M. Hasna Maznavi

1. Hasna Maznavi is the president and founder of the first Women's Mosque of America America. The women's mosque is an effort to give Muslim women a more prominent place in the mosque community. The women's mosque had precedents in other countries in Muslim-majority nations and elsewhere, but this is the first such space in the United States. Maznavi was inspired by her own study of Islamic history and concerns about female Muslim participation to establish the mosque, which sets a precedent for women's leadership in American Islam.

Housed in a former synagogue and interfaith women's space in downtown Los Angeles, the mosque is led by women. The call to prayer, speeches on Islamic scholarship, taught Quran classes, and Friday sermon all come from women. The mosque permits men at some activities but is led by women and has discussions and classes dedicated to their concerns. The women's mosque represents the development of the Muslim community in America both internally and externally. Muslim women in the Islamic heartland do not attend mosques regularly, so American mosques established by new immigrant Muslims were sometimes ill-equipped to accommodate the needs of Muslim women in America. The mosque also sought to counter a stereotype of Muslim women as having no leadership roles in their faith.

After the mosque was founded, Maznavi published an article in the Huffington Post to explain the motivation for her work with the women's mosque. She tried to counter the image that the women's mosque represented a rebellion against both Muslim men and Islamic history. She wrote to clarify that the women's mosque was not a rebellion against the men of the Islamic faith and that Muslim men were involved and supportive of her work.

She is a filmmaker and comedy writer, and she received an MFA in Film and TV Production from the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts and a BA in Art and Mass Communications from UC Berkeley.