Hadia Mubarak, Ph.D.

Biography

Hadia Mubarak is an Assistant Professor of Religion at Queens University of Charlotte, where she teaches courses on Islam, comparative scriptures, women and gender in the Muslim world, the history of Islam in America, and religious representation in popular culture, among other courses. She previously served as Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Guilford College (2018-2020) and as a Research Fellow at New York University-Abu Dhabi (NYUAD)’s Institute in the Humanities (2017-2018). Mubarak completed her Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from Georgetown University, where she specialized in modern and classical Qurʾanic exegesis, Islamic feminism, and gender reform in the modern Muslim world. She currently serves as a scholar-in-residence with the Muslim Community Center of Charlotte (MCC), a Board of Advisors member with the Carleton Center for the Study of Islam (CCSI), and a scholar with the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU).

Her new book, Rebellious Wives, Neglectful Husbands: Controversies in Modern Qurʾanic Commentaries (Oxford University Press, 2022), explores significant shifts in modern Qurʾanic commentaries on the subject of women against the backdrop of broader historical, intellectual and political developments in twentieth-century North Africa. Mubarak’s publications include, among others, “Women’s Contemporary Readings of the Qurʾan” in The Routledge Companion to the Qurʾan (Routledge, 2021); “Violent, Oppressed and Un-American: Muslim Women in the American Imagination” in The Personal is Political, eds. Christine Davis and Jon Crane (Brill, 2020); “Gender and Qurʾanic Exegesis” in The Routledge Handbook of Islam and Gender, ed. Justine Howe (Brill, 2020); “Change Through Continuity: A Case Study of Q. 4:34 in Ibn ʿĀshūr’s Al-Taḥrīr wa-l-Tanwīr” (Journal of Qurʾanic Studies 20.1 February 2018); “Breaking the Interpretive Monopoly: A Re-Examination of Verse 4:34” (Hawwa 2.3); and “Crossroads,” I Speak for Myself: American Women on Being Muslim (White Cloud Press, 2011).

Mubarak previously taught as a lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (2015-2017) and a visiting lecturer at Davidson College (2015-2016). In 2006-2007, Mubarak served as a Senior Researcher at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University and a researcher at the Gallup Organization’s Center for Muslim Studies, where she contributed research to Who Speaks for Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think (Gallup Press, 2008) and The Future of Islam by John Esposito. In 2006, Mubarak joined the “Islam in the Age of Globalization” initiative, sponsored by American University, Brookings Institute and the Pew Forum. As a field researcher, Mubarak conducted on-site interviews and surveys with a range of Muslim scholars, government officials, activists, students, and journalists in Qatar, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Pakistan and India and published an analysis of these surveys in Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization (The Brookings Institution Press, 2008). Mubarak received her master’s degree in Contemporary Arab Studies with a concentration in Women and Gender from Georgetown University. She received her bachelor’s degree in International Affairs and English from Florida State University. In 2004, Mubarak was the first female to be elected president of the national Muslim Students Association.

Education

Ph.D., Georgetown University
M.A., Georgetown University
B.A., Florida State University