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The Lady Imam: How Amina Wadud's Life and Faith Changed the World
The soul-stirring intersectional biography of the most famous Islamic woman theologian working today, from the two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist author of
If the Oceans Were Ink
and
Home, Land, Security
.
A fierce feminist, single mother of five, an advocate for and member of the LGBTQ+ community, and a respected scholar, amina wadud has led a revolt against Islam’s patriarchal establishment that’s been felt keenly all over the world, especially in marginalized communities, for nearly three decades. Like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X before her, wadud has demonstrated faith’s potential as an engine of liberation and social justice. And yet her story has never been told in book form, until now.
Born Mary Teasley, the daughter of a Methodist preacher, wadud grew up with a rare vantage on the country’s socioeconomic divides. As a child in Maryland, she experienced poverty, eviction, and the death of her elder sister from an unsanctioned abortion. A gifted student, wadud was sent to live with a series of white families in the affluent town of Weston, Massachusetts. Following her interest in philosophy, she briefly lived in a Buddhist ashram before officially converting to Islam as a twenty-year-old college student, quickly falling in love with the Quran. She married and became a mother soon after, and the young family traveled to north Africa.
Her philosophies on faith and feminism would grow from her continued scholarship, informed by these lived experiences, whether it be her belief in bodily autonomy inspired by the loss of her sister or her groundbreaking reinterpretation of the Quran’s verse 4.34, traditionally read as permitting husbands to beat their wives, formed as she was enduring domestic abuse. wadud declared herself queer in her late sixties because "if God is everywhere, why should humans define themselves in binary categories?"
The Lady Imam chronicles the life of a singular figure not only in Islam, but also in feminism, Black history, and gender studies. With unprecedented access through years of interviews and archival research, Carla Power has written the definitive, deeply personal story of wadud's extraordinary life and sheds light on our deepest questions of faith and belief.
A fierce feminist, single mother of five, an advocate for and member of the LGBTQ+ community, and a respected scholar, amina wadud has led a revolt against Islam’s patriarchal establishment that’s been felt keenly all over the world, especially in marginalized communities, for nearly three decades. Like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X before her, wadud has demonstrated faith’s potential as an engine of liberation and social justice. And yet her story has never been told in book form, until now.
Born Mary Teasley, the daughter of a Methodist preacher, wadud grew up with a rare vantage on the country’s socioeconomic divides. As a child in Maryland, she experienced poverty, eviction, and the death of her elder sister from an unsanctioned abortion. A gifted student, wadud was sent to live with a series of white families in the affluent town of Weston, Massachusetts. Following her interest in philosophy, she briefly lived in a Buddhist ashram before officially converting to Islam as a twenty-year-old college student, quickly falling in love with the Quran. She married and became a mother soon after, and the young family traveled to north Africa.
Her philosophies on faith and feminism would grow from her continued scholarship, informed by these lived experiences, whether it be her belief in bodily autonomy inspired by the loss of her sister or her groundbreaking reinterpretation of the Quran’s verse 4.34, traditionally read as permitting husbands to beat their wives, formed as she was enduring domestic abuse. wadud declared herself queer in her late sixties because "if God is everywhere, why should humans define themselves in binary categories?"
The Lady Imam chronicles the life of a singular figure not only in Islam, but also in feminism, Black history, and gender studies. With unprecedented access through years of interviews and archival research, Carla Power has written the definitive, deeply personal story of wadud's extraordinary life and sheds light on our deepest questions of faith and belief.
336 pages, Hardcover
Published June 16, 2026
About the author
Carla Power
7 books111 followersA two-time Pulitzer finalist, Carla Power spent her childhood toggling between the Midwest and the Mideast. As a Newsweek foreign correspondent in the 1990s and naughts, she wrote on Muslim societies, global social issues and culture, reporting from Europe, the Middle East and Asia. She's written for Time, Vogue, The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Foreign Policy and other periodicals. Her first book, If the Oceans Were Ink, an account of studying the Qur'an with a traditional Islamic scholar, was short-listed for the National Book Award as well as the Pulitzer. Her second book, Home, Land, Security looked at why people get drawn into extremist groups--and why they leave.
She lives in London with her husband Antony and from time to time, her twenty-something daughters Nic and Julia.
She lives in London with her husband Antony and from time to time, her twenty-something daughters Nic and Julia.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
July 21, 2026
Over the last thirty years, I’ve spent long stretches studying Islam and I’ve read the Qur’an a handful of times by different translators. I’m very fond of Islam and credit its tenets of justice, equality, inclusion, compassion, generosity, and charity with helping me reengage with a belief in God consciousness. I believe connecting with an all-encompassing God is best experienced and expressed through one’s commitment to carrying out good action, which is indeed a cornerstone of Islam.
