---
title: "Female Imams and Women Scholars in Islam"
url: "https://reincarnatiopedia.com/en/female-imams-women-scholars-in-islam/"
date_published: "2026-10-03T00:26:49+00:00"
date_modified: "2026-10-03T00:26:49+00:00"
author: "Maris Dreshmanis"
language: "en-US"
site: "Reincarnatiopedia (https://reincarnatiopedia.com/en/)"
license: "© 2026 Reincarnatiopedia / Maris Dreshmanis. All rights reserved. Cite with a link to the source URL."
---

# Female Imams and Women Scholars in Islam

Can a woman be an imam? In mainstream Islamic law a woman may lead other women in prayer, and most classical jurists did not allow her to lead a mixed congregation — but that is only part of the story. Women were among the greatest transmitters of Islamic knowledge from the very first generation; a modern scholar has documented about ten thousand of them; in China, women imams have led women’s mosques for at least two centuries. This article is part of our guide to [women in religion](https://reincarnatiopedia.com/en/women-in-religion/).

## Can a woman be an imam?

A woman can lead a congregation of women; leading men is where opinions divide. Three of the four Sunni schools of law — the Shafi’i, Hanafi and Hanbali — permit a woman to lead women-only prayer (the Hanafis consider it disliked), while the Maliki school does not. Most classical jurists opposed a woman leading mixed prayer, but not all: al-Tabari (839–923), Abu Thawr (764–854), al-Muzani (791–878) and Ibn Arabi (1165–1240) are reported to have allowed it, at least for optional prayers. The Friday sermon (*khutba*) has traditionally been given by men.

### Umm Waraqa: the woman the Prophet appointed to lead prayer

The key text in this debate is the hadith of **Umm Waraqa**, a woman of Medina who had memorised the Qur’an. According to the hadith, the Prophet Muhammad appointed her to lead the prayer for the people of her household, and a muezzin, an old man, called the prayer for her. Scholars still argue about the meaning of the Arabic word for her “household” (*dar*) — her home, her neighbourhood or her village — and so about whether she led men as well as women.

## Female imams today

In 2005 the American scholar **Amina Wadud** led Friday prayer for a mixed congregation in New York; it made international headlines and sharp controversy, and she has continued to lead prayers in various countries since. In February 2016 **Sherin Khankan** founded the Mariam Mosque in Copenhagen with women imams. In 2017 the lawyer **Seyran Ateş** founded the Ibn Rushd-Goethe Mosque in Berlin, Germany’s first liberal mosque, where men and women pray together. In the United States, the Women’s Mosque of America in Los Angeles held its first Friday prayer, led and preached by women, on 30 January 2015. These remain minority initiatives; most Muslim communities keep the classical rules.

Judaism went through a similar debate about women’s authority. Read [female rabbis: from Asenath Barzani and Regina Jonas to today](https://reincarnatiopedia.com/en/female-rabbis/) →

## China’s women’s mosques (nüsi)

The oldest living tradition of women imams is not in the West but in China. Among the Hui Muslims, women’s mosques — *nüsi* — have existed for several hundred years in the provinces of Henan, Shanxi, Shaanxi and Hebei. They grew out of women’s religious schools at the end of the Ming and beginning of the Qing dynasty. The oldest surviving one, the Wangjia Hutong Women’s Mosque in Kaifeng, dates to 1820, and Kaifeng alone has sixteen women’s mosques. The women who lead them are called **nü ahong**, “women akhunds”: they lead women’s prayers, teach, and care for the community.

Women’s mosques also existed in the Maldives, where separate buildings for women were run by women of the community.

## Women scholars in Islam

Teaching religious knowledge was never closed to Muslim women. The Oxford scholar **Mohammad Akram Nadwi** spent years collecting the biographies of women who taught hadith, the sayings of the Prophet. His introduction, *Al-Muhaddithat: The Women Scholars in Islam*, appeared in English in 2007; the full biographical dictionary, *Al-Wafa bi Asma al-Nisa*, was published in 2021 in 43 volumes and covers about 10,000 women. Many of them taught men, and some of the most famous male scholars of Islam list women among their teachers ([Abou-Bakr, 2003](https://doi.org/10.1163/156920803322765155)).

### Aisha bint Abu Bakr

Aisha, the wife of the Prophet, is revered in Sunni Islam as one of the leading scholars of the first generation. She is credited with narrating more than 2,000 hadiths — about 2,210 in the classical count — covering not only the Prophet’s private life but law, ritual, inheritance, pilgrimage and theology. For 44 years after his death she taught companions and their students, and early scholars such as al-Zuhri praised her knowledge of law, poetry and medicine. In Shia Islam she is viewed critically because of her opposition to Ali.

### Fatima al-Samarqandi

Fatima al-Samarqandi was a twelfth-century Hanafi jurist in Central Asia and Syria. Her father, Muhammad al-Samarqandi, wrote the legal handbook *Tuhfat al-Fuqaha*; her husband, al-Kasani, wrote a celebrated commentary on it. According to the classical biographers, fatwas from that household were signed by all three, and when her husband erred in a ruling, she corrected him. She was an adviser to Nur al-Din, the ruler of Syria.

### Nana Asma’u

Nana Asma’u (1793–1864), daughter of Usman dan Fodio, founder of the Sokoto Caliphate in what is now northern Nigeria, was a poet, teacher and scholarly authority in four languages. She devoted herself above all to educating women and remains a revered figure in northern Nigeria.

### Fatima al-Fihri, founder of al-Qarawiyyin

In 857 or 859 Fatima al-Fihri, the daughter of a wealthy merchant, used her inheritance to found the al-Qarawiyyin mosque in Fez, Morocco. It grew into one of the leading centres of learning in the Islamic world and became the University of al-Qarawiyyin in 1963; UNESCO and Guinness World Records cite it as the oldest continuously operating institution of higher learning in the world.

