In this exclusive Lamppost session, Dr. Zara Khan of Respect Graduate School shares her thoughts on the deep connections between sex, power and politics today. She identifies a growing “arc” of opinions about sexuality among American Muslims that, she argues, is a brand of identity politics, contributing to the secularization of our practices, and harming our communities with mutual insults. Specific attention is paid to female sexuality and homosexuality.

Dr. Zara Khan

 Zara Khan is a daughter, mother, wife, student, teacher and scholar in Political Science. She has a BA from Hunter College (City University of New York) MA./PhD. from The Graduate Center of the City University of New York
Her specializations are Comparative Politics, Political Theory and Human Rights. Her doctoral dissertation, “Refractions Through the Secular: Islam, Human Rights and Universality,” questions the universality claims of Human Rights on account of their secular definition of the human being, and unsettles the modern concept of ‘religion.’ She has taught comparative politics, social science literature and political theory at Lehigh University, The City University of New York and New Jersey City University. She has published a report-back from a fact-finding mission to the West Bank in a women-of-color feminist magazine. She is fluent in Urdu and Spanish. Her next scholarly project will attempt, in sha’ Allah, to problematize the state-of- nature concept by drawing on foundational classical Islamic governance themes.