Below I have listed some prominent activists that are seeking to reform Islam both from within and outside the religion. Different strategies for battling Islamic extremism are hinted at. 

1. Ghada Jamshir: Ghada Jamshir is a Bahraini women's rights activist and an ardent campaigner for the reform of Sharia courts in Bahrain and the Arab States of the Persian Gulf. Jamshir heads the Women's Petition Committee lobbying for a law that would shift jurisdiction over family and women's affairs from Islamic Sharia court to civil courts.

Watch one of her powerful videos on YouTube.


2. Nonie Darwish: (born 1949)is an Egyptian-American human rights activist and critic of Islam, and founder of Arabs for Israel, and is Director of Former Muslims United. She is the author of three books: Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel and the War on Terror, Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law, and The Devil We Don't Know: The Dark Side of Revolutions in the Middle East. Darwish's speech topics cover human rights, with emphasis on women's rights and minority rights in the Middle East. Born in Egypt, Darwish is the daughter of an Egyptian Army lieutenant general, who was called a "shahid" by the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, after being killed in a targeted killing by the Israel Defense Forces in 1956. Darwish blames "the Middle Eastern Islamic culture and the propaganda of hatred taught to children from birth" for his death. In 1978, she moved with her husband to the United States, and converted to Christianity there. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, she has written on Islam-related topics.

3. Ayaan Hirsi Ali: born Ayaan Hirsi Magan, on 13 November 1969, is a Somali-born Dutch-American activist, author, and former politician. She opposes female genital mutilation and calls for a reformation of Islam. She is supportive of women's rights and is an atheist. Her latest book was released in 2015 and is called: Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now.

Hirsi Ali is the daughter of the Somali politician and opposition leader Hirsi Magan Isse. She and her family left Somalia in 1977 for Saudi Arabia, then Ethiopia, and later settled in Kenya. In 1992, Ali sought and obtained political asylum in the Netherlands. Following graduate work, she published articles on her political views and spoke in support of Muslim women becoming atheist.

In 2003, Hirsi Ali was elected a member of the House of Representatives (the lower house of the Dutch parliament), representing the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). A political crisis related to the validity of her Dutch citizenship led to her resignation from parliament, and indirectly to the fall of the second Balkenende cabinet in 2006.

Ayaan has been a vocal critic of Islam. In 2004, she collaborated on a short movie with Theo van Gogh, entitled Submission, the English rendering of the word "Islam", a film about the oppression of women under Islam. The documentary sparked controversy, which resulted in death threats against the two and the eventual assassination of Van Gogh later that year by a Dutch Muslim. In a 2007 interview, she described Islam as an "enemy" that needs to be defeated before peace can be achieved. But in her latest book Heretic (2015) she moderated her views of Islam and now calls for a reform of the religion by supporting reformist Muslims.

In 2005, Hirsi Ali was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. She has also received several awards, including a free speech award from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, the Swedish Liberal Party's Democracy Prize,and the Moral Courage Award for commitment to conflict resolution, ethics, and world citizenship. Hirsi Ali has published two autobiographies: in 2006 and 2010.

Hirsi Ali emigrated to the United States, where she was a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute. She founded the women’s rights organisation the AHA Foundation. She became a naturalised U.S. citizen in 2013 and that year was made a fellow at the Kennedy Government School at Harvard University and a member of The Future of Diplomacy Project at the Belfer Center. She is married to British historian and public commentator Niall Ferguson.

4. Wafa Sultan: born June 14, 1958, is a medical doctor who trained as a psychiatrist in Syria, and a U.S. author and critic of Muslim society and Islam. She is the author of A God Who Hates, a very powerful book. 

Watch one of her powerful Videos on Al-Jazeera

5. Irshad Manji

6. Farzana Hassan

read her article on Islamic reform here

7. Amazing presentation from the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars: Reformist Women Thinkers in the Islamic World

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/reformistwomenthinkers.pdf

8. In 2018, I discovered the amazing Iranian Goddess, Aynaz "Anni" Cyrus: Here is one of her interesting articles called Worth Less. 

9. Also in 2018 I had the pleasure of discovering Imam Mohammed Tawhidi who is a true revolutionary in Islam: Some of his mind blowing video lectures and interviews are on Youtube and his Wikipedia profile is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Tawhidi 

10. Brigitte Gabriel: A Christian, Lebanese critic of Militant Islam an activist in the USA. Her Wikipedia is here.
Her message is that only the small violent minority in Islam is enough to commit tragic atrocities such as 9/11 and 7/11. 

11. British Activism for Moderate Islam and Against Fanatic, Militant Islam: The British found one of the most innovative and creative ways to fight extremism in Islam and that is Comedy: The two movies Four Lions and The Infidel are powerful and subtle and carry a strong message. Four Lions sizes up militant Islam, which tries to project itself as a powerful agent of Terror, as a scared confused ignorant "mouse" of a movement. 

compiled by AMALID.ORG

Last Updated: September 27, 2018