Islamic feminism is a form of feminism concerned with the role of women in Islam. It aims for the full equality of all Muslims, regardless of gender, in public and private life. Islamic feminists advocate women's rights, gender equality, and social justice grounded in an Islamic framework. Although rooted in Islam, the movement's pioneers have also utilised secular and European or non-Muslim feminist discourses and recognize the role of Islamic feminism as part of an integrated global feminist movement.

Advocates of the movement seek to highlight the deeply rooted teachings of equality in the religion, and encourage a questioning of the patriarchal interpretation of Islamic teaching through the Qur'an (holy book), hadith (sayings of Muhammad) and sharia (law) towards the creation of a more equal and just society.

Muslim majority countries have produced several female head of states and prime ministers: Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan, Mame Madior Boye of Senegal, Tansu Çiller of Turkey, Kaqusha Jashari of Kosovo, and Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia. Bangladesh was the second country in the world (after Mary and Elizabeth I in 16th century England) to have one female head of state follow another, those two being Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina.^{[citation needed]}

Mona Eltahawy (Arabic: منى الطحاوى‎, IPA: [ˈmonæ (ʔe)ltˤɑˈħɑːwi]; born 1 August 1967, Port Said, Egypt) is a freelance Egyptian-American journalist based in New York.

Eltahawy was educated at the American University in Cairo, from which she has an MA in Journalism. Before moving from her native Egypt to the United States in 2000, Eltahawy was a news reporter for a decade. She was a correspondent for Reuters News Agency in Cairo and Jerusalem, reported from the Middle East for the UK's Guardian newspaper and was a stringer for U.S. News and World Report.

She wrote a weekly column for the Saudi-owned international Arab publication Asharq Al-Awsat for some years before her articles were discontinued for being "too critical" of the Egyptian regime, she claimed in an article written for the International Herald Tribune in 2006.

However, the ban imposed by Asharq Al-Awsat's editor in chief, Tariq Alhomayed, gave Eltahawy a platform and she now writes essays and op-eds for publications worldwide on Egypt and the Islamic world, including women's issues and Muslim political and social affairs. Eltahawy is active in the Progressive Muslim Union, and has been a strong critic of the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, The New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, and the Miami Herald among others.

Tariq Ramadan (Arabic: طارق رمضان‎; born 26 August 1962 in Geneva, Switzerland) is a Swiss academic and writer. He is also a Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies in the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Oxford University. He advocates the study and re-interpretation of Islamic texts, and emphasizes the heterogeneous nature of Western Muslims.

Tariq Ramadan is the son of Said Ramadan and Wafa Al-Bana, who was the eldest daughter of Hassan al Banna, who in 1928 founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Gamal al-Banna, the liberal Muslim reformer is his great-uncle. His father was a prominent figure in the Muslim Brotherhood and was exiled by Gamal Abdul Nasser from Egypt to Switzerland, where Tariq was born.

Tariq Ramadan studied Philosophy and French literature at the Masters level and holds a PhD in Arabic and Islamic studies from the University of Geneva. He also wrote a PhD dissertation on Friedrich Nietzsche, entitled Nietzsche as a Historian of Philosophy.

Amina Wadud (born September 25, 1952) is an American scholar of Islam with a progressive focus on Qur'an exegesis (interpretation). As an Islamic feminist, she has addressed mixed-sex congregations, giving a sermon in South Africa in 1994, and leading Friday prayers in the United States in 2005. These actions broke with the tradition of having only male imams (prayer leaders), and thus she triggered debate and Muslim juristic discourse about women as imams.

Wadud was born as Mary Teasley in Bethesda, Maryland. Her father was a Methodist minister and her mother was descended from Muslim slaves of Arab, Berber and African ancestry dating back to the 8th century. She received her Bachelor of Science from the University of Pennsylvania, between 1970 and 1975. In 1972 she pronounced the shahadah, that is, accepted Islam, not knowing of her maternal ancestry. By 1974 she had changed her name officially to Amina Wadud, to reflect her chosen religion. She received her M.A. in Near Eastern Studies and her Ph.D. in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the University of Michigan in 1988. During graduate school, she studied in Egypt, including advanced Arabic at the American University in Cairo, Qur'anic studies and tafsir (exegesis or religious interpretation) at Cairo University, and philosophy at Al-Azhar University.

Asra Quratulain Nomani (born 1965) is an Indian-American journalist, author, and feminist, known as an activist involved in the Muslim reform and Islamic feminist movements. She teaches journalism at Georgetown University and is co-director of the Pearl Project, a faculty-student, investigative-reporting project into the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. The project is based at the Center for Public Integrity.

She is the author of two books, Standing Alone in Mecca: An American Woman's Struggle for the Soul of Islam and Tantrika: Traveling the Road of Divine Love. She is also the author of numerous articles including "Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in the Bedroom", the "Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in the Mosque", and "99 Precepts for Opening Hearts, Minds and Doors in the Muslim World".

Her work is the subject of a documentary, The Mosque in Morgantown, aired nationwide on PBS as part of the series America at a Crossroads.

Nomani was born in Bombay, India, and when she was 4 years old moved to the United States with her older brother to join their parents in New Jersey, where her father, Zafar Nomani. was earning a Ph.D. at Rutgers-New Brunswick. When she was 10, her family moved to Morgantown, West Virginia, where her father became an assistant professor of nutrition. Her father (cited as M.Z.A Nomani) published papers on the health effects of Ramadan fasting. He also helped organize mosques in both New Jersey and West Virginia. In her books Tantrika and Standing Alone in Mecca, she states she is descended from Indian Muslim scholar Mawlana Shibli Nomani, known for writing a biography of Muhammad. Nomani received her B.A. in Liberal Studies from West Virginia University in 1986 and M.A. from American University in International Communications in 1990.