Asra Nomani

On November 11, 2016 on CNN, Nomani revealed that she voted for the Republican candidate Donald Trump, and adding that "liberals and the left have really betrayed America." After Donald Trump passed controversial Executive Order 13769, Nomani supported the decision and stated that referring to the executive order as a "Muslim ban" was a "propaganda campaign" to incite fear in the public.

In 2015 a group of Muslim activists, politicians, and writers issued a Declaration of Reform which, among other things, supports women's rights and states in part, "We support equal rights for women, including equal rights to inheritance, witness, work, mobility, personal law, education, and employment. Men and women have equal rights in mosques, boards, leadership and all spheres of society. We reject sexism and misogyny." The Declaration also announced the founding of the Muslim Reform Movement organization to work against the beliefs of Middle Eastern terror groups. In 2015 Nomani and others placed the Declaration on the door of the Islamic Center of Washington.

Nomani is the founder and creator of the "Muslim Women's Freedom Tour." She was a lead organizer of the woman-led Muslim prayer in New York City on March 18, 2005, which has been described as "the first mixed-gender prayer on record led by a Muslim woman in 1,400 years." Various mixed-gender prayers have been led privately by a Muslim woman, including a 1997 funeral prayer led by a South African Muslim feminist Shamima Shaikh.

Inspired by Michael Muhammad Knight's punk novel The Taqwacores, she organized the first public woman-led prayer of a mixed-gender congregation in the United States, with Amina Wadud leading the prayer. On that day, March 18, 2005, she stated:

Nomani is interviewed in a 2005 National Film Board of Canada documentary by Zarqa Nawaz about the efforts of North American Muslim women to be accepted in mosques, entitled Me and the Mosque.

Regarding the Morgantown mosque issue, Pakistani-American lawyer Asma Gull Hasan, author of Why I Am a Muslim: An American Odyssey, expressed admiration for Nomani, while West Virginia University professor Gamal Fahmy, who claimed that many Muslims believe women should be “isolated as much as possible” to reduce sexual temptation, criticized her and questioned her motives. Others suggest Nomani's woman-led prayer in 2005 led to open discussion and debate about the role of women in Muslim society. Representatives of some Islamic organizations have criticized Nomani on the Morgantown mosque issue, in part because she has openly criticized commonly accepted practices in the American-Muslim community, but also for not sufficiently interacting with longstanding Muslim communities.

In November 2003, Nomani became the first woman in her mosque in West Virginia to insist on the right to pray in the male-only main hall. Her effort brought front-page attention in a New York Times article entitled Muslim Women Seeking a Place in the Mosque.

In addition to her books, Nomani has expressed her experiences and ideas for reform in op-eds in The New York Times and in several other publications and broadcasts. She was a friend and colleague of The Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was staying with her in Karachi with his wife Mariane Pearl when he was abducted and later murdered by Islamic militants in January 2002.

Nomani was born in Bombay (now Mumbai), India to parents following Sunni Islam. When she was four years old, she moved to the United States with her older brother to join their parents in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Her father, Zafar Nomani, was earning a PhD at Rutgers University. When Nomani was ten, her family moved to Morgantown, West Virginia, where her father became an assistant professor of nutrition. Her father (cited as M.Z.A. Nomani) published studies on the health effects of fasting during Ramadan and also helped organize mosques in both New Jersey and West Virginia. Nomani received her B.A. in Liberal Studies from West Virginia University in 1986 and M.A. from American University in International Communications in 1990.

Asra Quratulain Nomani (born 1965) is an American author and former Georgetown University professor. She is co-director of the Pearl Project, a faculty-student, investigative-reporting project into the kidnapping and murder of her former colleague, The Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.