UC Press Blog

By Samaneh Oladi, author of Women, Faith, and Family: Reclaiming Gender Justice through Religious Activism

When I began writing Women, Faith, and Family, I couldn’t help but see the complex tensions that shape conversations around women’s rights in Muslim societies—especially in Iran. In many of these discussions, Western feminist perspectives often treat faith as a barrier, suggesting that women must step outside religious structures to gain real autonomy and justice. 

My book tells a different story—one that is essential to understanding how faith-based activism allows women in Shi‘i Iran to pursue justice and autonomy within their own cultural and religious frameworks.

The idea for this book began to take shape during a visit to Iran years ago, when a conversation with my childhood friend Leila pushed me to question my positionality as a researcher on women’s rights in Islamic contexts. Leila urged me strongly to resist a Western-centric view of women’s liberation in Muslim societies. For her, the wider discussion on women’s rights in Islamic contexts often bordered on cultural imperialism, ignoring the complex connections between faith and identity within these communities. She inspired me to look past reductive narratives and critically engage with the layered realities of Muslim women, particularly those who find strength and purpose in faith-based values. 

A few years later, during another visit to Iran, I was taken aback to find a new, unexpected turn in Leila’s life. Her husband had entered a polygynous marriage—a reality permitted by the legal system. Facing this betrayal, she wrestled with reconciling her personal values with her faith. Determined to stay true to her beliefs, she eventually joined the Women’s Islamic Coalition (Itilaf-i Islami-yi Zanan, or IIZ), an organization that works within Shi‘i frameworks to advance women’s rights and gender justice. For Leila and others in IIZ, the path to justice didn’t mean abandoning their faith. It meant reshaping religious principles to reflect women’s lived experiences and to address systemic inequities.

Women, Faith, and Family grew from exploring stories like Leila’s, where faith and activism come together to create a vision of justice that neither fully aligns with secular feminism nor conforms to traditional religious orthodoxy. Members of IIZ describe this approach as women’s jurisprudence, a dynamic discourse that interprets Islamic sacred texts through a lens that is informed by women’s experiences and voices. For them, ijtihād—the practice of independent interpretation—offers a powerful way to re-engage with religious texts and to reinterpret laws that directly impact their lives. This practice enables them to see faith not as a barrier but as a pathway to advocate for justice and equality.

Throughout my research, I sought to understand how women like those in IIZ, often marginalized in both Western feminist and conservative religious narratives, carve their own spaces of justice by engaging simultaneously with faith, law, and activism. They resist identifying as “feminists” in the classic sense, as the term carries connotations of Western cultural influence and values. Instead, they define their efforts as a movement for “gender justice,” grounded in Shi‘i values and Iranian culture. In this way, they can advocate for justice without losing connection to their faith or alienating their communities.  

This book is organized into six chapters, each looking closely at different aspects of women’s legal status and activism through themes like marriage, divorce, custodianship, women’s activism, and female religious authority. IIZ’s work pushes against traditional views of gender roles in these areas, advocating for reforms that honor both justice and faith. By reinterpreting religious laws to be more inclusive of women’s voices, they offer a powerful example of what gender justice can look like within a faith-based framework.

In a time when essentialist narratives are all too often imposed, Women, Faith, and Family challenges the dominant understanding of women’s rights in Muslim societies, recognizing faith-based activism as a powerful force in shaping gender discourse. Through this work, I invite readers to rethink what agency, activism, and justice mean within Muslim contexts. The faith-based activism practiced by IIZ presents a vision of justice that sees women drawing strength from their faith, creating pathways for change from within their cultural and religious traditions. The book is a testament to the complex and sometimes paradoxical journeys that Iranian women undertake as they work to reshape what justice and equity mean in their lives. This book stands as both a tribute to their strength and an invitation to engage more deeply with these dynamic spaces where faith and justice meet.