Riffat Hassan

Riffat Hassan (born 1943) is a Pakistani-American theologian and a leading Islamic feminist scholar of the Qur'an.

Hassan was born in Lahore, Pakistan, to an upper-class Sayid Muslim family. Hassan's maternal grandfather was Hakim Ahmad Shuja, a Pakistani poet, writer and playwright. She lived a comfortable childhood, but was affected by the conflict between her father's traditional views and her mother's nonconformism. For most of her life, she hated her father's traditionalism because of his views of sex roles, but she later came to appreciate it because of his kindness and compassion. She attended Cathedral High School, an Anglican missionary school, and later St. Mary's College at Durham University, England, where she studied English and philosophy. She received her Ph.D. from Durham University in 1968 for her thesis on Muhammad Iqbal, who she has written about frequently.

She taught at the University of Punjab at Lahore from 1966 to 1967 and worked in Pakistan's Ministry of Information and Broadcasting from 1969 to 1972. In 1972, she immigrated to the United States with her daughter. She has taught at schools including Oklahoma State University and Harvard University, and is currently a professor of Religious Studies at the University of Louisville, Kentucky.

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