At a community hall in Oxford, a crowd crunched on potato chips and sipped tea,...

At a community hall in Oxford, a crowd crunched on potato chips and sipped tea, while listening to a lecture by the leading Islamic feminist theologian, Amina Wadud. Wadud’s theme was language and gender in the Quran, but this discussion eventually led to a broader one: who has authority to interpret Islam? On this, the American scholar was adamant: any Muslim with an open Quran and an open mind. “What’s this about a specific class of people, the scholars, who can understand it?” she asked. “ By making it seem inaccessible, they create a mystique around it. But how does that jive with the Quran saying that it’s for everybody?”