A scholar of contemporary Western thought and of women studies, and a pioneering researcher associated with IIIT and later with what is now known as Cordoba University, Dr. Mona Abul-Fadl passed away in Reston, Virginia on September 23 after a protracted battle with cancer. She is survived by her husband Dr. Taha Jabir Al-alwani, president of Cordoba University, and a former president of IIIT.

Dr. Abul-Fadl received her doctorate from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and went on to become a full professor at Cairo University. She was a Fulbright scholar at the Old Dominion University in Virginia and an exchange scholar at the Center for Research and Study of Mediterranean Societies (CRESM) in Aix-en-Provence, France before she joined IIIT. Her research interests included political theory; comparative politics; Islam and the Middle East; epistemology; and feminist scholarship. Her publications included: Paradigms in Political Science Revisited, Islam and the Middle East: The Aesthetics of Political Inquiry, Alternative Perspectives: Islam from Within, Where East Meets West: Reviewing an Agenda, and Contrasting Epistemics.

Dr. Abul-Fadl continued to hold her professorship and divided her time between teaching at The Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences in Virginia, where she held the Zahira Abdin Chair for Women Studies, and teaching at the Cairo University. In recent years, she had developed an extensive website in women’s studies which can be found at http://www.muslimwomenstudies.com.