UKZN Undergraduate Wins Best Student Presentation at National Conference

UKZN Undergraduate Wins Best Student Presentation at National Conference

Third-year student in Religion Studies, Ms Azraa Ebrahim, won the Best Student Presentation Award at the Association for the Study of Religion in South Africa (ASRSA) Conference, hosted by UKZN’s School of Religion, Philosophy and Classics.

Ebrahim impressed delegates with her autoethnographic account of her journey as a Muslim woman with a disability under the theme of “Religion, Power and Empire/Hegemony”. The award is particularly impressive as Ebrahim was the only undergraduate student to present amongst masters and doctoral students, professors and senior researchers.

Recognising her newly-found feminist activist voice, Ebrahim’s paper titled: “Egalitarian Strides and Palestinian Emancipation: Journeying Between and Within the Bounds of Autoethnography and Feminist Disability Studies in Identity Discovery and Counter Narrative Creation”, highlighted the importance of narrative reclaiming in liberating the voices of the marginalised and redefining the disability narrative within cultural and societal contexts.

Diagnosed at the age of four with congenital Bilateral Optic-Nerve Atrophy, a rare degenerative condition that left her with less than 30% of functional vision, Ebrahim said she had never viewed herself as different until society deemed her so when she was confronted by ableist interjections and rigid notions of “how to be Muslim”.

She found a sense of peace in Sufism and discovered her feminist voice after studying feminist disability studies in her Religion major. ‘I am committed to centring my voice as an embodied prototype, breathing life into the spirits of marginalised Muslim women with disabilities who do not have the vocabulary to call for feminist intersectionality, academic activism or writing as resistance,’ she said. She added that this has become her societal intifada where she draws on the Palestinian qualities of resilience, resistance and survival whilst navigating the complexities of belonging.

Ebrahim attributes the reclamation of her newly-evoked identity to on-going support from her friends, family and the Religion Studies Discipline as a whole, particularly Dr Cherry Muslim who has provided unwavering guidance and has been an integral part of her tertiary journey. Dr Muslim commented: ‘Not only is this an impressive individual feat for Azraa, but also for UKZN as this is the second successive year that a UKZN Religion student has walked away with this prize.’

Words: NdabaOnline

Photograph: Sethu Dlamini