In a lecture to the Cornell Association of Professors Emeriti (CAPE) Nov. 19, 2015, research fellow Nimat Hafez Barazangi argues that Muslim women issues are symptoms of the widespread crisis in understanding Islam, and that these issues, being the consequences of extremism on all fronts, are the active drive to understand the foundations of Muslim extremism. To better understand this crisis, she says, we need a radical shift in discourse to be able to analyze the mind-set of these extremist Muslims, the majority of whom are males.
Barazangi is the author of "Women’s Identity and Rethinking the Hadith."