### Morocco’s murshidat

In the mid-2000s Morocco began officially training women religious guides, *murshidat*, alongside male imams. They preach, teach and counsel in mosques, schools, prisons and hospitals, but do not lead mixed prayer. About fifty are trained each year.

## Women in Sufism

Sufism, the mystical path of Islam, gave women a voice through sainthood rather than office. The earliest Sufi biographies already include a separate book on women: *Dhikr al-niswa al-muta’abbidat al-sufiyyat* (“Remembrance of the devout Sufi women”) by al-Sulami (d. 1021). The most famous of them all is [Rabia al-Adawiya of Basra](https://reincarnatiopedia.com/en/rabia-al-adawiya/), who is credited with first teaching the love of God for His own sake, without fear of Hell or hope of Paradise. Centuries later, in Damascus, the Sufi master and poet A’isha al-Ba’uniyya (d. 1517) wrote so much that a modern scholar judged she “probably composed more works in Arabic than any other woman prior to the twentieth century”.

Who was Rabia, and why do Muslims, Christians and poets still quote her? → [Rabia al-Adawiya (Rabia Basri)](https://reincarnatiopedia.com/en/rabia-al-adawiya/)

## Islam and reincarnation

Mainstream Sunni and Shia Islam teach one earthly life followed by resurrection, and reject the transmigration of souls (*tanasukh*). Rebirth appears only at the edges of the Islamic world — in some esoteric groups and, most clearly, among the **Druze**, a community that grew out of Ismaili Islam in the eleventh century but does not regard itself as Muslim. For the Druze reincarnation is a central principle: the soul passes into a new human body at the moment of death, and a woman’s soul is always reborn as a woman. Children who speak of a previous life among the Druze of Lebanon were studied by Ian Stevenson — see [the reincarnation research of Dr Ian Stevenson](https://reincarnatiopedia.com/en/the-reincarnation-research-of-dr-ian-stevenson/) and our overview of [reincarnation beliefs across world religions](https://reincarnatiopedia.com/en/reincarnation-beliefs-across-world-religions-and-cultures/).

And in Buddhism, where rebirth is the foundation? → [Women in Buddhism: bhikkhunis, female lamas and Tara](https://reincarnatiopedia.com/en/women-in-buddhism/)

## Frequently asked questions

### Can a woman lead prayer in Islam?

Yes, for other women, according to three of the four Sunni schools. Leading a mixed congregation is rejected by most classical jurists, though a minority, citing the hadith of Umm Waraqa, allowed it.

### Who was the first female imam?

Umm Waraqa, appointed by the Prophet to lead the prayer of her household, is often called the first. In modern times, the nü ahong of China have led women’s mosques since at least 1820.

### Were there female scholars in Islam?

Thousands. Akram Nadwi’s dictionary lists about 10,000 women who taught hadith, from Aisha in the seventh century to the modern era.

### What is a murshida?

A woman religious guide. In Morocco the state trains murshidat to preach and counsel; in Sufi orders a murshida is a woman spiritual guide.

More in this series: [female prophets in the Bible](https://reincarnatiopedia.com/en/female-prophets-in-the-bible/), [can women be priests?](https://reincarnatiopedia.com/en/can-women-be-priests/), [women who founded religions](https://reincarnatiopedia.com/en/women-who-founded-religions/). All topics: [Women in Religion](https://reincarnatiopedia.com/en/women-in-religion/).

## Sources

1. Mohammad Akram Nadwi. *Al-Muhaddithat: The Women Scholars in Islam*. Oxford: Interface Publications, 2007.
2. Mohammad Akram Nadwi. *Al-Wafa bi Asma al-Nisa*, 43 vols. Jeddah: Dar al-Minhaj, 2021.
3. Maria Jaschok and Shui Jingjun. *The History of Women’s Mosques in Chinese Islam: A Mosque of Their Own*. Curzon, 2000. doi:[10.4324/9781315028316](https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315028316)
4. Abu Dawud, *Sunan*, hadith of Umm Waraqa (Book of Prayer).
5. Amina Wadud. *Inside the Gender Jihad: Women’s Reform in Islam*. Oneworld, 2006.
6. Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami. *Early Sufi Women*, trans. Rkia Elaroui Cornell. Fons Vitae, 1999.
7. Jean Boyd. *The Caliph’s Sister: Nana Asma’u, 1793–1865*. Frank Cass, 1989.
8. Omaima Abou-Bakr. “Teaching the Words of the Prophet: Women Instructors of the Hadith (Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries)”. *Hawwa* 1(3), 2003, 306–328. doi:[10.1163/156920803322765155](https://doi.org/10.1163/156920803322765155)
9. Meriem El Haitami. “Restructuring Female Religious Authority: State-Sponsored Women Religious Guides (Murshidat) and Scholars (’Alimat) in Contemporary Morocco”. *Mediterranean Studies* 20(2), 2012, 227–240. doi:[10.5325/mediterraneanstu.20.2.0227](https://doi.org/10.5325/mediterraneanstu.20.2.0227)
10. Hilary Kalmbach. “Female Mosque Leadership and Islamic Authority in Syria and Further Afield”. *Travail, genre et sociétés* 27, 2012, 73–89. doi:[10.3917/tgs.027.0073](https://doi.org/10.3917/tgs.027.0073)

---

Source: [Female Imams and Women Scholars in Islam](https://reincarnatiopedia.com/en/female-imams-women-scholars-in-islam/) — Reincarnatiopedia, Maris Dreshmanis. License: © 2026 Reincarnatiopedia / Maris Dreshmanis. All rights reserved. Cite with a link to the source URL.