Ani Zonneveld and the Moral Work of Muslims for Progressive Values
On a clear evening in Los Angeles, Ani Zonneveld can look out from her home in the Hollywood Hills and see the city set back behind a menagerie of trees — a “lush forest” she calls it — that grants her soul a moment’s rest.
It is here, she said, that she is able to reset. When the news headlines become too much, when hate mail pings in the inbox, when a certain sadness overcomes her, she finds peace among animals, plants, and the rhythm of the natural world.
In this way, and more, Zonneveld’s spirituality is not ritualistic in the conventional sense. “I don’t pray five times a day,” she said. “My ritual is everything I do and say affirming and lifting up humanity. That’s my spiritual compass.”
That compass has guided nearly two decades of work at the helm of Muslims for Progressive Values (MPV), an organization Zonneveld co-founded in 2007 to challenge what she sees as a profound rupture between Islam’s ethical core and some of its contemporary expressions.
At stake, Zonneveld said, is not simply a matter of theological interpretation and application for the world’s 2 billion Muslims, but the possibility of a more humane public life for all — one in which sacred traditions like Islam contribute to healing rather than exacerbating the world’s pain and polarization.
The story of MPV is, in many ways, a story about moral imagination, about how religious language can be reclaimed to expand human dignity, how spiritual formation can reshape civic belonging, and how those advocating for reform must navigate pushback, internal tensions, and a certain amount of holy risk.
A Crisis Within
For Zonneveld, the turning point came in the years following 9/11, when Islam was simultaneously hyper-visible and deeply misunderstood. More and more people were encountering Islam in the media, but in a way that misconstrued the faith and fostered division and hate.
But Zonneveld’s reckoning was not only with external Islamophobia. It was even more so an internal process of rediscovery, wherein she had to wrestle with the crisis within and among Muslims as much as the crisis without in society at large.
In particular, reading The Veil and the Male Elite, by Moroccan feminist Fatima Mernissi, revolutionized the way she thought about Islam.
Mernissi employed a feminist take on women’s rights that opened a new interpretive lens on the tradition Zonneveld felt she knew: one that foregrounded gender equality and challenged centuries of patriarchal assertions and accretions.
Something stirred within her as she read Mernissi’s missives on recovering Muhammad’s dream of a sacred tradition wherein its adherents “question everything and everybody” and reclaim their faith as a “religion of reasoning, responsible individuals capable of telling what was true from what was false as long as they were well equipped to do so, as long as they possessed the tools of knowledge” available to them.
Returning to the Quran with that prism in place, Zonneveld encountered what she describes as a radically different form of her faith than the one she saw practiced in many communities. “There was such a disconnect between the teachings and what reality is these days for millions of Muslims,” she said.
That disconnect, she argued, is intentional and systemic.
Across both Muslim-majority societies and diaspora communities, patriarchal interpretations, colonial influences, and applications that favor the few over the whole have calcified into accepted norms — by Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
Whether it’s forced marriages, restrictions on women’s mobility, the criminalization of apostasy, gender-based violence, or widespread hostility toward LGBTQ+ Muslims, such things have no place in the Islam Zonneveld knows and loves.
“These are often justified in the language of religion, even when they contradict both the Quran and the example of the Prophet Muhammad,” she said, citing verses about there being “no compulsion in religion” (2:256) or traditions reporting the Prophet’s conduct with women or his encouragement of women to engage in commerce, travel for pilgrimage, and take an active role in mosque life.
Sofia Tsourlaki, who researches global Islam’s progressive and feminist movements, situates this problem within a longer historical trajectory. “Teachings of so many centuries have corrupted the message of the Quran,” she said, describing a tradition shaped by elite male authority, often typified by a “macho, white, or as white as possible, rich man.”
The result is an internal hierarchy that marginalizes not only women and queer Muslims but also Black Muslims and converts communities of all kinds.
What complicates matters further is that many Muslims primarily experience Islam as a defensive identification in environments often hostile to the public practice of their faith. Public narratives shaped by anti-Muslim rhetoric, even if they sound like calls for women’s rights or appear in defense of queer communities within Muslim-majority contexts, often overshadow internal conversations and critiques among Muslims, Tsourlaki said. “Less people talk about what is happening between us,” Tsourlaki said, underscoring both how deep and wide global Islamic tradition is and has been.
When religion is mobilized to justify exclusion, Tsourlaki said, it reinforces broader patterns of polarization, hardening boundaries between “Us” and “Them.” There is a need, given the internal debates and living tradition of the Islamic approach to the sacred, Tsourlaki said, to move beyond views of “good Muslims” and “bad Muslims,” faithful and deviant, or between tradition and change by insiders.
Otherwise, the result is the same, with minorities within Muslim communities framed as the “Other” or, at worst, as falling outside the community of the faithful.
The Three Stages of Reform
Noor Shabaan, a mentee of Zonneveld’s and young MPV leader who officiates Muslim marriages (nikah), frames this dilemma as a broader moral and spiritual crisis for both Muslims and non-Muslims.
