Known For: First Female Filmmaker in Saudi Arabia
Dates: August 10, 1974 - Present
Country: Saudi Arabia

About

Haifa Al-Mansour was born in 1974 in Saudi Arabia and was raised in el-Zilfi.  She grew up to become the first female Saudi Arabian filmmaker. She studied literature as her undergraduate work at American University in Cairo and went on to get a masters degree in Directing and Film Studies from the University of Sidney. She was the first women in Saudi Arabia to direct a feature film called Wadjda, released in 2012. In 2005 her internationally acclaimed and award winning documentary, Women without Shadows, was released. This, along with three other short films made by her, Who?, The Bitter Journey and The Only Way Out, opened a whole new discussion for the Saudi world and their filmmakers about opening cinemas in the country. In addition, her work has been praised and vilified for discussing taboo topics such as tolerance, the dangers of orthodoxy, and the need for Saudis to take a critical look at their traditional and restrictive culture.

Known For: Journalism, The first foreign women in broadcasting on 8pm news in the history of Italian television
Dates: April 24, 1973 - Present
Country: Israel

About

Rula Jabreal was born on April 24th, 1973 in Haifa, Israel and grew up in East Jerusalem. At the age of 5 her father took her to the Dar Al Tifel orphanage where she studied and eventually graduated with a scholarship from the Italian government to pursue the study of medicine. She obtained a degree in physiotherapy from the University of Bologna then eventually went back to obtain a second degree in journalism and political science. She worked for newspapers such as II Resto del Carlino, II Giorno, La Nazione and II Messaggero.

In 2000 after moving to TV broadcasting she quickly became the first foreign anchorwomen broadcasting the 8pm news in Italian television history. In 2004 she started her own talk show called Ominibus where she interviewed many prestigious global figures such as Bill Gates and Silvio Berlusconi. During 2004 she received her first award from Media Watch for her courage in covering the Iraqi war. In 2005 she was awarded the International Aschia Award for Best Journalist of the Year, Europe’s most prestigious award. In 2009 she produced and hosted a show in Egypt for Egyptian television where she interviewed influential people such as the Lebanese author, Elias Khoury, along with many others. It was considered to be the most independent show in Egyptian television history. She has written three books, Miral, La Promise d’Aswan, and Divieto di Soggiorno. Miral has sold over 2 million copies and is published in fourteen languages. She also wrote the screenplay for the 2011 movie, which was the first film to ever premier at the General Assembly Hall at the United Nations. She is currently working on her fourth book.

Known For: Award-winning documentary filmmaker, Director, and Author
Country: Yemen

About

Khadija Al-Salami gained her independence at an early age when her family forced her into a marriage at the age of 11. In order to escape family pressure and tradition, she found a job at the local TV station in the afternoons, while pursuing her studies in the mornings. At age 16, she earned a scholarship to study in the United States, where she studied filmmaking. Khadija is an award-winning documentary film maker and Yemen’s first female film director, having made more than 20 documentaries for various TV stations in France and Yemen. Al-Salami’s films tend to focus on the role of women and their rights in Yemeni society, as well as on corruption.

With Charles Hoots, she has written a book, The Tears of Sheba, about her experiences growing up in Yemen. she occupied the post of Cultural and Press Counselor and Director of the Communication and Cultural Center at the Embassy of Yemen in Paris for more than ten years.

Jacques Chirac awarded her a Legion d’honneur for her work in building bridges between France and Yemen.

Other awards have included: The Knight of the Order of Arts & Letters by the French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand ; Inspiring woman, chosen by the Mosaic Foundation (Washington DC) ; Yemeni Women’s Union Recognition Award for dedication to women’s issues ; Yemen Observer Award for Outstanding Service to Yemen ; Certificate of Recognition for Exceptional Effort awarded by Yemeni President ; Chosen among the five laureates of Simone de Beauvoir prize ; Feminine achievement trophy “Le Trophée 2011 de la réussite au féminin France-Euro-Méditerranée” ;

She was also named one of the 100 most Influential Arab women in the world by Arabian Business in 2012 and 2013. The Monitor named Khadija Al-Salami #2 in their list of the top 50 People Shaping the Culture of the Middle East.

Known For: Charity, Politics
Dates: Hijri unknown – d. 762 AH
Common Era unknown – 1360 (CE)

Country: Yemen

About

Al Udar al-Karimah Shihaab ad Din Salaah was the mother of Sultan Sayf Al Islam Mujahid Ali ibn Al Muayyad Hizbir Al Din Daud, the ruler of Yemen from 724 – 765 Hijri (1322-1363 AD). Al Udar al-Karimah was a patroness of religion and education who established schools and mosques throughout Yemen. She was often referred to as Lordly Lady of Piety.

She was also known for her generosity and sympathy for the poor and needy. It is recorded that she would personally make visits to the houses of people in need and give them generous gifts to ease their sufferings.  Al Udar al-Karimah also took over the reins of leadership in Yemen during her son’s absence for 14 months. As the Vicegerent Queen, Al Udar al-Karimah demonstrated her political and governing abilities by establishing administrative order, internal security system, and further strengthening of the charitable work throughout the land.

Known For: Director and founder of the Edna Adan Maternity Hospital
Dates: 1937 - Present
Country: Somalia

About

Edna Adan Ismail was born and raised in an educated and wealthy family. She was amongst the first to attend the first girls’ school in Somaliland and was also the first Somali girl awarded scholarships to study in Britain, where she studied nursing, midwifery and hospital management.

Her return to Somaliland made Edna the first qualified nurse-midwife in the country. Upon her marriage to the Prime Minister, Ibrahim Egal, Edna became the first lady of Somaliland. During her time working in the World Health Organization (WHO), Edna advocated for the abolition of traditional practices, including female genital cutting.

After retiring from the WHO, Edna sold all of her possessions and returned to Somaliland to build a hospital in the country with one of world’s highest birth rates per woman and the highest maternal mortality rates. Due to the shortage of funds, the hospital took ten years to be completed.  Now that the hospital is opened and improving the lives and health of women, Edna has also focused on training and dispatching 1,000 qualified midwives throughout the country.

Known For: Music, Performing
Country: Mali

About

Oumou Sangare is a Malian singer and known as one of Africa’s most outstanding artists. Using the traditional music of her ancient homeland, Wassalou, Oumou’s songs address many of the social problems taking place in Mali society such as the place of women and polygamous marriages. Her fierce dedication to women’s rights is evident in her song lyrics and her language, as in an interview with The Observer, “‘I will fight until my dying day for the rights of African women and of women throughout the world.” Some of Oumou’s albums include Moussoulou (1989), Ko Sira (1993), Worotan (1996), Laban (2001), Oumou (2003). She released Seya in 2009. 

Known For: Singer, Musician
Dates: Hijri unknown – d. 98 AH
Common Era unknown – 720 (CE)

Country: Saudi Arabia

About

Jamila al-Medina was a well-known singer from the early Umayyad period. As a naturally talented young girl, Jamila was self-trained in the art of singing. She would memorize and sing songs from Sa’ib Khathir, a famous male singer.  Over time, the people of Medina began to praise Jamila for her voice and her self-composed songs. The community appreciation and desire to learn music from her led Jamila to gain freedom from her master.

After becoming a freewoman of the Banu Sulaym, Jamila married a wealthy man and began to hold concerts and teach the nobles in her house. Jamila was also hired by the slave masters to train their girls. Soon after, Jamila formed an orchestra of fifty girls, who were taught to play the lute and to sing.

Beside lessons and performances, Jamila is also known for organizing a “musical hajj.” She invited all of the musicians of Medina, including poets and her orchestra of fifty girls. Jamila’s entourage set out to Mecca, where they were greeted with songs and poems by the Meccan musicians.

Jamila continued to teach and sing for the rest of her life.  A student of hers proclaimed, “In the art of music, Jamila is the tree and we are the branches.”

Known For: Human Rights Activist
Dates: 1930 - 2013
Country: South Africa

About

Amina Cachalia was born in South Africa under the apartheid regime. Her family tradition of political activism allowed Ms. Cachalia to begin the struggle for democracy and equality early in life.  Leaving school to support her family compelled Ms. Cachalia to enter workforce and experience the hardships. Understanding the importance of financial independence and skill development influenced Ms. Cachalia to start the Women’s Progressive Union in 1948. The union flourished under her mentorship until 1952 when Ms. Cachalia was sent to jail for her participation in the Defiance Campaign. 

Her active involvement in the Peace Council, the Indian Youth Congress, Federation of South African Women and later organizing protests against passes for women made Ms. Cachalia an anti-government target. During her life, Ms. Cachalia spent 15 years in the 1960s and 1970s under house arrest and received various banning orders by the regime. She continued her “underground” activities throughout the period of her banning and confinement.

