Musawah owes our beginning to Sisters in Islam, which itself started with a group of Muslim women who came together to read, to write, to organise, and to mobilise in order to address the injustices Malaysian women faced under the Shari’ah (Islamic law) system.

In 2009, some 250 activists, scholars, lawyers, journalists, policy makers and others from 47 countries gathered in Kuala Lumpur to bring together practitioners of cutting-edge activism and scholarship on Islam and women’s rights. The attendees agreed that what they had went beyond a meeting; it was a movement, and thus, Musawah (‘equality’ in Arabic), the global movement for equality and justice in the Muslim family, was launched.

Since then, Musawah has grown to include people working in their national, regional, and international contexts to bring about change. As co-founder Zainah Anwar said at the opening meeting:

““We were also clear from the start that we would not prescribe a model Muslim family law. That would be left to the groups at the national level to decide. What we wanted to provide were concepts, tools, and arguments that make equality and justice possible within the Muslim family.”