“Interpretation can either be used to justify exclusion and discrimination, or it can become a tool for empowerment,” she said. In an era marked by loneliness, distrust, and fragmentation, the stakes are high for Shabaan, as religion can deepen division or help repair it.
MPV’s response has been to not work outside the sacred, but through it. The organization’s central premise is that Islam, properly understood, is inherently aligned with human dignity, justice, and equality and that reclaiming this vision requires both fresh interpretations of tradition and a certain amount of institutional innovation.
From the beginning, MPV has focused on translating scholarly insights like that of Mernissi and other Islamic feminists into accessible language for the masses. While it does not position itself as a scholarly authority, Zonneveld views MPV as a bridge between intellectual currents and everyday believers.
Tsourlaki described this as the second stage of reform. If the first stage involves knowledge production by scholars themselves and the third stage the embodiment of progressive principles in the lives of everyday believers, then organizations like MPV can help move the process along toward public engagement through activism, social media, and community-building.
“You have to speak a language that resonates with the audience you are trying to bring along,” Zonneveld said. Purely secular human rights discourses, she argues, often fail to persuade those embedded in sacred frameworks where they find meaning, guidance, and community. By contrast, reinterpreting Islamic texts from within can have transformative effects for individuals’ everyday lives.
To effect that change, MPV works with local imams and ulema — scholars who act as guardians, transmitters, and interpreters of religious knowledge — to put on workshops focused on universal human rights, gender equality, and LGBTQ+ inclusion within an Islamic context. Their educational programming, such as their Progressive Islam Curriculums, addresses social justice, inclusive theology, and critical discussions around the history and misuse of Islamic tradition.
Zonneveld recounted workshops in rural communities where young women, long taught that the Quran justified domestic or gender-based violence, are given the chance to encounter an alternative reading. For example, during MPV’s workshops they revisit the meaning of the word daraba in Surah An-Nisa (4:34), discussing how the word in question is often translated as “to beat” (in reference to the female spouse) but can mean to “separate” or take time apart. “That one example,” Zonneveld said, “opens their eyes, awakening them to a whole range of possibilities” to see the Quran — and their faith as a whole — anew and to thus live a life of greater dignity.
Shabaan echoes this emphasis on spiritually grounded reform from within. “When religion is approached through empathy, reflection, and humanity rather than rigidity, it has the potential to create meaningful social change,” she said.
Crucially, this does not require abandoning tradition but reinterpreting it in ways that center compassion and justice.
MPV’s work extends beyond interpretation into concrete practices that model an alternative Muslim public life. The organization conducts interfaith marriages without requiring conversion, supports LGBTQ+ Muslims with mental health resources, and promotes women’s leadership in religious spaces. It has developed curricula for children, created English-language devotional music, and built networks among Muslim artists and creatives.
Each initiative, Zonneveld said, is like “another brick,” building toward a larger effort to construct an inclusive, culturally rooted Muslim identity that also speaks to lived realities in the modern world.
More than theory, Zonneveld dreams of a physical place that can embody these principles and house such workshops. Her ambitious vision is to open a cultural center in Los Angeles – perhaps in the next three-to-five years – that would serve as a hub for sacred devotion, art, education, and community life. “Not a mosque,” she clarified, but something more and beyond — a space where spirituality and creativity intersect.
Such a vision aligns with broader shifts in U.S. religious life. As traditional institutions undergo demographic change, many people are seeking forms of spirituality that are less rigid and more inclusive. Zonneveld sees an opportunity here to help Americans attune to the sacred as they address the challenges of the 21st-century.
Shabaan said that by creating spaces where people can engage with religion “in a more humane and inclusive way,” organizations like MPV help rebuild trust and foster belonging, two elements often missing in contemporary civic culture.
Thus, “anchored in goodness and spiritual justice,” Zonneveld said she can envision a future where their work not only helps reform Muslim life, but shared public life more broadly.
Ready for Reform? Well…it Depends
One of the challenges to enact such futures lies in that third stage: to see lay believers actually embodying the principles and teachings of progressive intellectual currents like that offered by MPV.
Tsourlaki’s own research reveals a complex and uneven reception of progressive Islamic ideals that varies across gender, geography, and lived experience. Rather than a simple divide between acceptance and rejection, Tsourlaki found what might be called “conditional openness,” wherein most Muslims she spoke with are willing to entertain reformist ideas — but only up to a point.
“No one is ever 100 percent on board,” she said. “There’s always a threshold, people will go so far, and then stop, before they really start materializing these ideals in their daily lives.”
In her interviews across the globe, gender emerged as the most significant fault line, with male respondents generally more resistant. Even when engaging with progressive platforms such as MPV, their interest was often narrow or fleeting, sometimes reduced to a single issue, like LGBTQ+ inclusion, before disengagement.
Above all, Tsourlaki said, geography — and by extension the cultures that arise from place and context — played the biggest role in determining male responses. She would find almost uniform resistance in certain corners of the globe, often shaped by local religious authority, and general openness in other contexts.
