14 Facts About Leila Ahmed

Leila Ahmed is an Egyptian-American scholar of women's studies and religion.

Leila Ahmed became the first professor of women's studies in religion at Harvard Divinity School in 1999, and has held the Victor S Thomas Professor of Divinity chair since 2003.

Leila Ahmed was later awarded the Victor S Thomas Research Professor of Divinity in 2020.

The Leila Ahmed family became politically ostracized following the Free Officers Movement in 1952.

Leila Ahmed's father, a civil engineer, was a vocal opponent of Gamal Abdel Nasser's construction of the Aswan High Dam on ecological principles.

Leila Ahmed earned her undergraduate and doctorate degrees from University of Cambridge during the 1960s before moving to the United States to teach and write, where she was appointed to professorship in Women's Studies and Near Eastern studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the position of director in said programs in 1981.

Leila Ahmed has been a strong critic of Arab nationalism in Egypt and the Middle East.

Leila Ahmed devotes an entire chapter in her autobiography to the question of Arab nationalism, and the political factors and efforts which went into constructing an Arab identity for Egypt after the army's coup d'etat.

Leila Ahmed describes Arab nationalism, like many other forms of pan-nationalism, as a type of cultural imperialism.

In 2013, Leila Ahmed, who had previously opposed the veil, received the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion for her analysis of the veiling of Muslim women in the United States, in which she describes how some women wore the veil as a symbol of activism for justice and social change.

Leila Ahmed tells of how she was introduced to Islam through her grandmother during her childhood, and she came to distinguish it from "official Islam" as practiced and preached by a largely male religious elite.

Leila Ahmed speaks of her experience in Europe and the United States as one that was often fraught with tension and confusion as she tried to reconcile her Muslim Egyptian identity with Western values.

Leila Ahmed maintains that as Islam evolved, two divergent voices emerged in the religion:.

Leila Ahmed concludes by exhorting feminists, both Muslim and Western, to undertake this task by critically engaging with, challenging and redefining the Middle East regions' diverse religious and cultural heritage.