Speaker biographies

Ikbal Al-Gharbi is an assistant professor at Al-Zaytouna University in Tunis, Tunisia, where she lectures in psychology. A contributor to several Muslim reformist websites, Al Gharbi writes frequently on what she has called “the Muslim world’s many failings in gender equality.” She is a member of the Al-Zaytouna Institute of Islamic Science. Her articles have been reprinted by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

Wajeha Al-Huwaider challenged social and political norms as a columnist for Saudi Arabia’s Al-Watan and Arab Times newspapers from 2002 to 2003, when she was banned from publishing by the Saudi monarchy. The winner of the 2004 PEN/NOVIB Free Expression Award, she has written in both Arabic and English about the monarchy’s marginalization of women and Shiites. Al-Huwaider works as a professional development analyst for the Saudi Aramco Oil Company.

Amel Grami is a professor in the Department of Arabic Studies at the University of Manouba in Tunis, Tunisia. Grami, who teaches courses on gender in Islam, studies gender roles in the Arab world and Middle East education. She has written for both academic journals and Muslim reformist websites.

Sawsan Hanish is the executive director of Libya’s National Society for Social Development and the assistant secretary of its Environment Friends Society. Also active in Libyan women’s rights organizations, Hanish has participated in the United Nations Development Program’s National Consultation Committee on Women. She also works as an education inspector.

Gameela Ismail, a former journalist for the Arabic edition of Newsweek, is the chief spokeswoman for Egypt’s El Ghad (Tomorrow) Party, of which her husband, Ayman Nour, is president. Ismail also runs the Nour Foundation, a charity which assists impoverished residents of Nour’s electoral district. When Nour, the leading challenger to the regime of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, was imprisoned in advance of the 2005 election on charges of document forgery, Ismail led daily protests in Cairo.

Wafa Sultan, a Syrian-American psychiatrist, rocketed to fame in February 2006, when she forcefully decried Muslim extremism in a debate with a cleric on Aljazeera television. An online video of the debate has been viewed more than one million times. Sultan, who was named one of the “100 People Who Shape Our World” by Time magazine in May 2006, is writing a book titled The Escaped Prisoner: When God Is a Monster. She is an editor at Annaqed, a reformist Muslim website.

Pascale Warda serves as a human rights advisor to Iraqi president Jalal Talabani. In 2004, she was appointed Minister of Displacement and Migration as a member of Iraq’s interim Council of Ministers. Warda, who co-founded the Iraqi Society for Human Rights in Damascus in 1995, served as the Paris representative of the Assyrian Democratic Movement, the largest Iraqi Assyrian political party, from 1993 to 1995. She has also been the chairwoman of the Assyrian Federation of Women since 2001. At the 2004 G8 summit in the Democratic Republic of Georgia, Warda discussed women’s rights issues with first lady Laura Bush.

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