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About Us

We are an international solidarity network that provides information, support and a collective space for women whose lives are affected by laws and customs said to derive from Islam. We have been working for nearly three decades, and our network now spans more than 70 countries. It brings together:

  • women living in countries where Islam is the state religion, including secular states with Muslim majorities and those from Muslim communities governed by minority religious laws;
  • women in secular states where political groups are trying to introduce religious laws;
  •  women in Muslim communities in Europe, the Americas, and around the world;
  • non-Muslim women who have Muslim laws applied to them directly or through their children;
  • women or families automatically categorized as Muslim but may not define themselves as such, either because they are not believers or because they choose not to identify themselves in religious terms, preferring to prioritise other aspects of their identity such as political ideology, profession, sexual orientation. 

Our name challenges the myth of one, homogenous ‘Muslim world’. This myth has been deliberately created for political ends and it fails to reflect the fact that:

  • laws said to be Muslim vary from one context to another;
  • the laws that determine our lives come from diverse sources: religious, customary, colonial, and secular;
  • we are governed simultaneously by many different laws: laws recognised by the state (codified and uncodified) and informal laws such as customary practices which vary according to the cultural, social and political context.

We are here to bring women from these varying contexts together.  Through this collective space we learn from one another and give strength to women’s struggles for gender justice at the local, national, and international levels.