Q&A With Daisy Khan: How She Advances Women's Rights Informed By Islam
Daisy Khan is one of the most prominent female Muslim leaders in the United States and is the executive director of the Women's Islamic Initiative. Photo via WISE.
The swift withdrawal of U.S. and allied forces after 20 years in Afghanistan has heightened the urgency of advancing the well-being and freedom of Muslim women and girls.
The Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality is an organization committed to advancing the rights of women based on the spiritual principles integral to the Islamic faith. Founded by Daisy Khan, WISE asserts that 1,400 years ago, the Quran articulated the value and worth of women — including their equality in the eyes of God and their role as stewards of God on Earth.
I had the privilege of sitting down with Khan recently. She reflected on the history of WISE, the Islamic spiritual principles that animate and embody her personal and organizational work, and WISE’s vision and current work to promote human dignity for Muslim women.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Chelsea Langston Bombino: Daisy, can you shed light on the distinctiveness of WISE’s approach to advancing women’s rights?
Daisy Khan: WISE’s unique specialty is to demonstrate how the principles of Islamic jurisprudence guarantee a full suite of women’s rights. Unlike secular women’s advocacy groups, WISE does not see faith as an impediment to Muslim women’s advancement. Instead, WISE’s past projects demonstrate that the only truly effective means of improving the lives of Muslim women is to connect them to their spiritual traditions and deeply held religious beliefs. WISE’s method involves openly affirming the ideals of universal human dignity and equality that are at the core of the Islamic faith and encouraging faith-based activism that is consistent with Islamic traditions and with the international human rights articulated in the U.N.’s Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
CLB: Daisy, can you speak a little to the current moment in terms of what is happening in Afghanistan. How are you and WISE thinking and acting on this moment?
DK: WISE and our on-the-ground and diaspora partners have been actively monitoring the situation and making necessary adjustments to our strategies and implementation. Several key points about WISE and our partners: We have historic work and direct experience with the Taliban through our partners in Afghanistan, including providing well-received trainings to 6,000-plus imams in 34 provinces using Islamic principles to defend women’s rights. Our in-country partners and activists will deliver services despite the changes in Afghanistan, and we developed the fundamentals of our approach based on more than a decade of work Afghanistan.
Since 2009, WISE has closely collaborated with the Noor Educational and Community Development Organization in Afghanistan. We are not new at this work. We have been engaged for many years and enjoy established relationships. Therefore, our overarching objective remains the same: Provide religious literacy through trainings, resources and support to Muslim women and girls to defend their human rights based on sound, irrefutable Islamic principles. The implications for this work have far-reaching possibilities for Muslim women and girls worldwide, not just in Afghanistan.
Working with leading women in Afghanistan and leading women’s groups in the United States, WISE is working to fill this gap by publishing authoritative, go-to resources on the rights of women and girls in Islam and coupling their introduction with trainings, a global declaration, a multi-stage buy-in from male scholars and a youth-focused marketing campaign. These efforts will fly under the banner of the 30 Rights of Muslim Women and better enable women and girls to promote and protect their rights.
CLB: Let’s go back a little. Can you share how you came to found this spiritually innovative organization that lifts up the voices of Muslim women in this really particular moment?
DK: I started out as an architectural designer who was on a career path for 25 years working in corporate America. But my reality changed after 9/11, and I was married to an imam whose mosque was blocks from ground zero. The horrific attack became very personal for me, as it took place in my neighborhood, in my city and was attributed to people of my own faith.
When Americans became curious about Islam, explaining the status of Muslim women was ranked among the top-three frequently asked questions. Even though I explained that Muslim women were entitled to the same God-given rights as their male counterparts, my answers fell on deaf ears! They wanted me to explain how and why the faith of Islam was being manipulated to justify such outrages as female genital mutilation and child marriages, and most importantly, they wanted to know what I was doing about it.
In a church where I was lecturing, a little old lady in her 80s asked me a question about women’s status in Islam. I immediately responded that in seventh-century Arabia, Muslim women were granted many rights — like the right to divorce, to own property, to education and to inherit. These rights, I pointed out, were divinely granted to women more than 1,400 years ago, whereas Western women only gained them in the last 100 years.
Confused and perplexed, the little old lady asked, “Then, can you explain why an Afghan woman was gunned down in a soccer stadium? I froze, as I was angry at my inability to do anything for Afghan women. Upon seeing my anguish, she asked a life altering question, “Then dear, just tell me what YOU are doing about it!”
Her profound question stayed with me. I repeatedly questioned myself about how, if I was the most empowered Muslim woman living in the most powerful country in the world, what was I doing for Afghan women? And more importantly, if not ME, then WHO? So, in a year, I quit my career to dedicate myself to community-building. I had no idea what I was going to do, but I just knew I had to do something.
I was fairly grounded in my faith, and having done a deep study of my own religion, I knew that the answers to social issues could be found in my faith. Then I was introduced to Helen Lakelly Hunt, who founded the Sister Fund (now known as the HLH Family Foundation) to seed faith-based initiatives led by women. And it was in this faith and feminism space, where women’s activism was integral to their faith, I found my home. From Helen, I learned that the anti-slavery movement was started by devout Christian women — White and Black — together.