Later in life Ms. Cachalia was presented the Order of Luthuil in Bronze for her lifetime contribution to the struggle for “gender equality, non-racism and a free and democratic South Africa.”

Known For: Medical Doctor Specialized in Obstetrics and Gynecology
Dates: 1957 - Present
Country: Saudi Arabia

About

Dr. Samia Mohammed Abdulrahman Al-Amoudi is a Saudi physician specialized in obstetrics and gynecology and breast cancer. She holds an MB Bch from King Abdulaziz University Hospital College of Medicine & Allied Sciences Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where she was among the first group of female graduate from the collage of medicine. She also holds a CABOG from the Arab Board for Medical Specialization in Obstetric and Gynecology and a Certificate of MERITE for studying qualtative methodology data collection, management, and analysis at FHCRC.

Dr. Al-Amoudi is an advocate women’s health issues and Saudi women’s health rights who has held a number of important professional posts. She was a member of Harvard GTF.CCC Technical Advisory Committee, advisor for Yemen Cancer Foundation, member of the Executive Board of MEPI, member of the Breast Health Global Initiative Steering Committee, USA, Consultant Obstetrician Gynecologist and IVF (1987), and Associate Professor at the College of Medicine, King Abdulaziz University (2008). More recently, she acted as Chairwoman of Scientific Chair of “Women’s Health Empowerment” (2012) and was the first GCC women elected in UICC Board of Directors for 2012 - 2014.

She is also the founder, CEO & Board Member of Sheikh Mohammed Hussien Al-Amoudi Center of Excellence in Breast Cancer, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (2010).

She is the author of several books on obstetrics and gynecology, including My Daughter-My Best Friend 1st Edition (Arabic) 2011, Islamic Guidelines for Sensitive Issues in Obstetrics & Gynecology, 2003, and I.V.F. and Islamic Guidelines, 2003. A breast cancer survivor, she is also the author of many books on breast cancer, including Breast Cancer Patients’ Health Rights, 1st Edition (Arabic/English) 2011, Saudi Women’s Health Rights 1st Edition, (English), 2011, Breast Cancer in Sign Language for Deaf and Mute (English), 2011 1st Edition, and Breast Cancer Researches in KSA Vol. 2, 2011. A full list of publications is available here.

Dr. Al-Amoudi is also the recipient of several prestigious awards and honors. In 2013, she was nominated by CEO as one of the top 100 most powerful Arab women. In August 2012 became the first woman from the GCC to win a seat at the Union for International Cancer Control Board of Directors in Geneva. In March 2007, the U.S. Department Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice awarded her the First International Women of Courage Award in recognition of her Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign and for sharing her personal battle with breast cancer to raise awareness across the Kingdom and throughout the Middle East.  MBC TV named her one of 4 women in the Middle East who has contributed to change in their societies, and she was honored by Susan G. Komen for the Cure in March 2008 in Washington DC.

Known For: Pediatric Dentist, Hypnotherapist, Dental Phobia treatment expert, Columnist, Writer, and Social activist
Country: Saudi Arabia

About

Dr. Al-Namankany specializes in hypnosis and pediatric dentistry and the author of several publications and a textbook (Dental Phobia & Anxiety: A guidance for a better management: Non Pharmacological Behaviour Management). She has earned a Graduate Certificate in teaching in higher education, and has taught postgraduate students at University College London- Eastman Dental Institute.

Dr. Al-Namankany is a member of the editorial board of the World Journal of Meta Analysis, and a reviewer at the European Academy of Paediatrics, the European Journal of Orthodontics, and the International Dental Journal. She is the founder of a new dental anxiety scale (ACDAS) and is a dedicated researcher with a specific interest in child/adolescent patients who show signs of dental fear, anxiety, phobia, and other behavioural problems. Her professional qualifications and clinical experience include being the first worldwide to make pediatric dentistry/psychology inquiries to measure and treat dental anxiety using drug-free psychotherapy methods, a method used to protect patients from the risks of general anaesthesia and the side-effects of the medicine used for sedation.

She is an international chairperson and a speaker at many conferences, a possessor of the Graduate Certificate of teaching in a higher education. She is also the winner of six Distinguished Clinical and Research Awards, of them: The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow ; The British Society of Paediatric Dentistry (The Research Prize) ; The Young Researcher’s Prize of the Emirates Medical Association ; The Distinguished Clinical Research Awards at Warwick University in Coventry ; Award of Education and Scientific Excellence at Excel London by His Royal Highness the Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf (Ambassador of Saudi Arabia in the UK and Ireland) ; and Life-long Premium Membership from Malaysian Airlines for saving the life of a Malaysian Airlines passenger while on a flight. She is also a social activist and a children’s and women’s rights activist.

Dr. Al-Namankany intends to continue contributing to social, children’s, and women’s development and to the world of paediatric dental research for worldwide betterment.

Known For: Founder of the Khadija bint Khuwailid Center
Dates: 1955 - Present
Country: Saudi Arabia

About

As the vice-dean of the Business and Economics Collage at the King Abdul Aziz University (KAAU), Ms. Baeshen witnessed students with promising potentials graduating from KAAU and then going home and doing nothing. For women there were seldom employment opportunities in government and the chances of landing a government job in schools, the Education Ministry and in hospitals, which were the only sectors women could work in, were slim to none. 

Ms. Baeshen wanted to help the recent graduates and businesswomen and pave the way for them to fight the rules and regulations which had put them in a certain restrictive framework.  This motivation led to the establishment of the Khadija bint Khuwailid Center in 1998 to train, qualify and empower Saudi women. The Center continues to flourish and expand under the new leadership and well-trained staff to carry forward the torch and mission of Ms. Baeshen.

Ms. Baeshen travels across the Kingdom to encourage the empowerment of businesswomen in different cities. During her visits, Ms. Baeshen addresses businesswomen and cites examples from Islamic history. Women are still struggling with taboo issues and religious regulations. “I don’t need to go there and talk about Nadia Baeshen, Nahed Taher or Lubna Al-Olayan with all due respect. These are not the examples those women want to hear or can identify with. They want to know about Khadija bint Khuwailid, the Prophet’s wife who was a businesswoman who brought prosperity in her trade to Makkah; Nasiba bint Ka’ab, and Ayesha bint Abu Bakr.”

Known For: Urdu Poetry
Dates: 1952 - 1994
Country: Pakistan

About

Parveen Shakir was a famous contemporary Urdu poet. A number of her poetry books were published and received nationwide recognition in Pakistan. Before her untimely death, Ms. Shakir was awarded the Pride of Performance award, the highest award given by the government of Pakistan.

Ms. Shakir’s poetry mainly consists of ghazalyaat, lyric poetry written in recurring rhymes, and free verses. Her ghazal style represents a combination of “classical tradition with modern sensitivity.” The most prominent themes in Ms. Shakir’s poetry are love, feminism, and social stigmas, though she occasionally wrote on other topics as well. Her work was often based on romanticism, exploring the concepts of love, beauty and their contradictions, and heavily integrated the use of metaphors, similes and personifications.

Defying the most commonly masculine syntax used by other poets, Ms. Shakir was the first female poet to use the word larki (girl) in her work. Similarly, she often made use of the Urdu first-person, feminine pronoun in her verses which, though extremely common in prose, was rarely used in poetry, even by female poets, before her.

Known For: Author, Activist, Researcher, Public Speaker
Dates: 1964 - Present
Country: India

About

Sohaila Abdulali was born in Bombay, India. She did her schooling in India, and moved to the United States with her family when she was 15. Since then, she has lived in both countries. She has a BA from Brandeis University in Economics and Sociology, and an MA from Stanford University in Communication. Her undergraduate thesis dealt with the socio-economics of rape in India. When she was 20, she wrote an explosive article on the subject in an Indian magazine that won her notoriety for years. In 2013, she wrote an op-ed in the New York Times, After Being Raped, I Was Wounded; My Honor Wasn’t.

Sohaila is Senior Editor at Ubuntu Education Fund, an international NGO working to transform the lives of vulnerable children in the townships of Port Elizabeth, South Africa. She writes and edits grants, annual reports, the Ubuntu website, op-eds and editorial stories, and regular blogs. She helped guide Ubuntu through an update of its communications strategy and is part of a successful team of dedicated, passionate people who are making a real difference in the Eastern Cape.

For two years, Sohaila was the Director of Communications at AIDS-Free World, an international advocacy organization. In this position, she wrote briefs, reports, press releases, essays, letters and more, which were carried by worldwide media; helped set up the communications strategy of the organization; assisted in the development of a new website; and initiated several large ongoing projects including a comprehensive atlas of AIDS.

In 2010, Penguin India published her novel, Year of the Tiger.

As soon as she graduated from college, Sohaila coordinated the biggest, oldest rape crisis centre in the Northeast for two years.

