b. 1952 · United States / Malaysia · Qur'anic exegete, theologian, Islamic feminist scholar
Amina Wadud was born Mary Teasley on 25 September 1952 in Bethesda, Maryland, the daughter of a Methodist minister. She embraced Islam in 1972 while studying at the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned a degree in education, and later adopted the name amina wadud, often written in lower case. She took a master’s degree and, in 1988, a doctorate in Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Michigan, and studied Arabic, Qur’anic exegesis and philosophy in Cairo, including at Cairo University and al-Azhar.
From 1989 to 1992 she taught Qur’anic studies at the International Islamic University Malaysia, where she published her dissertation as Qur’an and Woman (1992) and helped found the advocacy group Sisters in Islam. She then taught religion and philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University until her retirement, later holding visiting posts at Starr King School for the Ministry, Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta and elsewhere.
Wadud’s central argument is that the Qur’an, read holistically and in light of the principle of divine unity (tawhid), affirms the full moral and spiritual equality of women and men, and that patriarchal outcomes stem from male-dominated interpretation rather than revelation. Qur’an and Woman became a foundational text of Islamic feminist exegesis. In Inside the Gender Jihad (2006) she joined theology with personal narrative, discussing among other things her 1994 sermon in Cape Town and the mixed-gender Friday prayer she led in New York in March 2005, an event that drew both support and strong criticism across the Muslim world.
She has also written on race, African American Islam and family law reform, contributed to the Musawah movement’s publications, and published a spiritual memoir, Once in a Lifetime (2022). She remains a central and contested figure in debates on gender and authority in Islam.
