Quote by Leila Ahmed: “The veil is not the issue. The issue is the right to choose.”

Whether a woman wears religious covering or not matters far less than whether she has freely chosen to. The debate about veiling often obscures the more fundamental question of women's autonomy. This moves the conversation from surface appearances to the deeper principle of freedom and self-determination.

Ahmed published Women and Gender in Islam in 1992, during the aftermath of the Gulf War and a period of intensifying Western scrutiny of Muslim societies. Debates about women's dress were often used as proxies for broader political arguments about Islam, modernisation, and cultural values.

Egyptian-American scholar and the first professor of women's studies in religion at Harvard Divinity School. Her 1992 book Women and Gender in Islam is a foundational academic text examining the history of gender in Islamic thought, and she received the National Book Award for her memoir A Border Passage.