Director: SSa'diyya Shaikh
Sa’diyya Shaikh (PhD Temple University, 2004) is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town. She specialises in the study of Islam, gender ethics, and feminist theory. She has published on gender-sensitive readings of Muslim textual traditions, including Qur’an, hadith and Sufi texts; theoretical and political debates on Islam and feminism, religion and gender-based violence; Sufism and Islamic Law; contemporary Muslim women’s embodied, experiential and everyday modes of understanding Islam and negotiating religious teachings; and marriage, sexuality and reproductive choices amongst South African Muslim women.
Her books include The Women’s Khutbah Book: Contemporary Sermons on Spirituality and Justice from around the World (co-authored with Fatima Seedat, Yale University Press, 2022); Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn ʿArabī, Gender, and Sexuality (University of North Carolina, 2012); and Violence Against Women in Contemporary World Religions: Roots and Cures (co-edited with Daniel Maguire, 2007). Her current book project is provisionally entitled ‘The Breath of Merciful: Jamali Ethics, Gender and Spirituality’.
Sa’diyya is active on a number of community fora for the empowerment of Muslim women, and contributes to feminist knowledge building work of Musawah, a global movement for justice and equality in the Muslim family, and has presented talks at the Claremont Main Road mosque regularly.
Her awards include research fellowships at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin: Centre for Advanced Study (2016-2017) and at Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies (STIAS) 2020; Fulbright PhD Scholarship (1997-2001)
Selected Publications
Shaikh, Sa’diyya. 2012. Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn ʿArabi, Gender and Sexuality. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press; (Winner of 2015 UCT Book Award; Shortlisted for 2013 American Academy of Religion Excellence Award)
Shaikh, S. 2022 “Justice, Refinement and Beauty: Reflections on Marriage and Spirituality.” In Justice and Beauty in Muslim Marriage: Towards Egalitarian Ethics and Laws, edited by Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Mulki Al-Sharmani, Jana Rumminger and Sarah Marsso. London: Oneworld Press, 379-392.
Shaikh, S. 2021 “Islamic Feminist Imaginaries: Love, Beauty and Justice.” The African Journal of Gender and Religion Vol. 27 (Dec) 2-16.
Shaikh S. 2021. “Embracing the Barzakh: Knowledge, Being and Ethics” Journal for Islamic Studies, Vol. 39: 28 – 48
Mahomed, Nadeem and Shaikh, Sa’diyya. 2018. “Islam between Margins: Reassessing Gender and Sexuality in Islam.” The African Journal of Gender and Religion 24, no 2 (Dec): 120-138
Shaikh, Sa’diyya. 2022. “Ibn ʿArabī and Mystical Disruptions of Gender: Theoretical Explorations in Islamic Feminism” Signs: Journal of Women and Culture in Society 47, 2, (Winter): 475-497
Shaikh, Sa’diyya. 2021. “Refining Islamic Feminisms: Gender, Subjectivity and the Divine Feminine” In Surfacing: On Being Black and Feminist in Southern Africa ed by Desiree Lewis and Gabeba Baderoon, Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. 119-129.
Shaikh, Sa’diyya. 2013. “Feminism, Epistemology and Experience: Critically (En)gendering the Study of Islam.” Journal for Islamic Studies 33: 14-47.
Claassens, L.J., Shaikh, S and Swartz, L. 2019. “Engaging Disability and Religion in an African Context.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Disability and Citizenship in the Global South, ed by Brian Watermeyer et al. Cham Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan” 147-164
Hoel, Nina and Shaikh, Sadiyya, 2013. “Sex as Ibadah: Religion, Gender and Subjectivity among South African Muslim Women.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 29 (1): 69-91.