Olfa Youssef is a Tunisian university professor and a writer specializing in Arabic linguistics, psychoanalysis and Applied Islamic Studies.

[1] Olfa Youssef was born in 1964 in the coastal city of Sousse, where she received her primary and secondary education.

Youssef's PhD in Arabic language and literature defended in 2002 deals with the subject of “Polysemy in the Quran.”[2] Youssef occupied various administrative positions including serving as the director of the Higher Institute for Children's Executives in Carthage as well as the head of the National Library of Tunisia from 2009 to 2011.

Generally, Youssef claims that although certain dogmas have always been taken for granted throughout the long history of Islam, there is no proof in the Quran that makes them unquestionable rules.

[5] Youssef wrote The Dramatic Discourse of Mahmoud Messadi's The Dam[6][7] and co-authored The Dramatic Discourse of Mahmoud Messadi's The Dam (1994) and published Women in Quran and Sunnah (1997), The Quran at the Risk of Psychoanalysis (2007), Bereft of Reason and Religion (2003), and Yearning (2010) among other books.