In this episode of How to Lead – 2025 Edition, Julia is joined by Zainah Anwar, a trailblazing feminist and human rights advocate whose decades of work have helped shift how women’s rights are understood and practised within Islamic legal and cultural frameworks. 

Best known for founding Sisters in Islam and now leading the global movement Musawah, Zainah speaks with striking honesty about the realities of leadership when your work is seen as both revolutionary and controversial. From pushing for legal reform to confronting deeply patriarchal religious narratives, she reflects on what it means to stay the course when change is slow, resistance is strong, and public silence can sometimes speak louder than protest.  

Zainah offers few guiding principles that shape her approach to leadership: 

Courage: Leadership isn’t the absence of fear. It’s the decision to keep showing up, even when it would be easier not to. 

Channelled outrage: Righteous anger alone won’t change a system. Progress demands patience, persistence, and the ability to transform frustration into constructive change. 

Strategic Legacy: Effective leadership means understanding power, timing, and consequence. Your leadership is only as meaningful as the leaders you raise behind you. 

Listen to this episode if you want to understand what it really takes to lead within, rather than against, complex systems. Zainah doesn’t just model resilience; she redefines what effective, enduring leadership can look like in 2025 and beyond. 

About the Guest:  

Zainah Anwar co-founded two ground-breaking women’s groups that engage with Islam from a rights perspective to promote equality and justice for women living in Muslim contexts. She co-founded Sisters in Islam in Malaysia in 1987 and Musawah, the global movement for equality and justice in the Muslim family, which was launched in 2009.  She now chairs its Board. Zainah has worked as a journalist, a researcher, a columnist, and a senior programme officer in the Political Affairs Division of the Commonwealth Secretariat. She has written numerous articles and given talks on Islam and women’s rights, political Islam, Malaysian politics and race relations.