SISTERS IN ISLAM (SIS FORUM (MALAYSIA)): HISTORY, MISSION, FOUNDERS

SISTERS OF ISLAM

Sister in Islam homepage picture sistersinislam.org

Sisters in Islam was founded in 1988 by Zaniah Anwar. It brought together Malaysian women interested in studying the Qu'ran and motivated to fight the discrimination and oppression women experience in the name of Islam."We grew up with the idea that Islam was the right religion," Zaniah told AsiaNews. "But as adults we faced the fact that Islam was not just." However, instead of rejecting the religion altogether, Zaniah and her fellow activists have chosen to study the Holy Scriptures and Islamic tradition to find out what they actually said about the relationship between men and women. [Source: AsiaNews, November 6, 2004]

AsiaNews reported: “Sisters in Islam emerged at a time when Malaysians were debating a bill on domestic violence. The group found itself at the opposite end of the debating against Pusat Islam (a conservative Muslim group) which supported the right of men to beat their wives. As part of the campaign against domestic violence, Sisters in Islam published a book titled Does Islam allow a husband to physically beat or mentally harass his wife?

Next, the group turned to polygamy and marriage law. It found that whilst the Qu'ran gave men the right to take more than one wife, it also impose precise conditions for this. In Surah An Nisa (chapter 'The Women'), ayat (verse) 4:3, it is written: "if you fear you cannot deal justly (with your wives), marry only one (wife)".

According to Ms Z. Anwar, "the issue of polygamy is not only about religion but about how the Qu'ran is interpreted". "How is it that in five years of religious school, this verse was never brought to our attention", she asks. "How is it possible that I thought that men had the right to marry four women when in fact God said that men could take only one wife if they feared they could not deal justly with the other?" As for the ongoing debate about Malaysia' status as an Islamic state, Zaniah Anwar is clear: "We are not an Islamic state and I do not think that we should ideologically be one. We should rather be a country based on the principles of justice."

Zainah Anwar

Zainah Anwar, Sisters in IslamCo-Founder

According to the Carter Center, the NGO started by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, “Advocating women's rights based on the teachings of the Qur'an may seem like a recipe for disaster to some. But for Malaysia's leading feminist, the sacred text of Islam is far from a source of repression – it is her most powerful asset. Zainah Anwar has long argued that Muslim practices oppressive to women are a perversion of the true word of God, instigated by men intent on maintaining their privileged position in society. "I'm outraged that my religion is distorted and used to justify patriarchy and the discrimination and oppression of women," she says. [Source: The Carter Center, August 2007 ||||]

“With revisionist mullahs resurgent in Muslim politics around the world, the stakes for strengthening a feminist discourse that can protect women's rights are high. By locating the ideological basis for sexual equality within the same religious fountainhead that inspires Islamic chauvinism, Ms. Zainah cannot easily be dismissed as just another Western-inspired radical with little relevance to local culture.” ||||

Jane Perlez write in the New York Times, “Sometimes it seems that Zainah Anwar — articulate, a little brassy, a presence wherever she goes — single-handedly keeps the flame for women's rights alive in Malaysia, a country that portrays itself as the model of a progressive Muslim society. Ms. Zainah, one of her nation's best known figures, is a founder of Sisters in Islam, sassily known as SIS, which has for nearly 20 years lobbied for justice for women, always within the framework of Islam and the words of the Koran. In doing so, her group confronts the conundrum that is Malaysia: a relatively prosperous, politically stable nation of 24 million yet one where powerful Islamic Affairs Departments in the 13 states and a federal jurisdiction that includes the capital, Kuala Lumpur, run Shariah courts that administer Islamic affairs, including matters of marriage, divorce and death. [Source: Jane Perlez, New York Times, February 19, 2006]

"I want an Islam that upholds the principles of justice, equality, freedom and dignity," Anwar told the New York Times. "There is nothing contradictory between wanting these principles to guide and govern your life and being a good Muslim...A model progressive Muslim country cannot show the world that it makes laws that discriminate against women and that allows its religious authorities to snatch away the body of a dead man from his grieving Hindu family."

Life and Mission of Zainah Anwar

According to the Carter Center, Anwar “was raised in a moderate Muslim environment that emphasized equality between the sexes and was shocked to find that fundamentalist imams thought of women as little more than helpmates with no identity outside of an appendage to their husbands, brothers, or fathers. "To become an adult and be confronted with a religion that is contradictory to my understanding and practice of religion, that totally contradicts what I believe in a just God and a just Islam, was outrageous to me," she says.[Source: The Carter Center, August 2007 ||||]

“So Ms. Zainah decided to do something about it. She set up in 1988 a group called Sisters in Islam (SIS), which petitions the government to reform sexist laws, organizes national and transnational conferences, runs training programs and a legal clinic for women, and comments on topical issues in the local press between three and four times a week. Its methodology? Revisiting the original teachings of the Qur'an to show that there is no basis in Islam for viewing women as inferior to men. ||||