She worked as a journalist in Philadelphia, Boston and Bombay. She also began her fiction career, and, to support her writing, she did various odd jobs, from working in an independent bookstore, working with mentally ill adults, to doing sleep research in a psychiatric hospital. She moved to Delhi, India, for two years, where she coordinated publicity and publications for Oxfam. She traveled all over India and England, writing, speaking and producing reports, brochures and a film. Back in Bombay, she did freelance writing and research for the Ford Foundation, Oxfam, and the London School of Tropical Hygiene. In 1998, her bestselling novel, The Madwoman of Jogare, was published by HarperCollins India.

In New York, from 1996 on, she worked as a freelance editor for several UN organizations, as well as private companies. She has edited books on computer systems in health care, human rights movements, and hedge funds. She ghostwrote two articles for Wall Street publications. She has produced reports for The Micronutrient Initiative, and worked as a proofreader for a busy advertising agency.

During this time, she has had two Ford Foundation grants. The first was to research, produce and distribute three children’s books on women’s health in India. The results, the RangBibi and Langra series, were sold all over India in four languages. The second grant was to write a book about aboriginal people in Western India. The book is called Bye Bye Mati:A Memoir in a Monsoon Landscape.

Sohaila has done a lot of public speaking and teaching. In Boston, she spoke at hospitals, schools and many other institutions about sexual assault. When she worked for Oxfam, she spoke in public about issues such as poverty and women’s rights. She has appeared on broadcast television in the US, India and on the BBC in England. She was a guest speaker at Clark University in Massachusetts, Northwestern University in Chicago, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, among others.

In 2004 and 2008, she was an adjunct professor at New York University, teaching South Asian Civilization to undergraduates. Her curriculum was based on her latest book, Bye Bye Mati: A Memoir in a Monsoon Landscape.

Sohaila’s writing has been published in India, the US, England, and Canada. She is on the board of Point of View, a women’s media group in Bombay, India. She continues to write and publish both fiction and non-fiction. She lives in the Lower East Side of Manhattan with her husband, neon artist Tom Unger, and their daughter, Samara.

Known For: First Woman Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Somalia
Country: Somalia

About

Fawzia Yusuf Haji Adan has just recently been named the first woman Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Somalia. She was appointed to this position by newly elected president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud.  Along with this position she is one of two women who joined Somalia’s new cabinet. Prior to being appointed minister, Adan had already taken steps in becoming a prominent female figure in Somalia. In the late 1990’s, she served as an instrumental role in founding the University of Hargeisa in the self declared independent state of Somaliland.  Because of her gender, she was not allowed to sit on the board. In 2008, she launched RAADTV, which strove to provide a different image on Somalia other then the unstable, war-ridden failed state as portrayed in the media.  Adan served aso a diplomat in Berlin Germany prior to the collapse of the Somali government.

It was not until 2011 where she broke societal barriers by creating and leading her own political party Nabad, Dimoqraadiyad iyo Barwaaqo (Peace, Democracy, and Prosperity Party). Her party was declared unqualified to be an official party by the Silanyo government due to her gender. In response, she held a peaceful protest in Hargeisa, but was arrested and detained until her supporters disbanded. Despite the many obstacles she has managed to become the first Somali woman to hold the Deputy Prime minister and Foreign Minister positions.

Adan hails from the independent state of Somaliland, although she has lived in the United Kingdom for many years. She is a graduate from John Hopkins University and American University in Paris. Upon her return from the UK, she worked in Somalia’s foreign ministry as a diplomat.

Known For: Designing and constructing Astrolabes
Dates: 10th Century
Country: Syria

About

Mariam Al-Ijliya lived during the 10th century in Aleppo, Syria.  Her father was an apprentice to a famous astrolabe maker in Baghdad and she in turn became his student.  Her hand-crafted designs were so intricate and innovative that from 944 AD-967 AD, she was employed by the ruler of the city, Sayf Al Dawla.

Astrolabes were used to determine the position of the sun and the planets and were in turn used in the fields of astronomy, astrology, and horoscopes.  Muslims used it to find the Qibla, determine prayer times and the starting days of Ramadan and Eid. 

Known For: Doctorate in astrophysics
Dates: c. 1982 - Present
Country: Pakistan

About

In July 2012, Mariam Sultana became the first Pakistani woman to earn a doctorate in astrophysics.  She is a lecturer at the mathematical sciences department of the Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science and Technology (FUUAST).

She began her coursework and research in 2006 was supervised by Dr. Salakhutdin Nuritdinov, a professor at the National University of Uzbekistan.  He is a pioneer in the field of extragalactic astrophysics and allowed Mariam Sultana to further the mathematical models he had developed.  Her thesis investigated the instabilities and physical conditions which gave galaxies their ring shape.  In 2008, her research paper was published in a Russian journal called Astrofizika (Astrophysics) and was later printed in another journal, Astrophysics.

Two prominent professors agreed to become examiners for her thesis.  The two professors were James Binney, a physics professor at the University of Oxford and the other Dr. Ana Katrin Schenk, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California.

She plans to pursue a postdoctoral fellowship in the UK.  For now she wants to supervise the PhDs which were left incomplete because of Dr Nuritdinov’s departure from Pakistan.  Currently, she is supervising the doctoral students at FUUAST’s mathematical sciences department.

Known For: Boxing
Dates: October 1, 1992 - Present
Country: Tajikistan

About

Mavzuna Chorieva won the bronze medal in Women’s Light (60kg) Boxing during the 2012 London Olympic Games.  The 2012 games also marked women’s boxing debut at the Olympics. 

She was the only medalist from Tajikistan.  Mavzuna is also the first woman to win an Olympic medal for Tajikistan.

In her spare time she enjoys writing poems and reading the Qur’an. 

Known For: Track & FIeld
Dates: April 9, 1984 - Present
Country: Tunisia

About

Habiba won the silver medal for the 3000 meters steeplechase during the 2012 London Olympic Games.  Her achievement marked Tunisia’s first ever Olympic Silver medal won by a woman. 

Habiba competed in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.  In 2009 Habiba was named Athlete of the Year by daily Arabic newspaper Assahafa.  For most of 2010, she was bedridden due to operations on both her feet.  She returned to competition in September of that year. In 2011 she became the first Tunisian woman to win a medal at the IAAF World Championships, where she took silver in Daegu.

Her other achievements include a silver medal at the African championships in 2006, two time world championships finalist, and a Diamond league meeting winner. 

Known For: Track & FIeld
Dates: August 20, 1985 - Present
Country: Turkey

About

Asli Cakir Alptekin is a Turkish Track & Field athlete who won Gold medal in the 1500m event at the 2012 London Olympic Games.  She won the event with a time of 4 minutes and 10.23 seconds.  With this win, she brought home Turkey’s first-ever gold medal in an Olympic Track & Field event. 

Earlier in 2012 she also won the bronze medal at the World Indoor Championships in Istanbul and Gold in Helsinki at the European Championships.  She also finished second at the Diamond League meet in Paris which was just weeks before the London Olympics.

Her husband, Ilhan Alptekin, is also her coach.

Known For: World record holder in weightlifting
Dates: November 1, 1985 - Present
Country: Kazakhstan

About

Maiya Maneza is a Kazakh weightlifter.  During the 2012 London Olympics, she won the gold medal in the 63kg weightlifting competition.  She lifted a combined weight of 245 kg and established a new world record in the process.

She was born in Kyrgyzstan but lived for a while Beijing, China.  She moved to Kazakhstan in 2007 and acquired Kazakh citizenship.  She competed in the 2008 Beijing Olympics as well. 

Known For: world record holder in weightlifting
Dates: July 25, 1993 - Present
Country: Kazakhstan

About

Zulfiya Chinshanlo is a Kazakh weightlifter who competed in the 2012 London Olympics and won Gold in the women’s 53kg competition.  Her win also cemented a new world record as she lifted 131kg in the clean and jerk.

She began her sporting career at the age of 7. In 2009, she became the first woman from Kazakhstan to win a medal at the World Weightlifting Championships, in Goyang, Korea, where she captured Gold. She speaks Russian, Kazakh, and Chinese. 

When asked why she took up the sport, she replied “When I first came to a gym and was passing by a barbell, I decided to lift it. My first thought after that was how heavy it is.”

Known For: 2012 most decorated Russian Gymnast
Dates: September 30, 1994 - Present
Country: Russia

About

Aliya Mustafina made her first Olympic appearance in the 2012 London Olympics and left the London games as the most decorated Russian Gymnast.  Her medals include gold in the uneven bars, silver in the women’s team final, and a bronze in both the floor exercise and the individual all-around. 

