abdin and Mun‘im Abul Fadl in Cairo, Abul Fadl spent most of her childhood between London and Egypt.
Well-grounded in both Western and Islamic traditions, Abul Fadl’s cultural hybridism situated her in a unique position to redefine and articulate the terms of a Western-Islamic intellectual encounter. The value of Abul Fadl’s scholarship in bridging Islamic and Western intellectual epistemologies was first recognized by the founder of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), Isma‘il Raji al-Faruqi and his wife, Lois Lamya’ al-Faruqi. They proceeded to recruit Abul Fadl to become a IIIT fellow, but their efforts did not materialize until after their assassination.
Abul Fadl’s research in IIIT culminated in a manuscript which has yet to be published, Where East Meets West: Reviewing an Agenda, and Contrasting Epistemics. It was also through her academic affiliation with IIIT that she met her husband, Taha Jaber Al-Alwani, a scholar of Islamic jurisprudence and former president of the Fiqh Council of North America.[1]
Abul-Fadl received her doctorate from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and went on to become a full professor at Cairo University. She was a Fulbright scholar at the Old Dominion University in Virginia and an exchange scholar at the Center for Research and Study of Mediterranean Societies (CRESM) in Aix-en-Provence, France before she joined the International Institute of Islamic Thought IIIT.
Her research interests included political theory; comparative politics; Islam and the Middle East; epistemology; and feminist scholarship.
Her publications include:
The Association for Studying Women in Civilization (ASWIC)
Abul-Fadl was the founder of The Association for Women and Civilization Studies (ASWIC) which is a non-profit organization that was established in Cairo in March 1999 according to Egyptian Law no. 32 of 1946. This association seeks to raise awareness about the position, role, and status of Muslim women throughout history by conducting historical research, promoting academic scholarship, and through organizing seminars and training programs. [3]
The general philosophy of the association in its activities is based on an enlightened reading of the sources of Islamic culture and civilization. Its perspective is born out of the Arabic-Islamic heritage as it seeks to emphasize the link between past and future, spirituality and materialism, and between the divine revelation and empirical knowledge.
ASWIC aims at safeguarding and improving women’s status and protecting the family and society at large. It seeks justice for women based on the premise that women, in their various and versatile roles, are the source for community development and social reform.
Death
Mona Abul-Fadl has died on September 23, 2008 after more than 2 years of battling breast cancer.
Papers and theses
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