Khaled Abou El Fadl, the Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law and chair of the Islamic Studies Interdepartmental Program at UCLA, presents "ISIS and the Enslavement and Trafficking of Women" on Thursday, April 9, 6-8 p.m. at UCLA Law, room 1347.
Since the development of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) in 2014, there has been much debate within the media about whether ISIS is “Islamic” or not. Stories about ISIS policies towards women and slavery and statistics of women leaving their home countries to join ISIS as “jihadi brides” have proliferated in the news media. El Fadl, one of the world’s leading authorities on Islamic law, will analyze the salient issues of ISIS’s enslavement of and trafficking in women in the context of the normative discourses of Islam, and will demonstrate that ISIS ideology and practice is not only considered anathema in Islam, but directly contravenes the ethical pulse and purposes of Islamic law.
The lecture is free and open to the public. Sponsors include UCLA's Al Talib Magazine, the Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law, the Muslim Law Student's Association and the Political Science Student Organization. Find more information here.El Fadl is the author of many books on Islam and Islamic law including "Speaking In God’s Name: Islamic Law, Authority and Women" (2001), "The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists" (2005) and "Reasoning with God: Reclaiming Shari‘ah in the Modern Age" (2014).