Over the past four years, she has won numerous medals and has competed in the European Artistic Gymnastics Championships twice and the World Artistic Championships once.  Aliya is also the winner of three national Russian titles. At the International Junior Competition in 2007, Aliya won the silver medal in all four of the women’s gymnastics events as well as the all-around.  She won her first gold medal during the 2008 Junior European Gymnastics Championship.  At the 2011 European Championships, Aliya tore her ACL after the vault event.  After seven months of recovery, she returned to competition.

Aliya comes from a family of athletes.  Her younger sister Nailya is also a gymnast, and she won a silver medal in the 2008 Pacific Rim Championships.  Her father Farhat Mustafin won the bronze medal in Greco-Roman wrestling at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal.  Aliya has stated that her dad “helps me and give me advice, especially when I am exhausted and feel I can’t go on.”  Her mother is a physics teacher.  Along with training for the 2012 Olympics, she continued her studies and graduated from high school in 2012.

Known For: Law Professor, Nonprofit Leader
Country: Morocco

About

Dr. Rajaa Naji al Makkawi is a Professor of Law at Mohammad al Khamis University in Morocco. Newsweek and Al Jazeera have featured her as one of the most influential women in the Arab and Muslim world. In 2003, she was the first woman to deliver a religious lecture before His Majesty Mohamed VI, the King of Morocco, as part of the Ramadan lecture series broadcast on TV. Dr. Naji has published numerous legal books over the years on topics relating to family law, health, women’s rights, and Shari’a. Dr. Naji is involved with KARAMAH: Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights, a U.S.-based nonprofit, which seeks to educate and empower women.

Known For: Only Muslim player on the German Women's National Soccer Team
Country: Germany

About

A Kosovan refugee of Albanian descent, and the only Muslim on the German Women’s National Soccer Team, Bajramaj has become one of the most recognizable faces in the German Soccer world.

At the young age of 5, Fatmire “Lira” Bajramaj, along with her parents and brother, fled Kosovo in the midst of the increasing violence of the Kosovo War, and arrived in North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany. Bajramaj’s father found work as a builder in Mönchengladbach, a city famous for its soccer team. Here Bajramaj discovered her love for the sport, though her father forbade her from playing it. Despite her father’s protestations, Bajramaj secretly played with her brother, and eventually joined a youth club. In time, her father discovered his daughter’s impressive talent, eventually giving her his blessing. Such familial support has greatly contributed to Bajramaj’s professional success. In 2009, she signed with 1. FFC Turbine Potsdam, a top club in the women’s Bundesliga, helping her team to win the prestigious UEFA Women’s Champions League title by scoring in the penalty shoot-out in the final against French team Olympique Lyonnais. In April 2011, Bajramaj signed a three-year contract with rival club 1. FFC Frankfurt.

Bajramaj has also appeared in two World Cup tournaments, the first in 2007 in which she helped her team achieve victory, and the second in 2011, though Germany was eliminated in the quarterfinals. In 2008, Bajramaj led her team to a bronze medal in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, scoring 2 goals in Germany’s victory against Japan. Bajramaj also played for Germany in UEFA Women’s Euro 2009, helping her team to victory against England.
In late 2009, at the age of 22, Bajramaj published her biography My Goal in Life: From Refugee to World Champion, detailing her experiences in Kosovo and the obstacles she encountered as an immigrant to Germany. In 2011, building on the success and popularity of Germany’s previous two FIFA Women’s World Cup teams, Bajramaj served as an ambassador to a national campaign to encourage children of immigrants to participate in sports as a means of integration into German society, saying, “Playing football is what helped me integrate… In Germany I am welcome because I play football. And Muslims can see that even though I’m in football, I’m very religious.”

Known For: Nationally Ranked Fencer
Dates: 1985 - Present
Country: United States

About

Muhammad is a nationally ranked US fencer.

As a Muslim growing up in America, Muhammad felt uncomfortable wearing the revealing uniforms so often the norm in girls’ and women’s sports today. One day, Muhammad’s mother happened upon sabre fencing, a sport which requires all its practitioners to wear head to toe protection. Muhammad’s mother felt that this sport would offer many competitive opportunities for her daughter, while still allowing her to abide by the requirements of her faith. Muhammad went on to excel at the sport, so much so that she captained two championship teams at her high school, after which she attended Duke University. At Duke, she excelled both academically and athletically, becoming a three-time All-American, as well as double majoring in International Relations and African-American Studies, with a minor in Arabic. After college, Muhammad went on to win the gold medal at the 2009 USA Fencing National Championships, with the help of Olympian fencers Akhi Spencer-El and Peter Westbrook.

Muhammad strictly adheres to Ramadan, which has not made training easy. During competitions, which would often occur during Ramadan, Muhammad would wake every 90 minutes throughout each night to maintain her strength and energy during the daytime. Though Muhammad admits that it has been hard, she has been unwavering in her commitment to her faith. She hopes that her accomplishments will encourage other girls to achieve their dreams:  “I want them to know that nothing should hinder them from reaching their goals — not race, not religion, not gender.”

Known For: Performer
Country: Syria

About

Gaida Hinnawi is a vocalist and composer working at the intersection of the New York Arab and improvised music scenes. Her compositions draw on classical Arabic song, Syrian folk traditions, and improvisations that expand on traditional Arabic maqams (modes) to produce an original and highly personal style marked by great emotional intensity. An acclaimed singer from an early age, Gaida was raised in Damascus and later lived in Kuwait, Paris, and Detroit, where she received classical voice training at Wayne State University.

Now settled in New York, Gaida works with leading Arab and creative-music artists such as Amir ElSaffar, Brahim Fribgane, Tareq Abboushi, Omer Avital, and Rufus Cappadocia. She also is a member of other New York-based groups including Ayyoub, Zikrayat, and Tarab Ensemble. Gaida has composed and recorded for major motion pictures, including Jonathan Demme’s Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains, in which she recorded with Gillian Welsh and Alejandro Escovedo. Gaida also maintains a parallel career as a speech pathologist.

Known For: Performer
Country: United States

About

Originally hailing from LA, Rachelle DJ Raichous (pronounced “righteous”) was first exposed to DJing in high school through her older brother. Starting out with scratching, she later fell in love with vinyl collecting and spinning when she moved to San Diego for 5 years while attending school, as a biology major, at SDSU. While there, she started an all female DJ radio station called The Bonita Applebum Show that ran for 2 years on Earthbound Radio. DJ Raichous hails as a Muslim female DJ from the West Coast, in which during the day, one might find her in class or working at a record store, Stacks SD. Raichous was also a resident DJ of Table Manners (estb. 2006) and in 2009, she contributed various guest DJ sets including tributes to Mos Def and De La Soul on the world famous Wake Up Show hosted by King Tech.

She’s been fortunate enough to share the stage with influential artists such as J.Rocc (Beat Junkies), DJ Rafik (2007 DMC World Champ), and more recently she opened up for Mos Def at the renowned Apollo Theater in New York along with DJ Kidragon. DJ Raichous describes her music as hip hop, old school, funk, jazz, “turntabilism”, breaks and freestyle.She is currently doing projects with 2 other female DJs in a trio called the RRS Feed spinning live sets on a 4 turntable-3 mixer set up.

Known For: Singer
Country: Canada

About

Azam Ali is an Iranian-born singer who grew up in India from the age of four in the state of Maharashtra. While there, Azam attended an international boarding school that stressed art, spirituality and social transformation through moral and academic excellence. Her education and the rich culture and musical tradition of India would eventually influence Azam’s career in music.

After the Iranian Revolution Azam moved with her family to the United States, where she studied classical Western repertoire as well as Indian, Persian and Eastern European music techniques. However, she always kept the melodies from her childhood in Iran and India close to heart and continued to explore the immense potential in her voice as she developed as an artist. According to Azam, the human voice has the capability to “transcend language, cultural, and spiritual barriers when expressing pure emotion.”¹

Azam’s breakthrough onto the international music scene came with her duo Vas’ best-selling first album. They went on to create four albums from 1997 to 2004. Their music blended Azam’s earlier Indian, Persian and Western influences and focused on the relationship between percussion and the human voice.

Her next music project was with a new group that she co-founded in 2004 called Niyaz. The group created a unique sound that was a blend of acoustic instrumentation, electronic music, sufi poetry, and folk songs from Iran, India, Turkey and elsewhere in the Middle East.² Niyaz has been described as a “miniature electro-worldbeat supergroup” and the sound on their first album has been described as “complex and frequently highly danceable.”³ Together they have performed in the United States, Canada, France, Japan, Spain, Turkey, Italy, UAE and Mexico and have been featured in many prominent music festivals such as Globalfest in New York City, and the Montreal Jazz Festival and Vancouver Jazz Festival in Canada.

In addition to her work with Niyaz, Azam is also a solo artist. In 2010, she released her third solo album, From Night to the Edge of Day, which she considers her most personal project.⁴ 

[1] Azam Ali: Biography.

