ARTICLE: The First Muslim Believer

Spolier, it's a she, not a he.

Back in 2022, I went out and harassed a kindly professor working out of Connecticut to come and join us on History Hack. His name was Hossein Kamaly and he’d just written a book that I would never have gone looking for, but as soon as I saw it I became obsessed with it. It was called A History of Islam in 21 Women, and today, I want to introduce you to arguably the most important. Much love and thanks to my “Bedouin Husband” Mohammed, who talked me through lots of this article to keep me sensible. Come meet him in Jordan in March with us, he is lovely.

If you’re from the west, and you don’t travel much, you might have the impression that Muslim women the world over are downtrodden and silent, and that they spend their lives wishing for something else. I never will be an expert, but half my family is Muslim, and they are proud of it. The women I am related to range from lapsed, to casually practising, to very devout.

The sheer diversity of the Islamic experience is staggering. Generalising that Islamic women live oppressed lives is like saying that all Jews follow strict orthodox rules.

The Quran is as un-flawless as the bible, but it definitely does not encourage people to blow each up in defence of their ideology. The people who do that are twisting their religion to meet their own fundamentalist agenda, and guess what, they ain’t popular amongst their fellow Muslims.

But this isn’t an article to convert you, we’re just going to look at the world’s first Islamic believer. And yep, she was a woman.