Meet the Scholar: Snapshots of Intellectual Journeys

Sa’diyya Shaikh – University of Cape Town, South Africa

University Website

Sa’diyya Shaikh is an Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.  Her research is situated at the intersection of Islamic Studies and Gender Studies. She has a special interest in Sufism and its implications for Islamic feminism and feminist theory. Her book “Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn ʿArabī, Gender and Sexuality” is published by the University of North Carolina Press (2012); and co-published again in 2013 by both University of Cape Town Press and Munshiram Manoharl Publishers (New Delhi). Her areas of research include gender-sensitive readings of hadith, Quranic exegesis and Sufi texts; theoretical and political debates on Islam and feminism; religion and gender-based violence; contemporary Muslim women’s embodied, experiential and everyday modes of understanding Quranic teachings (“Tafsir of Praxis”). Shaikh has also completed an empirical project focused on sexuality, marriage, and reproductive choices amongst South African Muslim women.