My reading and studying of the Qur’an have led me to conclude that Islam empowers women. Although some hardline clerics and Muslim nations do not uphold that belief, it requires strong Muslims, both women and men, to steer their faith towards the equality that fervors at the heart of its scriptures. amina wadud (she does not capitalize her first or last name) is a Black Muslim woman who has challenged and transformed her faith. Although I was familiar with her revolutionary thinking and subsequent actions, not until Carla Power’s comprehensive biography did I know much about wadud’s trailblazing life.
A model of strength and resilience, she grew up in poverty in Maryland with a father who preached Christian values and a mother who abandoned the family when amina was an adolescent. At twenty she converted to Islam and went on to earn a PhD with her dissertation focused on how to interpret the Qur’an from a female point of view. Her visionary work and her courageous activism confront Islamic traditions too often established by males over the fourteen centuries since the first Muslim community, the Ummah, was established. Power’s engaging narrative takes us through the hardships of wadud’s life from childhood and through two marriages and her rearing of five children as she led the revolutionary call to transform her faith.
After visiting South Africa and delivering some of her first groundbreaking lectures about Islam’s empowerment of women, she realized how the unfairness and injustice towards women in Islamic traditions mirrored how Blacks were treated in apartheid South Africa. Standing for the freedom of women in Islam was much like the fight for equality in South Africa. wadud understood how after the Prophet’s passing, interpreting the Qur’an’s sacred scriptures became part of a perpetual manmade domain where every individual brings a perspective to the sanctity of how the verses guide us.
The more wadud studied and learned, the more she understood that no one person has exclusivity over Qur’anic truth, and so women had just as much insight as men in bringing eternal truth to the Qur’an. In 2005 she unsettled many Islamic traditionalists by deciding to become the first woman to lead Jum’ah, Friday prayer, for both women and men. What I think about most in regard to wadud’s vital work is how for any sacred text, including the Qur’an, to be eternal, it must work for every generation. If it does not bring justice and equality, it must be reengaged with in order to serve the goodwill and wellbeing of all God’s people for all time.
My reading and studying of the Qur’an have led me to conclude that Islam empowers women. Although some hardline clerics and Muslim nations do not uphold that belief, it requires strong Muslims, both women and men, to steer their faith towards the equality that fervors at the heart of its scriptures. amina wadud (she does not capitalize her first or last name) is a Black Muslim woman who has challenged and transformed her faith. Although I was familiar with her revolutionary thinking and subsequent actions, not until Carla Power’s comprehensive biography did I know much about wadud’s trailblazing life.
A model of strength and resilience, she grew up in poverty in Maryland with a father who preached Christian values and a mother who abandoned the family when amina was an adolescent. At twenty she converted to Islam and went on to earn a PhD with her dissertation focused on how to interpret the Qur’an from a female point of view. Her visionary work and her courageous activism confront Islamic traditions too often established by males over the fourteen centuries since the first Muslim community, the Ummah, was established. Power’s engaging narrative takes us through the hardships of wadud’s life from childhood and through two marriages and her rearing of five children as she led the revolutionary call to transform her faith.
After visiting South Africa and delivering some of her first groundbreaking lectures about Islam’s empowerment of women, she realized how the unfairness and injustice towards women in Islamic traditions mirrored how Blacks were treated in apartheid South Africa. Standing for the freedom of women in Islam was much like the fight for equality in South Africa. wadud understood how after the Prophet’s passing, interpreting the Qur’an’s sacred scriptures became part of a perpetual manmade domain where every individual brings a perspective to the sanctity of how the verses guide us.
The more wadud studied and learned, the more she understood that no one person has exclusivity over Qur’anic truth, and so women had just as much insight as men in bringing eternal truth to the Qur’an. In 2005 she unsettled many Islamic traditionalists by deciding to become the first woman to lead Jum’ah, Friday prayer, for both women and men. What I think about most in regard to wadud’s vital work is how for any sacred text, including the Qur’an, to be eternal, it must work for every generation. If it does not bring justice and equality, it must be reengaged with in order to serve the goodwill and wellbeing of all God’s people for all time.
June 18, 2026
Thanks to netgalley and One World for the ARC.
The first half was some of the best biography writing I have had the pleasure to read. The balance between purple, personal perspective, and factual reporting was done well and the author did not overextend herself into the writing. The subject, amina wadud, felt alive on the pages. In the second half I found that while amina’s voice was preserved, the style unfortunately did not feel quite so cohesive. A deeper dive into some of the concepts that wadud introduced would have been warranted. Her explorations of queerness felt tacked on, Fewer connections were made on balance as well. Nonetheless, I deeply enjoyed this look into an icon of Muslim feminist thought, all the richer because of how rigorously the author interviewed and appreciated her topic.
