Naema Tahir (born 23 August 1970) is a Dutch human rights lawyer and author.
Biography Naema Tahir was born in Slough on August 23, 1970 into a Pakistani emigrant family. In 1980, the Tahir family moved from England to the Netherlands and settled in Etten-Leur. Tahir subsequently lived in Slough, Faisalabad in Pakistan (where her parents originally came from), Leiden, Nigeria, and Strasbourg. She studied Dutch law at Leiden University until 1996 and worked as a lawyer for Dutch and international institutions. She lived in Strasbourg, where she worked as a human rights lawyer for the Council of Europe. She took leave so that she could spend more time in the Netherlands and work on her Dutch-language books.
She was one of the six women interviewed in The Third Feminist Wave (2006) by the Flemish political philosopher Dirk Verhofstadt, alongside Yasmine Allas, Naima El Bezaz, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Irshad Manji, and Nahed Selim. She was also one of the guests on the 2008 season of Zomergasten.
In 2009 Gijsbert Pols concluded that she presented herself as an "enlightened" or "critical" Muslim woman.
From 2011 to 2012 she was a columnist for the television programmes Buitenhof and Altijd Wat. She later wrote columns for the newspaper Trouw. In November 2019, she received her doctorate on the subject of arranged marriage.
Personal life Tahir is married to Andreas Kinneging, a legal scholar and professor of philosophy of law at Leiden University.
Bibliography Year Title Publisher ISBN Notes 2004 Een moslima ontsluiert Houtekiet Memoir and opinion pieces 2004 Moslim in het paradijs: Op zoek naar de mens in de moslim Houtekiet 2006 Kostbaar bezit Prometheus Three stories 2008 Groenkapje en de bekeerde wolf en andere moslimsprookjes Meulenhoff Seven Muslim fairy tales for adults 2009 Eenzaam heden Sanoma; Meulenhoff Novel 2010 De mensen? Ze hebben geen wortels en daar hebben ze last van. De twijfels en de trots van de ontwortelden International Organization for Migration Non-fiction 2011 Bruid van de dood De Geus Novel 2015 Gesluierde vrijheid: De moslima in de moderne wereld Prometheus A Muslim woman's view on the freedom and emancipation of modern Muslim women: emancipation with the Quran in hand 2016 Brieven in Urdu Prometheus Stories 2017 Trein naar Pakistan Hollands Diep Introduction to the Dutch translation (by Ankie Blommesteijn) of Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan 2019 Feminisme en groepsculturen Atlas Contact Essay in the anthology Wolf: Dertien essays over de vrouw, edited by Maartje Laterveer 2022 Breaking Eurocentric Frames on Arranged Marriage: Uncovering the Dynamics of a Marital Institution Eleven Academic work (in English)
See also Migrant literature
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Further reading