Zainab Alwani

Zainab Alwani is an American Islamic scholar and jurist of Iraqi origin, born in Baghdad in 1962. She is the Founding Director and first Associate Professor of Islamic Studies at Howard University School of Divinity, and the first female jurist to sit on the board of the Fiqh Council of North America, of which she is now Vice-Chair. ^{1 2}

Alwani was born in Baghdad in 1962, the daughter of the scholar Taha Jabir Alalwani. When she was seven her family was forced to flee Iraq, going first to Egypt and later to Saudi Arabia. As a young woman she studied at Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, and she received her PhD in Islamic jurisprudence (usul al-fiqh) from the International Islamic University Malaysia, with a dissertation on applying the higher aims of Islamic law (maqasid al-sharia) within the American Muslim family. ^{1 2}

At Howard University School of Divinity she chairs the Master of Arts in Religious Studies program, and she is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Islamic Faith and Practice. She is President and Chairwoman of the Glass Lamp Institute, a nonprofit devoted to connecting people with the Quran through tadabbur — deep reflection on its verses — and through it she runs an Orphan Care Project. Her books include a study of the objectives of sharia and the family (2013), Muslim Women and Global Challenges (2012), and the co-authored guide What Islam Says about Domestic Violence (2008). ^{1 2}

Her Arabic lecture series on tadabbur al-Quran, recorded for a training programme for Muslim women in 2022–2024, circulates through her own YouTube channel and lecture archives. ²