Leila Ahmed

Leila Ahmed (pronunciation: /ˈliːlə/ /ˈɑːh.mɛd/) (born 1940; Arabic: لیلى أحمد‎‎) is an Egyptian American writer on Islam and Islamic feminism. She 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. In 2013, Ahmed received the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion for her analysis of the "veiling" of Muslim women in the United States.

Born in the Heliopolis district of Cairo to a middle-class Egyptian father and an upper class Turkish mother in 1940, Ahmed's childhood was shaped both by Muslim Egyptian values and the liberal orientation of Egypt's aristocracy under the ancien régime. After Egypt's last ruling monarch was overthrown by the Free Officers Movement in 1952, life for Ahmed's family along with others in her milieu was irrevocably changed. Her father, a civil engineer, was a strong opponent of Gamal Abdel Nasser's construction of the Aswan High Dam on ecological principles. This earned him the wrath of the ruling regime for years to follow and had detrimental effects on the family.

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