[2] ibid.

[3] Review: Niyaz.

[4] Azam Ali: Biography.

Known For: Journalist and Filmmaker
Country: United States

About

“I would also like the stories to be told of what the reality was for Muslim women in the early days of Islam. That is very different from what we see typically in the media today…scenes of oppression, lack of opportunity professionally, lack of opportunity for education, which, as I’ve said before, are cultural mandates rather than religious mandates on these people. Nevertheless, they exist!” -Anisa Mehdi

Anisa Mehdi is an Emmy award-winning journalist and filmmaker who specializes in religion and the arts.

Growing up in an interfaith household, Mehdi has had a lifelong commitment to peace in the Middle East. An active voice in Arab-American politics, she has reported news from and made documentary films in Algeria, Egypt, France, Iran, Jordan, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, and the United States.  Her National Geographic Special Inside Mecca is a recognized classic on the Hajj and her PBS Frontline film Muslims depicts the cultural, economic and sociopolitical diversity of Muslims around the world.  For Nightline, Mehdi produced a series of programs on stereotyping in the media and Muslim views about faith and non-Muslim cultures.

She is the winner of two Emmys, a CINE Golden Eagle, and numerous prizes from the Society of Professional Journalists.

Her current film-in-production “Monks and Muslims: Finding Faith in Algeria,” is funded in part by the United States Institute of Peace and the William & Mary Greve Foundation.

Known For: Performer
Country: United States

About

As a songwriter and producer Ms. Zonneveld has worked with many different artists with releases in Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Germany, the U.K., Japan, and the U.S. Her work in Malaysia resulted in an Album of the Year award at the AIMM which is the Malaysian equivalent of the Grammy. She also contributed a song to Keb’ Mo’s album “Keep It Simple” which helped him win a Grammy (2005) in the Contemporary Blues category, a song for the Grammy nominated album “Big Wide Grin” (2003) performed by Grammy winners Keb’Mo’ and Brenda Russell, and to Melissa Manchester’s latest release called “Thank You For Your Faith In Me”. Recently Zonneveld contributed three songs for Japanese artist Yuki. Her album ‘Joy’ was at #1 for several weeks.

Taking music and social activism to another level, Zonneveld’s latest project Anni Zola, utilizes music and different forms of art to draw in tweens and young teenagers into a more purposeful direction. What she hopes to achieve is for children to be more motivated to care about the society we live in, to respect the environment, and to care enough to give back even if you’re a 10 year old. As a mother, Zonneveld feels adults have totally messed up the world, and that it is our responsibility to nurture the next generation, that is Generation Z, to be more responsible than we have been.

Known For: Singer-songwriter
Country: Sudan

About

Alsarah is a Sudanese singer-songwriter who blends traditional Nubian music from the 1970s with contemporary Soul.  When young, Alsarah moved from Sudan to Yemen where she was exposed to an array of musical styles from traditional Yemeni music to Algerian records to classical Arabic music.¹  Later when she moved to the United States, Alsarah listened to everything from Balkan women’s choral singing, Appalachian folk songs, Jazz to Indian music. By the time Alsarah was graduating from university, her musical hobby had become a central part of her life, leading her to travel to Sudan to study the role of Sudanese music in rituals.² 

Today, Alsarah is carving out her own musical niche with her band, Alsarah and the Nubatones. Blending traditional sounds with their original material, Alsarah aims to use music to transcend linguistic or cultural barriers across diasporic communities.³  With a heavy use of drums and chanting, her songs range from fluid and soulful, to rich and joyful.  In an interview, Alsarah said she uses music to express a truth and creativity that has largely been absent from a male-dominated Sudanese music scene.  She hopes that her music will offer a means of fostering interaction between diverse communities internationally and in Sudan for herself and others. “I want a chance to get to know my own people. I know that Sudan can never be all that it can be if we are divided. I want to build a new Sudan for all of the Sudanese people not section it off so we become homogenous fenced off creatures afraid of change and afraid of diversity.”

[1] “SOUNDSCAPES | Possessed by the Jinn: Women and Music in Sudan,” Helo Magazine, December 8, 2010.
[2] ibid.
[3] Alsarah.com

Known For: Performer
Country: United States

About

Aja Black was born and raised in Hollis, Queens, NY and it was there that she began to make a name for herself in the music world.  She developed talents in both rapping and singing and, simultaneously, was able to create extremely meaningful lyrics that seem to display concepts of perseverence, reflection, courage, faith, and confidence. 

In 2004 Black and another artist, Big Samir, began performing together in the Midwest.  The two shared similar perspectives and ideas on both religion and music and thus decided to work on a project that they named “The ReMINDers.”  Their sound is thought to bring about awareness through their lyrics.  Both Aja and Big Samir claim that their influences are “The Creator and his creations (Everything).”

The couple took a two year break so that they could raise their children but now they are getting back on track in the music industry and have a debut record entitled “ReCollect.”

Known For: Singer
Country: Pakistan

About

Abida Parveen is a well-known Pakistani singer in the traditions of qawwali, ghazal and kafi, and known to many as the Sufi Queen of music. Abida composes her own music adding to it lyrics from Sufi poetry, and she sings in Urdu, Sindhi, Hindi, Punjabi and Seraiki. Although she is often compared to Pakistan’s Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Parveen says “We are all the same species — all humans have a representative of godliness, so there is really no male/female division. I have been given this gift by the Divine, who does not recognize differences between male and female singing. I am simply a medium, and if you listen to me sing, even over the period of a few days, it will be entirely different because the transmission is from the Divine.”

Abida received her musical training at an early age from her father Ustad Ghulam Haider and later from Ustad Salamat Ali Khan. She began her career in the early 1970’s with her first hit, singing the popular Sindhi song, “Tuhinje zulfan jay band kamand widha”. Some of her albums include Ruh-e Ali, Baba Bulleh Shah and she was awarded the President of Pakistan’s Award for Pride of Performance in 1982 and the Sitara-e-Imtiaz, or star of excellence, in 2005.

Known For: Author
Country: United States

About

Umm Juwayriyah, a pen name for Maryam Sullivan, is a Muslim author of West Indian-American ancestry. A mother of tow, she is dedicated to increasing indigenous African-American Muslim narratives in the literary world. She is the founding member and former two-term assistant director of the Islamic Writers Alliance, as well as the current editor for the New England Muslim Women’s Association. Umm is also a poet, playwright, ESL instructor, and founder and owner of Kanz Enrichment Online. Her work has been appeared in print magazines such as SISTERS, Azizah, An Nisaa, and As Sunnah An Nisaa.

In 2006, Umm Juwayriyah published her internationally-acclaimed novel, The Size of a Mustard Seed, the first urban Islamic fiction novel ever published. In 2012 she will publish her second novel, Hold Fast. She has been the recipient of many awards, scholarships, and grants including the prestigious Lorraine Hansberry Scholarship for contributions to multi-cultural fiction, and Canada’s An Nisaa’s Muslim Fiction Writer of the Year Award.

Having always been an avid reader, Umm desires to write about the urban Islamic experience in America. “As I became older, it became increasingly frustrating to me that none of my favorite authors wrote about little Muslim girls who lived where I lived and had the kind of life that I had. That lack of representation became my muse for years. I needed to write fiction that urban Western Muslims, specifically American Muslims could relate to.”¹

[1] “The Size of a Mustard Seed, Umm Juwayriyah,” IslamicBookstore.com.

Known For: Writer
Country: India

About

Sheema Khan was three years old when she emigrated with her family from India to Montreal. They wanted a country with a good education system and work opportunities. But mostly, they wanted to leave behind the sectarian violence between Hindus and Muslims in their Calcutta home.

Of Hockey and Hijab: Reflections of a Canadian Muslim Woman is a collection of 50-plus essays by Khan. It is obvious they started as newspaper columns — each is short and tied to new stories about terrorism, sharia law, the balance of rights between people of faith and those who do not want any signs of religion in the public square.

The short essays that form her book cover a range of topics, interweaving personal experiences of interfaith interactions and spiritual journeys as a Canadian Muslim woman with reflections on national and international political issues.

Known For: Playwright
Country: Iran

About

Naghmeh Samini is an Iranian playwright and tackles in her plays issues that women face in her country. She is an advocate about the progress women are making in theatre in Iran. One of her articles that she presented is called “Intertextuality and writing plays of women in Iran” which she presented at the Woman Playwrights International Conference (WPIC). Some of her work includes: The spell of the Burned Temple (2001) and Told by a Nightmare(2005).

Known For: Writer
Country: Iran

About

Marjane Satrapi was born in 1969 in Rasht, Iran. She grew up in Tehran, where she studied at the Lycee Francais before leaving for Vienna and then going to Strasbourg to study illustration. She currently lives in Paris, where she is at work on the sequel to Persepolis and where her illustrations appear regularly in newspapers and magazines. She is also the author of several children’s books.

