Mulki Al-Sharmani is an associate professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Helsinki. She also served as the first lecturer of Islamic theology, Faculty of Theology, University of Helsinki from September 2018 to December 2019. She was Academy of Finland research fellow working on her own five- year research project titled Islamic Feminism: Tradition, Authority, and Hermeneutics (2013-2018). She was also the lead researcher of the main study in the Academy of Finland research project titled Transnational Muslim Marriages in Finland: Wellbeing, Law, and Gender, led by Marja Tiilikainen (2013-2017).
Mulki is a member of knowledge building working group of Musawah, a network of scholars and activists from across the world producing research-based Islamic feminist knowledge to inform and train different relevant actors in Muslim majority contexts with regard to the question of gender and the reform of family laws.
Mulki’s research interests include Qur’anic ethics and Islamic feminist exegesis; contemporary Muslim women’s engagements with the Qur’an and Islamic interpretive tradition in Finland and Egypt; Muslim family laws and gender in Islamic legal tradition; modern diasporas and gender relations in the family domain, with a focus on transnational Muslim families.
The following is a selection of her publications: a 2022 book chapter ‘Quranic Ethics of Marriage (co-authored with Omaima Abou-Bakr and Asma Lamrabet); a 2022 edited volume Beauty and Justice in Muslim Marriage: Towards Egalitarian Ethics and Laws (co-edited with Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Jana Rumminger and Sarah Marsso); a 2020 book chapter ‘Islamic Feminist Tafsir and Qur’anic Ethics: Rereading Divorce Verses’ (co-authored with Omaima Abou-Bakr); a 2019 edited volume Wellbeing of Transnational Muslim Families: Marriage, Gender and Law (co-edited with Marja Tiilikainen and Sanna Mustasaari); a 2017 single-authored book Gender Justice and Legal Reform in Egypt: Negotiating Muslim Family Law (2017); a 2015 edited volume Men in Charge? Authority in Islamic Legal Tradition (co-edited with Ziba Mir-Hosseini and Jana Rumminger). Mulki also single authored and published numerous articles and book chapters on modern Somali diasporas, Muslim marriage and divorce practices in Finland, and the work of Finnish mosques in family dispute resolution. She is currently working on a manuscript on Islamic feminism-the scholarship and activism.