This project provides a unique perspective on Iranian women’s religious authority and their attempts to reform women’s legal status. It challenges assumptions rooted in secular-liberal feminism that has historically assumed an intrinsic discord between women’s agency and religion. This study focuses on the prominent Iranian women’s coalition, Zanan, and its use of faith–based activism to advance women’s rights within Shiʿi Iran, through individual empowerment and institutional reform. My research utilizes a combination of detailed case studies, ethnographic research methods, and textual analysis to shed light on debates on indigenous reformation within the Islamic tradition and the nature of female religious authority in this context. This research unravels the complexities Iranian women encounter in challenging deeply ingrained cultural and religious beliefs. Important questions driving this project are: What are the basic premises of the Islamic constructions of gender and justice? What are the possibilities and limits of achieving gender justice within a Shiʿi Islamic framework? Is the conventional discourse of Islamic law receptive to influence from bottom-up faith-based activism? The project unpacks these questions and takes an insider look into the practices adopted by Zanan, and its critical engagement with faith-based activism to advance gender egalitarianism through women's hermeneutics. By using Zanan’s activism as a lens through which to view women’s legal status, I argue that Muslim women’s access to and use of religious resources has reinforced their position in gender negotiations. The central aim of the project is to examine the extent to which women’s contribution to production of religious knowledge and their involvement in faith-based activism transforms patriarchal interpretations of Islamic scriptures and institutions. Drawing on case study and ethnographic research methods, this study argues that female religious activists not only struggle against patriarchy and conventional frameworks, but also cultivate a distinctively women's hermeneutics that simultaneously challenges Western liberalism and religious orthodoxy. Through the use of interdisciplinary research methods, drawing on works in religious studies, women’s studies, and sociology, this study approaches women’s faith-based activism textually and contextually, as well as in actual practice.