Dr. Elham Manea

Humanist & Writer

PD. Dr. Elham Manea is of dual nationalities, Yemeni and Swiss. She is a political scientist specialized on the Arab Middle East, a writer, and a human rights activist. She is well known in the Middle East and North Africa for her writings on a Humanistic Islam; reform of religion, fight against extremism and Islamism, and defence of universal human rights. She is the family spokesperson of the jailed Saudi blogger Raif Badawi and the co-founder of Open Mosque Switzerland. She advocates against identity politics and a paradigm she calls the essentialist paradigm in European and North American countries, arguing that both pave the ground for violations of human rights and enable Islamists as sole speakers of the diverse Muslim communities. Her Books include Women and Shari’a law, 2016; and Der Alltägliche Islamismus, 2018 (Islamism Mainstreamed). More than one and a half million readers have visited her Arabic personal online blog created in 2012 by Modern Discussion.