The University of Mary Washington will commemorate the enactment of Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom with a lecture titled, “Whose Freedom? Islam, Gender, and the Politics of Representation,” by Amina Wadud, professor emerita of Islamic studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 30 in George Washington Hall’s Dodd Auditorium.
Wadud is an internationally distinguished scholar on Islam and gender, traveling the world as a consultant on Islam, human rights and women’s issues. A visiting scholar at the Starr King School for the Ministry in California, she is the author of “Qur’an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective” and “Inside the Gender Jihad: Reform in Islam.”
The UMW Department of Classics, Philosophy, and Religion has sponsored the annual Jefferson Lecture on Religious Freedom since 2002, bringing scholars and public figures to the stage to enlighten students and visitors about religious freedom and the significance of Jefferson’s impact.
The Statute for Religious Freedom, enacted by the Virginia General Assembly on Jan. 16, 1786, legally established the right to full freedom of worship in the Commonwealth of Virginia, completing a significant step towards the addition of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
For more information about the lecture, call (540) 654-1342.