These women were driven by a faith in a just God and a belief that a country founded on the ideals of justice and liberty for all must see all men and women as equal. In that moment, I knew I had to start a modern-day Muslim women’s suffrage movement based on the sacred precepts of the Muslim faith. In 2006, I founded Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality, a nonprofit organization that leverages the power of faith to combat deep-seated social ills and uses Islam’s egalitarian teachings to promote women’s empowerment, human rights, and religious pluralism.
CLB: You mentioned that for Christian and other faith groups, faith was integral to their advocacy for the human dignity of women. What were some of the core principles in the Quran that first illuminated this journey for you into an Islamic movement for advancing the rights of women within the framework of Islam?
DK: So for me, because I was married to an imam, I was already familiar with the spiritual principles for some of the personal issues that impact Muslims: marriage, divorce, career pursuit and leadership. These are some of the issues that American Muslim women were struggling with. For example, somebody was going through domestic violence, and they were told that Islam justified it. My response was to ask, Where in the Quran and the prophet’s example do you see this?
The Quran is explicit. It provides commandments on women’s rights and issues that impact women, such as how to express modesty, pursue education and career, enjoy freedom of speech, access sacred spaces, assume civic and political leadership roles, own property, marry anyone of your choice and many others.
Since Muslim women represent about one-tenth of humanity, our networks of women activists represent Muslim women from all over the globe. Women around the globe face social issues that are not necessarily experienced by American Muslim women — for instance, the issue of rape.
There are societies where women are raped and forced to marry their rapists. In other locales, women are honor-killed even if they are victims of a crime, and some women are denied social mobility, which means they are not allowed in public without being accompanied by a male. And in conflict zones, children are victims of human trafficking, by which daughters are being sold as child brides to feed other members of the family.
As the scope of issues became bigger and bigger, we decided that the best way to address social ills was to establish women’s authority in religious discourse by publishing opinion papers on social justice issues that are simultaneously faithful to Islamic jurisprudence and a vision of women’s empowerment. To expand on this work, my upcoming book, “30 Rights of Muslim Women,” dives deep into Quranic and historical support for comprehensive women’s rights, all classified in the six objectives of Islamic jurisprudence and Shariah: right to life, intellect, religion, family, wealth and dignity.
CLB: Could you perhaps provide an example of a specific issue impacting women — within Islam or outside of Islam — that perhaps involves misinterpretation of the Quran in your view?
DK: There are many issues like female genital mutilation, domestic violence, child marriage — but all these issues pale in comparison to confronting extremism within the Muslim community and within certain elements of American Christianity. This great problem facing our world today affects us all — especially women, who serve as the bedrock of their families and communities and shape the lives of our future generations. Unfortunately, when our religions are weaponized and linked to violence or terrorism, it has far-reaching societal consequences that threaten national unity and our shared civic life.
I worried that if I did nothing, I would allow Muslim extremists to consolidate power, spread their influence and subjugate women, that my reality of an empowered Muslim woman was going to become a minority view and that millions of women would continue to be subjugated, falsely accused of crimes and even killed. So, my organization took the lead and embarked on the creation of a holistic, research- and evidence-based solution to violent extremism and Islamophobia. Over 18 months, we collaborated with 72 expert scholars and religious leaders from the U.S. and abroad, researching groups like ISIS to understand their ideology, their motivation, how they weaponize scripture, how they recruit people and what communities can do.
The result was a 365-page book, “WISE Up: Knowledge Ends Extremism,” aimed at 1) improving interaction across faith-based communities to protect people against hate and violence and 2) enabling American Muslims to clearly articulate the distinctions between the peaceful religion of Islam and the extremist ideology. With yellow and black pages literally side-by-side, we can demonstrate the true Islamic teachings as opposed to the weaponized version of ISIS.
In the wake of recent events regarding extremist versions of White Christian nationalism and particularly the events of Jan. 6, 2021, I see similar patterns emerge in the weaponization of Christianity for extremist purposes by certain extremist groups. Since the threat of extremism is operating openly in the American public square, we need to take the threat seriously, and learn from the experience of Muslims fighting religious extremism within their own ranks.
So, to spur this activity, WISE is spearheading a plan of action centered around an upcoming publication, “WISE Up to White Supremacy,” aimed at reeducating the public on the subject of White supremacy and its inflammatory rhetoric targeted at Muslims and other minorities. We will study the phenomena of White supremacy not just as a name but substantially. Who are the various groups? What are their beliefs? What motivates them? And how do they recruit?
The motivation behind this project is again deeply personal. I want to prevent the mischaracterization of Christianity and the weaponization of Christianity because for me, that is the same sort of fight I was fighting against my co-religionists. In my belief system, the Bible is God’s word, and Jesus is my prophet. As a spiritual activist, I have an obligation to fight those who mischaracterize God’s word and weaponize Jesus’ teachings to morally justify their violence and harm to others.
Chelsea Langston Bombino is a believer in sacred communities, a wife and a mother. She serves as a program officer with the Fetzer Institute and a fellow with the Center for Public Justice.