In the 20th century and until its peak in the 1970s, religious feminist movements based on nonpatriarchal interpretations of holy texts started appearing in the world. These movements were different from the prevalent secular female currents in the West in that they opted for a religious discourse founded on the texts of clerics, using religious reasoning within the framework of theological and jurisprudential discourse.
This phenomenon, which was not limited to Muslims but included Christian and Jewish communities, among others, came to be known as feminist theology.