Background
Born to an American mother and Iranian father in New York, Bakhtiar grew up in Los Angeles and Washington, District of Columbia, as a Catholic.
Born to an American mother and Iranian father in New York, Bakhtiar grew up in Los Angeles and Washington, District of Columbia, as a Catholic.
She holds a Bachelor in History from Chatham College in Pennsylvania, an Master of Arts in Philosophy, an Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology and a Doctor of Philosophy in Educational Foundations.
She is also a Nationally Certified Counselor. As of 2007 Bakhtiar lives in Chicago, where she is president of the Institute of Traditional Psychology and Scholar-in Residence at Kazi Publications. Khaled Abou El Fadl, Islamic law professor from University of California, Los Angeles, says she "has a reputation as an editor, not an Islamic scholar", and that three years of Classical Arabic are not enough.
He also "is troubled by a method of translating that relies on dictionaries and other English translations."
Bakhtiar disagrees with such criticism saying, "The criticism is because I"m a woman." She also says that some other well-known translators were not considered Islamic scholars.