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Controversial scholar Amina Wadud writes on the place of women in Islam


One of the great fallacies of this historical period is that all of the Islamic world is opposed to the rights of women and that the religion itself denies full humanity to women. It is easy for us to condemn all of Islam as being anti-feminine given the realities of laws and traditional practices that are destructive of the rights, dignity and freedoms of women and girls such as FGM, discriminatory property rights laws; hijab; stoning, etc. But, what if all these practices were aberrations or destructive misreadings of the sacred texts of Islam. Controversial Islamic scholar Amina Wadud makes this very case in her new book and in a recent interview on WNYC's Bryan Lehrer show.

Amina Wadud made the headlines last year when she led a prayer for a group of Muslims in New York. It was a protest of the tradition that forbids female imams in Islam and it drew condemnation from conservative Muslims as well praise from secular feminists. She outlines her arguments for change in a new book, Inside the Gender Jihad: Women's Reform in Islam.