Sisters in Islam logo

“Malaysia always has been considered a moderate Islamic society due to its social diversity. But once the political streak began to take hold in local mosques, "it negated this pluralism … and instead imposed on us a very alien understanding and practice of Islam that we feel do not serve the best interests of this plural country," says Ms. Zainah. "A bunch of us decided that it's really important to find out whether our religion is oppressive toward women, because that's not how we've been brought up o understand Islam." ||||

Jane Perlez writes: Zainah "holds some formidable cards. Chief among them are candor, not caring what others think and a refusal to be intimidated. She has not married, and said, "I don't want to be a slave to a man." Another advantage: Ms. Zainah is close to two progressive women with powerful connections, Marina Mahathir, the daughter of the former prime minister, and Nori Abdullah, the daughter of the current prime minister. "He gets an earful from her," Ms. Zainah said, referring to Mr. Abdullah and his daughter. [Source: Jane Perlez, New York Times, February 19, 2006]

Work of Zainah Anwar and the Sisters in Islam

"Sisters in Islam is performing a very vital function in educating women about their basic rights," says Asma Barlas, an expert on comparative politics, Islamic texts, and gender at Ithaca College. "People like Ms. Zainah are trying to get Muslim women to rethink their relationship to religion in an idiom that is relevant to them," she says.

According to the Carter Center, “Rather than adopting alien concepts of feminism from the West, SIS bases its message of equality on the original teachings of the Qur'an. The group runs study sessions on the holy text pointing out the many passages that support an equal role for men and women in Muslim society. "In Islam, everyone is treated equally, and no one comes before the other, and certainly nobody comes from anybody's broken rib. Creation is always spoken of in the Qur'an in terms of pairs – both are created equal and both are created at the same time, and one is not the derivative of the other," she says.[Source: The Carter Center, August 2007 ||||]

“But the battle remains an uphill one. Islamic law has recently helped underpin efforts in Malaysia to thwart domestic violence legislation, restrict women's property rights, and make polygamy and divorce easier for men. Despite many women being more highly educated than men and financially independent, women are increasingly being told that they are inferior. ||||

“Such statements fly in the face of reality and present Malaysian women with a dilemma in terms of how they relate to their faith, says Ms. Zainah. "The choice before us is: Do we accept what these kinds of mullahs are saying, or if we want to be a feminist, do we then reject our religion?" she asks. "For us, that is not a choice. Rejecting our religion in order to become a feminist is just not a choice. We want to be feminists, and we want to be Muslim as well." ||||

In 2006, Jane Perlez wrote in the New York Times, Islamic authorities in Malaysia ordered that a well-known Malaysian Hindu be buried as a Muslim, against the wishes of his wife. With the acid touch that has made her an accomplished campaigner, Ms. Zainah calls the officials in the government religious departments "those Taliban-minded bureaucrats." Then skittering back from the precipice of real trouble, she notes tat nearly 50 percent of Malaysian women work, some in top jobs, including the governor of the Central Bank. [Source: Jane Perlez, New York Times, February 19, 2006]

“In her latest victory, Ms. Zainah forced the government to step back from amendments to the family law that made it easier for men to practice polygamy and to divorce. Her group fought the amendments not only because they represented a backward step, but also because the governing party of Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi insisted that the women in the Senate who personally opposed the new amendments vote in their favor. "Senators were told to vote against their conscience," said Ms. Zainah, 51, who attended graduate school in the United States. "Can you imagine, in the debate, one minister apologized to her daughter for having to vote with the party whips. She was in tears."

“The Parliament passed the amendments just before the end of the year, and Ms. Zainah began a strong opposition campaign that was covered in the news media. In mid-January, the government announced that the cabinet would review the measures. Ms. Zainah and members of other women's groups and the bar association were invited to join a broad commission to find a compromise. "The cabinet ordered the attorney general — and not the religious department — to find solutions," she said triumphantly. "They recognized that the religious department and its obscurantist apparatchiks are the source of the problem." It was the first time, she said, that the forces of progress were sitting in the same room "on equal terms" with Islamic clerics and scholars. As satisfying as the win might be, it illustrated the extent of the opposition Ms. Zainah and her supporters still face.

Growing International Influence of Sisters in Islam

According to the Carter Center, “While SIS has a high profile in Malaysia, the group also has growing international clout due to its role in creating transnational networks on women's rights. "They are at the forefront of study not just in their own country but also within Muslim majority society in looking at how we define the role of women vis-à-vis Islam," says Rakhee Goyal, executive director of the Women's Learning Partnership, a U.S.-based non-governmental organization that works with Muslim women abroad. [Source: The Carter Center, August 2007 ||||]

“SIS has recently collaborated with activists from the Maghreb on the issue of reforming family law in Muslim nations, for instance. This work steps outside of the normal focus on religious law to include arguments based on sociological concepts, human rights, and legal and constitutional law. SIS is using the model of regional cooperation taking shape in the Maghreb to put together a coalition of Indonesian, Filipino, Singaporean, and Malaysian activists working on women's rights within an Islamic context in Southeast Asia. ||||

