Dr. amina wadud pursued her personal love of the Qur’an all the way to a Ph.D from the University of Michigan in 1988. From there she joined the International Islamic University in Malaysia. While in Malaysia, she edited her dissertation and published Qur’an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective. Also, while in Malaysia she and a collective of 7 other women organized the first major pro-faith pro-feminist organization Sister in Islam (SIS) . SIS would inspire the network Musawah, a global movement for reform in Muslim Personal Status Law. Her second book: Inside the Gender Jihad: Women’s Reform in Islam was published in 2006.

She returned to the US to complete her tenure and finally promotion to Full Professor of Islamic Studies before taking early retirement and joining the Starr King School for the Ministry as Visiting Researcher. At that time she took up international consultancy work on Islam, justice and human dignity.