Leila Ahmed was the first professor of Women's Studies in Religion at Harvard University. Her book ‘Women and Gender in Islam’ which was published in 1992 challenged many assumptions about women in the history of Islam and has informed decades of discussions around the complex detail of issues such as the Islamic headscarf. Her recent book ‘A Quiet Revolution’ has extended these conversations.

Leila Ahmed on the fact that it has always been men, Muslim or non-Muslim, who have been influential in the banning or enforcing of the Islamic headscarf:

“When items of clothing – be it bloomers or bras – have briefly figured as focuses of contention and symbols of feminist struggle in Western societies, it was at least Western feminist women who were responsible for identifying the item in question as significant and defining it as a site of struggle and not, as has sadly been the case with respect to the veil for Muslim women, colonial and patriarchal men who declared it important to feminist struggle.” [1] 

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[1] Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam (1992) p. 167