Marjane became famous worldwide because of her critically acclaimed autobiographical graphic novels, originally published in French in four parts in 2000-2003 and in English translation in two parts in 2003 and 2004, respectively, as Persepolis and Persepolis 2, which describe her childhood in Iran and her adolescence in Europe. Persepolis won the Angoulême Coup de Coeur Award at the Angoulême International Comics Festival. Her later publication, Embroideries (Broderies) was also nominated for the Angoulême Album of the Year award in 2003, an award which was won by her most recent novel, Chicken with Plums (Poulet aux prunes). She has also contributed to the Op-Ed section of The New York Times.

Known For: Writer
Country: United States

About

J. Samia Mair, JD, MPH is the author of two children’s books and a freelance writer. She has published fiction, nonfiction, and poetry in magazines, books, and scientific journals. She writes on a variety of topics, including Islam, public health, and law. She publishes under ‘J. Samia Mair’ in her non-scientific publications.

Known For: Writer
Country: United Kingdom

About

Ilona Yusuf is a British-Pakistani poet, photographer, designer, journalist, and artist. She was born in England, but spent her teenage years in Lahore, Pakistan, where she went to school. Yusuf’s poetry has been published and she is currently the editor for the Amhara Literary Review, a collection featuring pieces written in English by South Asian authors. She also designs furniture, and uses her photography to make prints. She spends her time in both Pakistan and the United States (Arizona) and is married with children.

Known For: Writer
Country: Lebanon

About

Born to a Shi’a family in Lebanon, al-Shaykh graduated from American Girls College in Cairo, Egypt. She worked as a journalist for a newspaper, a woman’s magazine, and for a television channel until 1975, the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War. She lived in Saudi Arabia until 1982 and currently resides in London. Considered a major force in world literature, al-Shaykh’s short stories and novels, originally written in Arabic, have been translated into English, French, Dutch, German, Danish, Italian, Korean, Spanish, and Polish.

Al-Shaykh’s work is deeply conscious of gender and the pressures placed on women by “traditional” social structures of the Arab Middle East. As such, she follows in the footsteps of contemporary Arab women authors like Nawal El Saadawi. Al-Shaykh boldly challenges the gendered notions of obedience, modesty, and familiar relations in her work while celebrating the parts of Arab culture that are empowering to women and refusing to idealize “the West” or depict Arab women as powerless victims.

In addition to her prolific writing on the lived experiences of contemporary Arab women, Al-Shakh is part of a group of authors writing about the Lebanese Civil War. Hikayat Zahra (1980) or The Story of Zahra (1994), for example, poignantly chronicles the struggles of a young woman at the time of the Lebanese Civil war, exploring the connections between gender injustice and military violence.

Locations, whether the desert or the urbanscapes of Beirut and Lebanon, are not mere backdrops in her stories but function as active forces driving the narrative. Al-Shaykh has also been recognized for her formal innovations, her meticulous attention to detail, and elaborate use of the first person narrative.

Known For: Writer
Country: United States

About

G. Willow Wilson is an American author and essayist, who divides her time between Egypt and the United States. Her articles about modern religion and the Middle East have appeared in many prestigious publications, including the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times Magazine and the Canada National Post. In 2005, Wilson became the first western journalist to be granted a private interview with Sheikh Ali Gomaa following his promotion to the position of Grand Mufti of Egypt.

Wilson’s first graphic novel, Cairo, with art by M.K. Perker, was published by Vertigo in 2007. Labeled a “magical-realism thriller,” Cairo features an eclectic cast of characters: a drug runner, a struggling journalist, an American expatriate, a young activist, and an Israeli soldier, who interact in the magical urban streets of Cairo. In this work, Wilson drew upon real-life events as well as the deep mythology of Egypt, including folk stories of Jinn. Other graphic projects include Air, an ongoing series for DC’s literary imprint, Vertigo, an original graphic novel, as well as Vixen: Return of the Lion, a DC miniseries.

In 2010 Wilson published her critically acclaimed memoir The Butterfly Mosque: A Young American Woman’s Journey to Love and Islam, which chronicles her move from Boston to Cairo and her conversion to Islam. Called “a first-rate memoir and love story that is a delight to read” by The Library Journal, The Butterfly Mosque, is an uplifting, humorous, and insightful coming-of-age narrative depicting the story of a young woman who discovers love and learns to bridge two worlds.

Known For: Poet and Filmmaker
Country: Iran

About

Forugh Farrokhzad was one of Iran’s most pioneering female poets of the twentieth century. Though she died in her early thirties, she created a significant body of work in her lifetime.

Born in 1935, Forugh never finished high school and, against her family’s wishes, got married at the age of sixteen. Her marriage ended bitterly in three years and her husband was given full custody of their son since the court had ruled her unfit to raise a child. This ruling and its consequences became a “haunting force” in her life and poetry.¹ 

Some of the themes of her early poems were young love, the pain of separation, and the desperate search for love. In the 1950s, Forugh published three collections of poems in quick succession: Asir (Captive) in 1955, Divar (Wall) in 1956, and Osyan (Rebellion) in 1957. Although her poems are now regarded as “manifestly refreshing in the millennium old tradition of male Persian lyricism,” initially they were received with significant negativity from critics and readers. Forugh developed an unfortunate reputation as a result and was considered a threat to the Iranian sense of female modesty.²

This negative criticism took its toll on Forugh in September 1955 when she had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized for almost a month. Once she recovered, she began to address social issues in her poetry and developed a new interest in filmmaking with Ebrahim Golestan, a leading filmmaker. Together, they made four documentaries entitled Yek Atash (A Fire) in 1959, Khastegari (Courtship) in 1960, Ab va Garma (Water and Heat) in 1961, and Mowj va Marjan va Khara (Waves, Corals and Flintstones) in 1961. Some of these works received prizes at various European festivals, while her 1962 film about lepers, Khaneh Siah Ast, was considered her best.³

Forugh died in 1967 in a vehicle accident at the age of thirty-two. Her final poems were published in a posthumous volume entitled Iman Biavarim beh Aghaz-e Fasl-e Sard (Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season).⁴

[1] “Forugh Farrokhzad: A Landmark Iranian Artist, Revisited,” Muslim Voices: Arts and Ideas.

[2] ibid.

[3] ibid.

[4] ibid.

Known For: pediatrician, political and women’s activist, and poet.
Country: Kosovo

About

Flora Brovina, born in 1949, is a Kosovar-Albanian poet whose work reflects her dedication to women’s and children’s issues. She is the author of three volumes of poetry. The first volume, Verma emrin tim (Call me by my name), was published in 1973 and consists of 42 poems. Bimë e zë (Plant and voice), the second volume, appeared in 1979. More than two decades after her first publication, her third, Mat e çmat (With the tape it measures), has been described by Robert Elsie as “the most compelling and impressive of her volumes” for its reflections on “the fate of her people, with freedom and self-determination.”¹

A scholar of Albanian literatue and language, Elsie published a single book entitled Call Me By My Name: Poetry From Kosova. In addition to her concern for the future of the people of Kosovo, Flora’s poetry deals with “the fate of women in society” and women as mothers as well as the “personal, maternal, and feminist” dimensions of the “problems and aspirations of individuals.”²

In 2000, Flora was one of two recipients of the Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award given by PEN American Center to honor threatened or imprisoned writers. The previous year she was awarded Swedish PEN’s Tucholsky Award that similarly recognizes writers under threat of persecution or exile.

[1] “Flora Brovina. Call me by my name,” website of Robert Elsie.

[2] ibid.

Known For: Writer, Poet, and Professor
Country: United States

About

Farzaneh Milani is a writer and poet born and raised in Tehran, Iran. She attended French primary and secondary schools and earned her BA in French Literature from California State University at Hayward in 1970. She latter transferred to the University of California in Los Angeles where she completed a graduate degree in Comparative Literature in 1979. Her dissertation focused on the poetry of prominent Iranian poet, Forugh Farrokhzad.¹

Currently, Farzaneh is a Professor of Middle Eastern and South Asian languages and cultures at the University of Virginia. She also is the author of Veils and Words: The Emerging Voice of Iranian Women Writers.² It is the first book that focuses on the writing of Iranian women, specifically prominent writers of poetry, fiction and autobiographies. Some of the featured women include Tahereh Qorratol’Ayn, Parvin E’tessami, Forugh Farrokhzad, Simin Daneshvar and Tahereh Saffarzadeh.

