I think that we don't have, here in the Middle East or in Africa, as much threat to our physical and economic livelihood as women in other parts of the world. But the continuum is the same. The pressures on women to fit into a certain image of a good Muslim girl is the same. The controls and rules are the same, but there are different degrees of it. So, in America, a father will threaten a daughter that he will disown her if she marries the American boyfriend and in Pakistan she faces acid thrown on her face. The power dynamic is the same, it just expresses itself differently.

Personally I get so much of my inspiration from women in other countries, so I don't feel like American women are the leaders and I don't agree with the notion that Americans can accomplish more or do more. But I do think that what we can uniquely do here in America is mobilize and galvanize a lot of these ideas and resources. It's a war of ideas. We, Islamic women, are very well supported in this country by institutions, academic and nonprofit, that are already in the field endorsing women's rights and tolerance. The women in other communities have been the pioneers in this work.

When we think about Islamic feminism, it is not just about women's rights. It's about a more progressive and tolerant expression of Islam in the world for all people. Women's rights is one aspect of it, it's not the end-all, but I also think that the women's issue is the strongest entry point that we've got to challenging extremism. You raise a woman's issue and you get the backs of the conservatives up against the wall faster than just about any other issue in our community. It's the fastest path that we've got to making change happen.

What we argue in the piece is that the headscarf has become a political symbol for an ideology of Islam that is exported to the world by the theocracies of the governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia. Just like the Catholic Church in the 17th century did religious propaganda to challenge the Protestant Reformation, these ideologies are trying to define the way Muslims express Islam in the world.

There is a fundamental flaw in interpretations of sharia that say a woman or man should be punished for sex outside of marriage.

One of our greatest challenges here in America is that pogressives don't always stand with the progressive Muslims because in the interest of freedom of religion and civil liberties and political correctness, they don't want to offend cultural choices by Muslims. I know that people have gone to these interfaith sessions at different mosques and they see that the women end up in the basement, but they don't want to challenge anyone because they think, "Oh, well this is your way".

I was born in 1965. When I grew up in India, there was no expectation that a good Muslim woman wore the headscarf. But what happened when I came here to the U.S. and the emergence of the Saudi and Iranian theologies in the world is that the headscarf became the hijab and the hijab is now the idea that is synonymous with headscarf.