Women, by contrast, showed greater familiarity with and openness to progressive Islamic thought, regardless of geography or cultural background. Even among women who identified as Salafi — a conservative revivalist movement among Sunnis — and who expressed ideological opposition to feminism, many acknowledged that the reforms proposed by groups like MPV would materially improve their, and other women’s, lives.
In other words, they resisted progressive Islam intellectually while conceding its practical benefits.
Motherhood proved to be a key factor, whether in South Asia or North Africa. Married or divorced, women with children were the most likely to support reform, suggesting that lived responsibilities sharpened their awareness of the structural inequities that existed within their religious communities.
The divide between intellectual resistance and practical agreement can be further distorted by a reliance on online activism, Tsourlaki suggested. By flattening complex theological and social debates for online consumption, such efforts can sometimes misrepresent the cause they set out to champion. “Online activism, for all its good, simplifies and frames things in ways that don’t reflect how people actually think on the ground,” she said.
Taken together, the research challenges the idea of a monolithic “Muslim response” to progressive Muslim movements. Instead, Tsourlaki highlights an ongoing, global conversation that is shaped less by doctrine than by everyday realities, especially the shared contours of women’s lived experience.
These realities can often determine how organizations and efforts like MPV are received.
Depending on the context, progressive Muslim leaders can even face harassment, threats, and, in some cases, violence.
Zonneveld herself has encountered resistance from multiple directions. More conservative Muslims have questioned her legitimacy, while some non-Muslims struggle to reconcile her advocacy with their own assumptions about Islam. “People are often confused,” Zonneveld said, describing reactions — often from evangelical Christians and the political right — to her support for LGBTQ+ rights, her practice of leading mixed-gender prayers, or her spiritual evolution that resonates with some but can alienate others.
“I may still be finding my way,” Zonneveld said. Citing works like Mernissi’s and those of other Islamic feminists who have drawn on the tradition of the early Muslim community and its emphasis on expanding women’s rights and roles in society, Zonneveld emphasized she is “a legit Muslim” living in a long tradition of progressivism in Islamic history — one she calls “Mecca style.”
What Counts as “Progressive?”
At the same time, the label “progressive” itself can be polarizing. It risks reducing a complex theological project to a set of political positions, potentially alienating those who might otherwise be receptive, Tsourlaki said.
Tsourlaki noted that many individuals who privately support feminist or inclusive interpretations are reluctant to speak publicly. “Ninety-five percent…say they don’t talk about it online,” she said, citing fears of abuse or social repercussions. There are also women who may not be labeled “progressive” or “feminist,” but who nonetheless are making space for greater gender equality within their lived context.
Famously, in her book Politics of Piety , Mahmood challenged the liberal feminist framework that equates agency with resistance. Studying women in Cairo, Egypt’s mosque movement, she shows that many women actively embrace practices such as veiling, modesty, or submission to men in their lives that outsiders might read as “oppressive.”
But for these women, such practices — even if not noted as such by western, liberal frames — are not signs of passivity but disciplines through which they cultivate piety, selfhood, and moral agency.
Towards More Humanity in Public Life
When it comes to scale, MPV operates within what Tsourlaki described as a broader but still nascent reformation. “One organization cannot do everything,” she said. “Change is incremental, distributed across many actors — scholars, activists, communities — each contributing a piece of a larger puzzle.”
Zonneveld, for her part, already sees success — and dreams of what comes next. She pointed to shifts in public opinion, including increasing support among American Muslims for LGBTQ+ rights in recent decades — with the majority now agreeing that “homosexuality should be accepted by society.”
At the heart of Zonneveld’s efforts — whether through MPV or in her collaborations with organizations like the United Nations — is the idea that sacred traditions can be resources for moral imagination rather than obstacles to it. This, in her view, requires more than reinterpretation, but a spiritual reorientation in the service of public life.
In other words, she suggests that the healing of public life may depend, in part, on the renewal of its sacred foundations — not through uniformity or coercion, but through dialogue, empathy, and the courage to imagine different futures together.
“That is how I’ve evolved as a person of faith,” she said, reiterating again that her daily ritual is to always say and do things to affirm and lift up our common humanity. “That’s a constant thing for me as soon as I open my eyes and before I go to bed.”
For Zonneveld, that formation is rooted in a commitment to human dignity that transcends doctrinal boundaries. “You don’t have to believe in a god to be a good human being,” she said, reflecting on her own journey toward a more expansive understanding of the sacred, based on the Quranic injunction found in the final verse of Surah Al-Kafirun (109:6): “to you be your way, and to me mine.”
Zonneveld will be the first to admit that this is no utopian project. It comes in fits and starts, with contestation and incompletion along the way.
But back at her retreat in the repose of the Hollywood Hills, Zonneveld continues to build, brick by brick. The structure she envisions is not yet complete. But the vision of it offers a glimpse of what a reimagined religious public life just might look like.
In a time of deep division, that vision may be more vital than ever.
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