Veils and Words examines the history of these writers in the context of social and cultural practices of their time such as veiling, unveiling, silence and revelation. Her book also discusses the hardships these writers faced for their craft, many of whom were confronted with accusations of immorality, promiscuity, heresy and some even were called lunatics.³

Farzaneh has had her poetry published in several literary journals. Her poems include Nimeye Digar, Par, Barrayand, Daneshju, Omid and Avaye Portland. In 1999, she published A Cup of Sin: Selected Poems of Simin Behbahani with Kaveh Safa.⁴ To date, Farzana has contributed to 100 articles, book chapters, introductions and afterwards in Persian and English and lectured at over 150 colleges and universities around the world. She is also the past president of the Association of Middle East Women’s Studies and the recipient of the Alumni Teaching Award in 1998.⁵

[1] Farzaneh Milani.

[2] Scholars Online: Milani.

[3] Veils and Words: The Emerging Voices of Iranian Women Writers.

[4] Scholars Online: Milani.

[5] ibid.

Known For: Writer
Country: Lebanon

About

Etel Adnan graduated from the Sorbonne University in Paris and continued her studies at Berkley and Harvard in the United States. In 2003, the journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS), called Adnan “arguably the most celebrated and accomplished Arab American author writing today.” She first found her voice through painting as a form of expression. She did not want to belong to a particular language oriented culture.

Later in life, she switched back and forth between image and writing. She illustrated many poems by well known contemporary artists including her own and wrote several masterpieces in different languages such as Sitt Marie Rose which became translated in more than ten languages.

Known For: Novelist
Country: Turkey

About

Elif Shafak (also spelled Elif Şafak) is a Turkish novelist and the best-selling female author in Turkey. Shafak holds a PhD in political science from Middle East Technical University. She writes non-fiction and fiction in Turkish as well as English.

Shafak’s work is characterized by a creative blending of Western and Eastern narrative styles and a thematic defiance of bigotry, xenophobia, and sexism. Her novels, such as the bestsellers The Bastard of Istanbul (2006) and Flea Palace (2004) challenge myths of national purity and present Istanbul as a city that embodies the traditional alongside the new, the Western alongside the Eastern. 

Mysticism is another thread in Shafak’s literary output, weaving in and out of almost all of her works and becoming central to a few. Her first novel, Pinhan (The Sufi) was awarded the “Mevlana Prize” in 1998, which is given to the best work in mystical literature in Turkey. Her second novel, Sehrin Aynalari (Mirrors of the City) explores Jewish and Islamic mysticism against the historical setting of the 17th-century Levant. Her 2010 bestseller, 40 Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi once again takes the subject head-on, interweaving the modern love story of a Jewish-American housewife and a Sufi living in Amsterdam through the story of the spiritual friendship between Rumi and Shams of Tabriz.

A public intellectual cognizant of the sociocultural importance of the novel, Shafak continues to write, teach, and contribute to various daily and monthly publications in Turkey, Europe, and the United States.

Known For: Author
Country: Saudi Arabia

About

Author of “The American Muslim Teenager’s Handbook,” Dilara is an author and activist currently living in Saudi Arabia and serving as Editorial Director at Destination Jeddah Magazine. She is an active writer, blogging for the Huffington Post, altmuslim.com, and other news outlets.

Born in Karachi, Pakistan, she holds degrees from John Hopkins University and the London School of Economics.

She has drawn upon her years of teaching weekend Islamic school, lecturing about Islam, and raising Muslim teenagers to contribute to The American Muslim Teenager’s Handbook.

Known For: Poet
Country: Pakistan

About

Born in 1948 in Karachi, Pakistan, Azra Abbas is a prominent feminist poet in Urdu literature.¹  After earning her master’s degree in Urdu at Karachi University, she taught Urdu literature at a government college. In 1981, she published an extended prose poem in stream-of-consciousness style, “Neend Ki Musafatain,” and since then, she has written three collections of poetry, a compilation of short stories, and a novel.²

Azra has most notably written about the challenges that comes with women’s roles in society. Domestic chores, sexual desire, and gender inequality are some of the issues she explores in her work. Azra blends the private and political life of women in meditating on the “hidden wonders and abysses in everyday life, and one scholar has described her work as capturing the “poetry of life’s prose.”³  For instance,  critics have described her poem, “A Dot Might Appear,” as a contemplative, evocative piece which “makes us wonder about, and even question, accepted perceptions and established priorities.”⁴

A dot might appear from somewhere
that could not be put
on any word
and the dot
alone
off by itself
would stand there
sustained by some illusion
waiting
for a word to come
on which it could be put⁵

Azra has also written a memoir entitled, Mera Bachpan, and her collections have been translated into English.⁶ 

[1] Ed. Reza Aslan, “Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East,” W. W. Norton & Company: New York, 2010.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Christina Oesterheld, “’An Evening of Caged Beasts:’ A Review Article,” The Annual of Urdu Studies.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Azra Abbas, “A Dot Might Appear”
[6] “In Their Own Voice: Azra Abbas and Anwer Sen Roy,” T2F.

Known For: Writer
Country: Iran

About

Author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi is an Iranian novelist. Nafisi lived in Iran until the age of thirteen, when she went to England for secondary school. After her return to Iran in 1979, and remained there for eighteen years. During Nafisi’s eighteen years in Iran, she taught English Literature at the University of Tehran, Free Islamic Azad University, and Allameh Tabatabaii; Nafisi was criticized for not wearing a veil, which actually prevented her from teaching between 1981 and 1987.

In her return to academia, Nafisi was subsequently chastised for the content of her courses, which prompted her to invite a select number of female students to come to her house so that they could read and discuss literature freely. Eventually, in 1997, Nafisi left Iran and began teaching in the United States where she authored Reading Lolita and Tehran and her two most recent works Things I’ve Been Silent About: Memories, and Republic of the Imagination. Azar Nafisi’s book, The Other World: Nabokov and the Puzzle of Exile will be published in Spring 2011.

Nafisi is currently a Professor and the director of Cultural Conversations at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC.

Known For: Poet
Country: United States

About

Adrian Jasper is a writer who was born and raised in Sacramento, California. She discovered her passion for writing as a child: at the age of five she began songwriting and by six, she began writing short children’s stories. One of her early successes was winning first place in The Afro Contest, a picture book contest. Adrian continued writing throughout her teenage years and into her twenties. Although she openly wrote short stories and poetry, she remained quiet about her songwriting until the increasing popularity of spoken word encouraged her to overcome her shyness.

Over the years Adrian has developed her poetry to address the political, the cultural and the religious. She started the Adrian Jasper Publishing to promote Islamic culture through poetry.¹ In May 2011 she wrote Lady Muslim with a Pen, which has been described as a unique and creative body of poetry influenced by Quranic verses and infused with Adrian’s spirit.² Her poems, which are often accompanied by the verses that inspired them, include Mama Said A Prayerand Liquor and Pork. In Lady Muslim with a Pen, Adrian touches upon a number of topics including prayer, women’s dress, motherhood, Quranic science, religious messengers, terrorism, the African slave trade, and the oneness of God.³ 

According to a book review by Imam Omar Shareef of Sacramento, Adrian is truly an Islamic poet: “Her use of prose and irregular stanzas strikes of authenticity and freshness, allowing the words to flow to the consciousness of everyday ordinary people.” ⁴

Adrian is currently the secretary of the Council of Sacramento Valley Islamic Organizations (COSVIO) and is working on an English Degree for Letters and Science online at National University.⁵

[1] Adrian Jasper: About.

[2] Adrian Jasper: Chapter Excerpts.

[3] ibid.

[4] Adrian Jasper: Book Review.

[5] Adrian Jasper: About.

Known For: Fashion Designer
Country: United States

About

From a young age, Zahiyya Abdul-Karim felt a passion for fashion design, graduating from high school with a concentration in art. She went on to Philadelphia University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to study fashion design. She later opened her own design company called Region Design Studio, Inc.¹ In addition to women’s clothing, Zahiyya also designs jewelry and baby clothing.

Zahiyya’s designs blend Afro-inspired prints with an urban edge. In her Heartland Collection, for instance, Zahiyya artfully combines military chic with everyday comfort. For one look, she designed an army green wraparound dress with three quarter length sleeves and a slight v-cut neckline, and in another, she used a green camouflage print to create a long sleeved shirt with ruched sleeves.² Her t-shirt collection consists of silk screened designs of “afro chic” and “afro diva” ladies in bold, fun colors.

Zahiyya was also awarded a grant by the Open Society Institute of the Soros Foundation to work as a Fellow at the Harlem Textile Works, a nonprofit organization which trains underprivileged youth in art, textile design, and entrepreneurship.³ Before launching her own line, she worked as a designer for many fashion design companies in both the United States and abroad. Her work has been awarded the National Association of Menswear Buyer’s “Excellence in Menswear” and “Best of Show” awards, and “Most Creative Collection” from Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science, and her designs have been featured in numerous articles from The New York Times, DNRM, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The City Paper, American Vision and Sew News Magazine.⁴

[1] Designer Zahiyya Abdul-Karim, Region USA.