The first half was some of the best biography writing I have had the pleasure to read. The balance between purple, personal perspective, and factual reporting was done well and the author did not overextend herself into the writing. The subject, amina wadud, felt alive on the pages. In the second half I found that while amina’s voice was preserved, the style unfortunately did not feel quite so cohesive. A deeper dive into some of the concepts that wadud introduced would have been warranted. Her explorations of queerness felt tacked on, Fewer connections were made on balance as well. Nonetheless, I deeply enjoyed this look into an icon of Muslim feminist thought, all the richer because of how rigorously the author interviewed and appreciated her topic.
June 26, 2026
Carla Power's The Lady Imam is a captivating account of the life of Dr. amina wadud, the first woman to lead a public mixed-gender Friday prayer. But it is more than a biography of a woman who changed the world—it is a history of the times and places that produced her and of the intellectual and spiritual labour behind her transformative interpretations of the Quran. The book's real achievement is where it puts its weight: race, class, gender, sexuality, family history, faith, religious history, and intellectual curiosity sit at the centre of wadud's development, not as background dressing for a single controversial moment.
Muslims may have seen wadud's daring to read the Qur'an from a woman's perspective and her choice to lead the prayer as a provocation against an unchanging tradition. But Power shows that tradition in Islam has always been responsive to its time and place. More than that, tradition moves with its inspired and devoted scholars, who carry the concerns of their day back into conversation with what came before them.
As a historian of medieval Islam, I can say with confidence that everyone has always read the Qur'an and experienced God through the particularities of their lives, their times, and even region—women included. The women of medieval Islam I've studied were just as bold, openly challenging men, and just as certain of their right to stand before God as powerful, embodied believers. Public prayer led by a woman, too, had long been considered permissible before Dr. wadud led one. Legal scholars simply judged it too disturbing for the community (see Elewa and Silvers, "I Am One of the People"). But Muslims, too, have always produced people willing to disturb the community when the times required it.
And the times required it.
I sometimes try to explain to people what Islam in North America was like pre-9/11 and pre-wadud. Eyes pop. The grip of Wahhabism felt absolute. Neo-traditionalism arrived to displace it but had to go harder conservative to make that displacement work. Post-9/11, everything shook loose—we were reconsidering who we were as a community even as we faced a tsunami of Islamophobia in every part of our lives, one that hasn't subsided since. Questions about the role of women were suddenly live. Dr. Ingrid Mattson was working within ISNA to change things from the inside, playing a long game that demands respect. Hind Makki was running her Tumblr, Side Entrance, lovingly shaming mosques for their wretched women's prayer spaces. Michael Muhammad Knight had written The Taqwacores. Across the spectrum of Muslim life, there were multiple sites of remaking underway at once.
The famous prayer dropped into the middle of it.
Power shows how Dr. wadud entered this moment as a Black American woman who had come through a childhood marked by economic hardship and nourished faith; through the alienating opportunity of being a promising Black student sent to private white schools; through mentors like Barbara Smith; through the wreckage and repair of her own family history, her marriages, and the civil rights movement itself (I look forward to reviews that address these aspects, especially her place in Black American history).
Power's book gives us the political, religious, and personal history that made a woman a great leader. I'm quoted in it, calling Dr. wadud a mujaddid—a figure who revives and enlivens the religion for their time. Mujaddids can come from deep within the tradition, like al-Ghazali, or they can be controversial figures. Either way, the world is changed by them: everyone who comes after has to reckon with Islam anew in their wake—even those who come only in opposition.
Muslims may have seen wadud's daring to read the Qur'an from a woman's perspective and her choice to lead the prayer as a provocation against an unchanging tradition. But Power shows that tradition in Islam has always been responsive to its time and place. More than that, tradition moves with its inspired and devoted scholars, who carry the concerns of their day back into conversation with what came before them.
As a historian of medieval Islam, I can say with confidence that everyone has always read the Qur'an and experienced God through the particularities of their lives, their times, and even region—women included. The women of medieval Islam I've studied were just as bold, openly challenging men, and just as certain of their right to stand before God as powerful, embodied believers. Public prayer led by a woman, too, had long been considered permissible before Dr. wadud led one. Legal scholars simply judged it too disturbing for the community (see Elewa and Silvers, "I Am One of the People"). But Muslims, too, have always produced people willing to disturb the community when the times required it.
And the times required it.
I sometimes try to explain to people what Islam in North America was like pre-9/11 and pre-wadud. Eyes pop. The grip of Wahhabism felt absolute. Neo-traditionalism arrived to displace it but had to go harder conservative to make that displacement work. Post-9/11, everything shook loose—we were reconsidering who we were as a community even as we faced a tsunami of Islamophobia in every part of our lives, one that hasn't subsided since. Questions about the role of women were suddenly live. Dr. Ingrid Mattson was working within ISNA to change things from the inside, playing a long game that demands respect. Hind Makki was running her Tumblr, Side Entrance, lovingly shaming mosques for their wretched women's prayer spaces. Michael Muhammad Knight had written The Taqwacores. Across the spectrum of Muslim life, there were multiple sites of remaking underway at once.
