Zainah Anwar

Zainah Anwar co-founded Sisters in Islam and Musawah, two groundbreaking women’s rights groups that engage with Islam from a rights perspective to promote equality and justice for women living in Muslim contexts.

She was founding Executive Director of Sisters in Islam  in Malaysia and subsequently Musawah, the global movement for equality and justice in the Muslim family that was launched in Kuala Lumpur in 2009. She chairs the board of Musawah.

Musawah today spearheads groundbreaking activities at the global level, bringing scholars and activists together to produce new feminist scholarship in Islam, conducting trainings on women’s rights in Islam, and engaging with the CEDAW process to challenge the ways governments use Islam to justify reservations and perpetuate discrimination against women, and to offer the possibilities of reform towards equality and justice for Muslim women.

Musawah leads the Campaign for Justice in Muslim Family Laws, working with activists in Asia, the MENA region and Sub-Saharan Africa, and is in the Coordinating Committee of the Global Campaign for Equality in Family Law.

Zainah wrote a monthly column in Malaysia’s largest English language daily The Star. In 2022 she was honoured as one of Equality Now’s 30 for 30, featuring 30 women changemakers who have played a key role in making equality reality. In 2018, she was honoured by Harvard Law School as one of the top 25 women globally who contributed in the areas of law and policy. She has been named by Newsweek and The Daily Beast as one of the “150 women who shake the world” and by Women Deliver as one of 100 most inspiring people championing the rights of women and girls. She was cited by Huffington Post in 2013 as one of the 10 leading Muslim women at the global level.