Dr. Farhat Hashmi
Farhat Naseem Hashmi (Urdu: فرحت ہاشمی; born December 22, 1957) is a Pakistani-Canadian Islamic scholar and preacher. She is the founder of the Al-Huda Institute, a network of conservative Islamic religious schools for women.
She holds a PhD degree in Islamic studies from the University of Glasgow, Scotland and was formerly a lecturer and assistant professor at the Faculty of Usul-al-Din at International Islamic University, Islamabad. Hashmi founded Al-Huda International Welfare Foundation in 1994. The foundation started a number of schools to teach the Quran and Hadith to women in order to "help women become better observant Muslims by helping them understand the Quran". The foundation now runs a network of schools, seminaries and social welfare projects. In 2004, the foundation established the Al-Huda Institute in Mississauga (Toronto area), Ontario, Canada. This institute offers courses on exegesis of the Quran and Hadith and attracts students from a number of foreign countries such as Australia.
She has gained popularity as a feminist scholar both in Pakistan and abroad, as evidenced by crowds of up to ten thousand that attend her religious lessons, called dars : the number of women who got a diploma or certificate are estimated to be around 15,000 while those who followed her courses without formally enrolling are even more numerous. Most followers come from liberal, literate and modern backgrounds; and most are women. She has stated that her mission is to bring a renewal in Islam, through better understanding of the core scriptures. In contrast to rigid and confrontational styles of proselytising, Hashmi has emphasized the need for her students to engage in voluntarily educating others through their examples.
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