Sharifa Alkhateeb, 58; Worked to Bridge Gaps Between U.S. and Islam

Sharifa Alkhateeb, who founded advocacy groups for Muslim women and explained the ways of Islam to America and the world as a scholar, journalist and educator, died Oct. 21 of pancreatic cancer at her home in Ashburn, Va. She was 58.

Alkhateeb embraced both American and Islamic ways in her lifelong effort to bridge gaps between the two cultures. Often quoted in news reports about Muslim matters, particularly pertaining to women, she also advised schools, police departments, corporate directors, governmental agencies and textbook publishers on the nature of Islamic life.

As founder of the North American Council for Muslim Women, she focused attention on domestic violence and other problems of women in the Islamic world. She edited an English translation of the Koran, was chairwoman of the Muslim caucus at the United Nations World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, and helped introduce Arabic as a subject in northern Virginia public schools.

In many ways, Alkhateeb lived a conventional Muslim life. She was the mother of three daughters, faithfully prayed five times a day and observed her religion’s dietary practices and other customs. Although she wore Western dresses and slacks, she had covered her hair with a scarf since she was 16.

Yet within the bounds of her faith, Alkhateeb sought -- and usually found -- a way to forge a strong, independent voice for herself and for other Islamic women.

“Muslim women are quite capable of speaking up for ourselves,” she told the New York Times in 1993. “We’re not waiting for Western women to pour their loveliness into our heads.”

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Alkhateeb was “in constant fear that someone would attack her,” according to her daughter, Maha Buthayna Alkhateeb. But she pinned a U.S. flag to her blouse and took a leading role in the Community Resilience Project of Northern Virginia, a counseling and education effort sponsored by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. She also helped organize an interfaith consortium of synagogues, churches and mosques to educate people across religious and cultural lines.

“She always felt extremely spiritual,” her daughter said. “She always felt she was doing what she was meant to do.”

Sharifa Ahmad Alkhateeb was born in Philadelphia, the daughter of a Yemeni father and a Czech mother. Hers was the only Muslim family in a Christian and Jewish neighborhood.

After entering the University of Pennsylvania at 16, she joined the Muslim Student Assn. and began to wear the scarf. But she did not renounce American ways or the growing feminist movement of the 1960s.

“She’s encountered people who wanted her to stop speaking out ever since the beginning,” her daughter said. “She believed in taking the best of both worlds. She didn’t see it as a clash of civilizations at all.”

After graduating from Penn, Alkhateeb received a master’s degree in comparative religion from Norwich University in Northfield, Vt., then edited a translation of the Koran, published in 1977.

From 1978 to 1987, she lived in Saudi Arabia, where her husband, an Iraqi-born U.S. citizen, was working. She taught in private schools and at a Saudi university, and worked as a journalist for the English-language Saudi Gazette, sometimes receiving warnings for reporting on sensitive issues.

She was coauthor of the Arab World Notebook, which is used in public schools nationwide, and was managing editor of the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences. She founded the Peaceful Families Project, a nationwide program sponsored by the Department of Justice to examine violence in the Muslim community.

“She was an educator and activist in the fullest sense of the term,” said John Esposito, a professor at Georgetown University and an authority on Islamic culture. “Bright, religiously centered and motivated, she balanced a kind, considerate, warm nature with an ability to stand firm for the principles she believed in.”

Survivors include her husband of 35 years, Mejdi Alkhateeb; two other daughters, Layla and Nasreen; a brother; three sisters; and a grandson.