The famous prayer dropped into the middle of it.
Power shows how Dr. wadud entered this moment as a Black American woman who had come through a childhood marked by economic hardship and nourished faith; through the alienating opportunity of being a promising Black student sent to private white schools; through mentors like Barbara Smith; through the wreckage and repair of her own family history, her marriages, and the civil rights movement itself (I look forward to reviews that address these aspects, especially her place in Black American history).
Power's book gives us the political, religious, and personal history that made a woman a great leader. I'm quoted in it, calling Dr. wadud a mujaddid—a figure who revives and enlivens the religion for their time. Mujaddids can come from deep within the tradition, like al-Ghazali, or they can be controversial figures. Either way, the world is changed by them: everyone who comes after has to reckon with Islam anew in their wake—even those who come only in opposition.
June 29, 2026
What a simply wonderful, wonderful book. The life and times of the truly heroic and inspiring amina wadud that through its empathy, imagination & expansiveness is the very opposite of the cruel, the cynical & the parochial that dominate the culture right now. The book has this radical openness - as it endeavours to share wadud’s vision with as many readers as it can - demonstrated, for me, by the contrast between my own life (so different to the elements of wadud’s biography) and my reading experience. Two examples of how the book creates this expansive quality - the use of photographs that (i felt) don’t simply ‘illustrate’ - but tell their own parallel story … and the break out moment just before the coda, when a number of those changed by their encounters with wadud are given the pages to relate their own experiences. This writing is optimistic, urgent, & speaks to this moment … important, in a word - so I can’t recommend it highly enough.
June 23, 2026
I have a vivid recollection of hearing about the controversy with wadud led a Jumu'ah service at St. John the Divine in 2005. I greedily read the small bits of coverage about that. I wanted to know about this woman, why she was the one do to what so many Muslim women had been waiting for.
And now, twenty-one years later, I am so happy to find the story of this fascinating human. For anyone who wants to understand amina wadud, this is truly a masterwork, but really, it's such a great read for anyone who likes biographies, and for people interested in religious thinkers (note I'm differentiating between religious people). I felt immersed in a life so different from my own and yet saw much to re
And now, twenty-one years later, I am so happy to find the story of this fascinating human. For anyone who wants to understand amina wadud, this is truly a masterwork, but really, it's such a great read for anyone who likes biographies, and for people interested in religious thinkers (note I'm differentiating between religious people). I felt immersed in a life so different from my own and yet saw much to re
July 13, 2026
This is the best non-fiction I've read in a long time: a layered, nuanced portrait that just sparkles on every page. Power's graceful and elegant writing is full of wisdom, empathy and insight. In her hands, amina wadud is complex and brilliant. This biography lets us get to know wadud on a totally human level, while also providing the big-picture context that helps us understand why her work and her voice are so important. Just the antidote we need to the racist, misogynistic, Islamophobic moment we are living through. What a life and what a stunning, shimmering telling of it. Highly recommend this absolutely absorbing read.
July 14, 2026
The Lady Imam is a fascinating and faithful account of the life and times of amina wadud, an American woman Muslim whose life experiences and revolutionary interpretations of the Quran deserve recognition. As revolutionary as Malcolm X. I learned so much reading this book, not just about about the experience of this young woman growing up in America and developing as an intellect and religious authority, but also long-standing Islamic teachings that are not in fact grounded in the Quran. A remarkable story sensitively told. You can always count on Carla Power’s clear prose, excellent reporting, contextual awareness, and humanity to deliver the goods!
June 30, 2026
If you love to keep an open mind and aren't afraid to adjust course in your own life, you need to read this biography of Amina Wadud. She champions justice, freedom, equality, and dignity for all marginalized groups across the globe from race to gender to faith. Unafraid to stand up to conservative patriarchal society, she inspires women and the LGBTQ+ community to follow suit in using their voices and finding the courage to exist in their own skin.
Thank you to Random House Books for this giveaway!
Thank you to Random House Books for this giveaway!
July 10, 2026
Do you want to be inspired by the courage of one of the world’s most remarkable intellectual and theological risk-takers? In The Lady Imam: How Amina Wadud's Life and Faith Changed the World, Carla Power delivers a masterful biography of amina wadud, whose ascent from an impoverished and neglectful childhood to becoming a global voice for feminist readings of Islamic scripture is nothing short of amazing. Her journey brought her infamy, exclusion, and heartbreak—but it also secured her an outsized impact on history. As a longtime follower of feminist thought, I’ve rarely encountered a book that complements and advances the pillars of the feminist canon from such a fresh and vital perspective. It is a fascinating, eye-opening read that will stay with me for a long time.
July 30, 2026
3.5 rounded up
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews