At Work With: Sherin Khankan

“Magical things happen when you are in a room that’s exclusively for women.”

When Sherin Khankan established the first female-led mosque in Scandinavia, she was celebrated in the mainstream press for being a feminist activist in addition to being its imam. Khankan, however, makes it refreshingly clear that the two roles are one and the same. An Islamic scholar, she is an expert on the ancient primary source texts that swat away today’s patriarchal interpretations of institutional Islamic thought. “At the time of the Prophet, women were warriors. They were teachers. And, of course, they were imams,” she says. Khankan is a steadfast community activist (she founded Exitcirclen, an organization for psychologically abused women), humble in her roots (“My father’s homemade shawarma is the only shawarma I like”) and a lifelong academic. In August, she will...