Asma Barlas, professor of Politics and director of the Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity, gave a presentation at the first plenary session of the conference on "Re-imagining the Shari'a: Theory, Practice, and Muslim Pluralism," in Venice, Italy, on September 14th. The title of her paper was "The Qur'an, Shari'a, and Women's Rights."
The other plenary speaker was professor Abdullahi An-Naim, the noted Sudanese scholar of Islamic law. The conference was organized by the University of Warwick (U.K.) and the Center for European Thought, University of Copenhagen.
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20090914164159406