My interests include international human rights and women’s rights issues (particularly in the United States, the Middle East and Muslim world), critical approaches to human rights theory and discourse, the intersections of law, religion and culture, and international law and compliance theory, namely constructivism (a sociologically-based theory emerging out of the international relations discipline). Currently I am working on a PhD thesis and book tentaively titled Between Hegemony and Emancipation: Mapping Human Rights After September 11th through Interwoven American and Middle Eastern Trajectories. The study paints a canvass of American and Middle Eastern encounters with human rights in the post-September 11th era and considers what they reveal about international human rights norms’ various linkages to power and hegemony. This empirical study incorporating field research conducted in Washington, D.C., Amman, Jordan and Sana'a, Yemen offers snapshots of human rights repeatedly being appropriated, invoked, promoted, claimed, reclaimed and contested within and between the American and Middle Eastern contexts during this period. By placing these deployments side by side and highlighting the myriad of contradictions they encompass and produce, the thesis brings to light human rights’ capacity to simultaneously manifest and transcend local and international power structures. Before beginning this research, I completed an LLM thesis examining Islamic feminists’ strategies for bringing international human rights norms into domestic contests over women’s rights under Islamic law in Iran. The research conducted for the thesis consisted of extensive interviews and interactions with members of the Iranian women’s movement, government officials and Shi’a clerics. I am also a member of the NY Bar. In 2004, I participated in the policy and academic debates surrounding faith-based arbitration (“Shari’a Tribunals”) in Canada. In these debates, I advocated achieving a balance between upholding women’s rights and recognizing Muslim migrant women’s agency. I have previously also been involved in human rights projects in Iran, the West Bank and Texas.
Articles
Editors' Note to Inaugural Issue of the Muslim World Journal of Human Rights (with Mashood A. Baderin, Mahmood Monshipour, and Lynn Welchman), Muslim World Journal of Human Rights (2007)
Human Rights in the Post-September 11th Era: Between Hegemony and Emancipation, Muslim World Journal of Human Rights (2007)
The post-September 11th era has presented immense challenges and disappointing setbacks for the advancement of...
Contributions to Books