Wednesday, September 17, 2008 9:56 AM

Featured Community Voice: Anne Sofie Roald

Anne-Sofie Roald is an associate professor at the University of Malmo, Sweden, a program director at Chr. Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway, and author of Women in Islam: The Western Experience. A historian of religion and convert to Islam, her main work has been in the field of Islamism, gender and migration studies. In this interview she speaks about the past and present of women's political participation in Muslim countries. She explains that women's involvement in politics is a result of Islamic religious and cultural understanding of gender roles.