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.

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.