Conflicting Family Laws: court-ordered divorces & Canadian Muslims
Prior to engaging in the western legal tradition through the LLM program, my educational background was in Islamic Sciences, with a concentration in courses of linguistics. I graduated from Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt in 2013 with an Honours Bachelor of Islamic Studies in English from the Faculty of Languages & Translation. In Canada, I took various graduate courses at Huron College of the University of Western in London, Ontario. These included Pastoral Theology, Pastoral Care and Counselling Ministry, Church History, and History of Christian-Muslim Relations.
As the Imam of Youth, Education, and Outreach at the Windsor Islamic Association, I was a religious lecturer and counselor. From this work experience, I developed a greater awareness of the domestic application of Islamic family law in Canada. Currently, I am the Muslim Chaplain at the University of Windsor where I continue to counsel youth and offer religious and mental health services.
After researching various LLM programs across Canada, the US, and the UK, I decided that Windsor Law's themes of access to justice and transnational law would foster my research which touches on the accommodation of religious minorities in Canada. Moreover, as the only program in Canada that offers a teaching training component, Windsor's LLM program furthers my long-term career goals by providing me with opportunities to simultaneously develop both my research and teaching skills in the legal discipline.
During my LLM, I will research pressing transnational legal issues in a manner that increases access to justice for Muslims in Canada. Specifically, to address one of the gaps between religious and secular legal systems, I am exploring the compatibility of secular court-ordered divorces for Muslim women abiding by Islamic religious divorce processes. This has proven to be a very important topic from my work experience as a religious counsellor, where I was frequently mediating issues of Islamic divorce at the intersection of Canadian law. Moreover, my membership with the Canadian Council of Imams heightened my awareness of the issue's presence across a multitude of communities.
With my LLM and UTC I plan to advance the scholarly discourse of private international law through researching conflicts of the law and teaching Islamic legal principles from a comparative lens.
My favourite thing about Windsor is its friendly people and vibrant community.