Asma Barlas
Asma Barlas is a Pakistani-American academic and writer born in 1950.
She specializes in comparative and international politics, Islam, Qur'anic hermeneutics, and women's studies.
Barlas made history as one of the first women in Pakistan's foreign service in 1976, but was dismissed by General Zia ul Haq in 1982.
After briefly working as an assistant editor for an opposition newspaper, she sought political asylum in the United States in 1983.
Barlas joined Ithaca College's politics department in 1991 and founded the Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity.
In 2008, she held the prestigious Spinoza Chair in Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam.