"There is a whole diversity of opinions, a diversity of interpretation, a diversity of laws – this rich diversity that is part of the Muslim heritage provides us with an incredibly rich source of information, scholarship, and opinion that we can work with to promote our belief in an Islam that upholds the principles of justice and equality, of freedom and dignity," says Ms. Zainah. ||||

Jane Perlez wrote in the New York Times in 2006, “At the end of a conference here on Islam and the West organized by New York University and the Malaysian government, the former president of Iran, Mohammad Khatami, asked to see Ms. Zainah and her colleagues. What did she think of Mr. Khatami? "He failed to deliver," she said after their encounter. "When you govern in the name of Islam and fail to deliver on the aspirations of the people, Islam is seen to have failed. You bring disrepute to the religion. They found out Islam does not, after all, have the answers."[Source: Jane Perlez, New York Times, February 19, 2006]

Sisters in Islam Keeps Its Distance from the West

According to the Carter Center, “One thing SIS does not want to be is too closely associated with Western ideals or organizations. There is a tendency in the United States, for example, to try to promote the views of moderate Muslim groups in an effort to counter the influence of more radical organizations. But overt support by Western groups is actually counterproductive because it undermines the local authenticity of moderate movements in the eyes of the public, says Ms. Zainah. [Source: The Carter Center, August 2007 ||||]

In 2006, “the RAND Corporation produced a monograph called Building Moderate Muslim Networks that mentioned SIS in a positive light. Ms. Zainah says the report, while well-intentioned, was both shortsighted and unwelcome. "That (kind of support) doesn't help because those who are not familiar with our work see us as the kind of group that the West wants to develop in Muslim countries. We are not a product of the West; we are a product of our own society and the challenges that we face within our own society," she says. ||||

“Campaigns in Muslim nations to promote women's rights run a real risk of being de-legitimized as "Western-inspired movements about bra-burning, topless people that we have no understanding of and are not at all rooted in local culture," says Ms. Goyal. Other experts on the topic agree. "Being too closely associated with the West can be a kiss of death to groups operating in the Muslim world," says professor Barlas. Trust among the local population can easily be lost, and in the worst-case scenario, groups can become the target of political repression. "This is particularly evident in Iran right now," she says. ||||

“Rather than picking and choosing the "good Muslims" from the "bad Muslims," Ms. Zainah says one way for the West to play a productive role is to encourage comprehensive scholarly inquiry into the Islamic canon by developing stronger transnational links between universities. She says some of the best work by Muslim scholars is occurring at colleges in the United States and Europe, and these researchers need to be given a platform to speak in places like Malaysia where moderate Islam is under threat. "The scholarship that is emerging in the West now is extremely important, and to expose that scholarship, that new thinking, to Muslims in Muslim countries is important." ||||

“The key to protecting women's rights and other civil liberties in the face of a defensive and hostile Islamic establishment is being able to preserve a public space for all voices to be heard. The United States and Europe often criticize nations such as Malaysia for backsliding on basic rights, but "it's a bit rich for Western governments to expect Islam to be democratic, to respect fundamental liberties within a political context that is not democratic but despotic," she says. "Without that democratic space, you cannot have a democratic Islam, you cannot have an Islam that recognizes justice and equality and freedom and dignity." ||||

Sisters in Islam (SIS) Changes Its name to SIS Forum (Malaysia)

Sisters in Islam (SIS) officially changed its name to SIS Forum (Malaysia), after the Sultan of Selangor advised the organization to stop using the word “Islam” in its public identity. The change, finalized on July 11, 2025, was intended to resolve a long-running dispute over the group’s legal status and prevent confusion among the Muslim community. The organization also announced that it would no longer use “Sisters in Islam” in publications or on public platforms.

The move followed comments by Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah, who expressed concern over the use of the word “Islam” by the group amid debates surrounding its interpretations of Islamic law. The issue was linked to a 2014 fatwa that described the organization as promoting “liberal” ideologies. In 2025, a Federal Court ruling determined that the fatwa could not be applied to the organization itself, prompting renewed discussion over the group’s role and name.

Despite the rebranding, SIS Forum (Malaysia) said its mission remains unchanged. The organization stated that it would continue advocating for gender equality, justice, and women’s rights within the framework of Islamic family law. Its leadership also expressed hope that the name change would allow its programs, including Telenisa, which provides free legal advice and counseling, to continue operating without further controversy.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: “Encyclopedia of World Cultures Volume 5: East/Southeast Asia:” edited by Paul Hockings; 1993; New York Times; Washington Post; Los Angeles Times; Smithsonian magazine; Encyclopedia.com; National Geographic; Live Science; Malaysia Tourism websites; Malaysia government websites; UNESCO; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Natural History magazine; Times of London; Library of Congress; The Conversation; The New Yorker; Time; BBC; CNN; Reuters; Associated Press; AFP; Lonely Planet Guides; Google AI; Wikipedia; The Guardian and various websites; books and other publications.

Last updated May 2026