[2] Gallery, Region USA.

[3] Designer Zahiyya Abdul-Karim, Region USA.

[4] ibid.

Known For: Fashion Designer
Country: Malaysia

About

Tom Saufi is a fashion designer from Malaysia who tries to combine Batiks with the current fashion trends. She is a graduate from the London School of Fashion and incorporates her national identity with the designs that she creates.

In 2001 she was selected as Designer of the Year and she was also nominated for Designer of the Year in the Malaysian international Fashion Awards of 2005.

She is exporting more of her Islamic apparel to the U.S. as she believes that Muslim women want to be able to be a little more trendy and would like to be able to express themselves through their clothing.

Known For: Fashion Designer ; Founder of Islamik Infusions
Country: United Kingdom

About

Takiyah Collins is one of the founders of Islamik Infusions, an organization in the United Kingdom that arranges inspirational events to promote unity among Muslim women. Its main goals are to provide Islamic services and products that help educate Muslims, highlight Muslim women who have created new enterprises, and to create an awareness of Islamic charities and services that are available.  This is done through articles published on Islamik Infusion’s website, informal gatherings such as luncheons, lectures and other events. The website also features poetry, recipes and advice for natural remedies.

Islamik Infusions also aims to brake down the barriers between Muslim women of all races and ages by putting on Muslim women-only events to encourage sisterhood and unity.¹ An example of such an event was a Muslim women-only luncheon to raise funds for revert2reality, an organization that provides support to new Muslims, both men and women as they learn about Islam.² The event consisted of games, an auction, stalls, and poetry by Sarah Ibrahim of NoFrills Poetry.³

An important part of Islamik Infusion’s work is to produce an Islamically oriented magazine for Muslim businesses in and around the London area. The aim is to provide a way for Muslim businesses to have a way to promote and market themselves in a cost effective way to the local community.⁴

[1] Islamik Infusions: Home.
[2] revert2reality: about us.
[3] Islamiki Infusions on Facebook.
[4] Islamik Infusions: Our Magazine.

Known For: Fashion Designer
Country: United Kingdom

About

Sarah Elenany is a rising fashion designer in London who has developed a new line for young Muslim women in response to the lack of stylish yet modest clothing. Elenany’s philosophy of ‘inclusive design’ has allowed her to design a clothing range that is attractive to both Muslims and non-Muslims.

As a teenager, Elenany designed her own clothes because she could not find clothing in shops that fit her well while also covering her appropriately to her standards. Although Elenany’s success in the new line has opened her up to the possibility of selling to high-end stores, she has decided to continue on her own to ensure that Muslim youth have a voice in fashion, “Lastly, a lot of people asked me why I don’t just produce clothing then let a big high street chain sell it under their own name. I thought about this, but then based on my experience of Muslims, I really thought there needed to be a brand –a brand which they could feel happy buying from, which would not exploit people who make the clothes and who wouldn’t donate profits to anything Muslims didn’t agree with. So the business ethics also reflect the needs of Muslims.”

Known For: Fashion Designer ; head of two separate brands: SAMIRA ATASH and a maternity line dubbed, It’s a Miracle Contemporary Maternity
Country: United States

About

“It’s hard enough to be a woman in this world but to be a Muslim/Afghan woman in the United States—and to be independent on top of that—definitely makes you strong.” -Samira Atash

Afghan-American designer, Samira Atash designs two different brands: one, SAMIRA ATASH, is described as when East meets West and is inspired by the Silk Road. Her other brand, It’s A Miracle Contemporary Maternity “offers contemporary for stylish women who don’t want to show too much skin.” Through her lines, she blends her Middle Eastern/Islamic heritage with the Western culture she was raised in.

With both a mother and grandmother that can sew, Atash learned the craft at home, honing it over the years. After earning degrees in both Marketing and Fashion, Atash moved to New York City to begin work on her brand.

Her designs have been featured in film and television, including Men in Black II, the upcoming Salt, starring Angelina Jolie, and CNN. Moreover, she has been covered by the Washington Post, the Oxygen Network, and National Geographic.

A two-time nominee for Fashion Group International’s Rising Star Award, Atash is also the creator-producer-host of Beauty and the East TV, a video blog which features Muslim/Middle Eastern musicians. Atash has further forayed into film and television through her role in FireDancer, the first Afghan film to be submitted for an Academy Award and the Tribeca Film Festival.

Photo courtesy Sadia Nosheen

Known For: Fashion Designer
Country: United Kingdom

About

Sadia Nosheen is a mother of two and creator of Masoomah. Her interest in jilbabs was born at the university where she studied Law. During that time she started her journey in exploring Islam, and soon began designing Islamic attire. Sadia picked up vital sewing knowledge from her mother during childhood, which was instrumental in cultivating her future in fashion. Growing up, Sadia was challenged, searching for Islamic clothing that was, comfortable and fitting for a young Muslimah in a university and work atmosphere.

Known For: Evening wear designer
Country: United States

About

Nzinga Knight is a Muslim American evening wear designer. In 2008, Nzinga launched her own line.¹ Her debut collection draws upon elegant draping and fluid lines to create bold yet sophisticated clothing, and her use of bright, solid colors and silk fabrics reflect a cosmopolitan, modest flair.

As a native of New York, Nzinga aims to create stylish clothing for women like herself – “Women with attitude, style and confidence.”² In one look called “Twareg,” Nzinga asymmetrically draped the front of a dress and created a long shawl in the back that could be also be used as a veil.³ Made out of a silk jersey fabric, the dress is a vivid midnight blue with long, flowing sleeves. In her “Cyndi” dress, Nzinga used a silk jersey in a dark lavender shade to create long, sleek 1930s-inspired look.⁴ With a snakelike gemstone beading at the neckline, the dress is an elegant yet sophisticated vision of the modern Muslim woman.

In an interview with Hijabtrendz, Nzinga said that aims to create eveningwear that does not rely on sex appeal. “With most of eveningwear being about sex appeal as opposed to elegance,” she said. “Women should be beautified, not exposed. So, I am about dignifying and beautifying women and giving them a beautiful option of modest high-end American eveningwear. I’m very pro-women, and pro-femininity.”⁵

Nzinga is a graduate of the Pratt Institute School of Design and is the recipient of Council of Fashion Designers of America Award. She has also been awarded a DCA Grant and was the winner of the 2008 Power UP Business Plan competition sponsored by Citigroup. Before launching her own line, Nzinga worked at Marc Jacobs, ThreeAsFour, Reva Mivasager and Jones NY.⁶ She has also been featured in the film, “Fashioning Faith.”

[1] “About Nzinga Knight,” NzingaKnight.com.
[2] ibid.
[3] “Twareg,” NzingaKnight.com.
[4] “Cyndi,” NzingaKnight.com.
[5] “Nzinga Knight,” Hijabtrendz.com.
[6] “About Nzinga Knight,” NzingaKnight.com.

Known For: Fashion and Jewelry Designer
Country: United States

About

Since its founding in 2003, IslamicGems remains faithful in their commitment to providing the highest quality hijab jewelry to the fashion forward Muslimah. The company has over 8 years experience in producing unparalleled innovative design. Combining functionality and beauty, IslamicGems’ pins provide dual support and quick interchangeability without compromising style. With a loyal fan base in 19 countries, the demand for our pins continues to grow locally and internationally.

About the designer, Nida Mirza:

Self taught custom hijab jewelry designer Nida Mirza, builds on her strong Islamic traditions as well as her interest in design. In 2003, while completing her dual degrees at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in Manhattan, New York; she realized the lack of Islamic inspired accessories. This motivated her to create contemporary hijab jewelry for herself and her friends. Based on the positive response and increased demand for her unique style of hijab jewelry, in 2008 she created an E-boutique called IslamicGems.com. What started as a hobby, making a few pins, grew to being several original collections and a successful online business.

Nida currently lives in Queens, NY and continues to design and inspire Muslim women around the world to feel confident and incorporate fashion in their Islamic attire while still being modest and true to their religious obligations.

Known For: Fashion Designer
Country: Iran

About

Neda, a fashion designer, model, published poet and PhD student moved to Melbourne in 2005 on a scholarship to do her PhD in chemistry at RMIT, after having completed her master’s of textile engineering in Iran. She has also launched a fledgling modeling career, often wearing her own designs.

Neda’s passions are fashion and science - a stereotype-busting combination at a time when the clothing choices of Muslim women, especially the face and body-covering burqa, are the subject of intense debate.

Her latest research paper was featured as a ‘hot paper’ in the prestigious peer reviewed international journal of Royal Society of Chemistry, London. She said enjoyed both her rigorous scientific work and glamorous modeling life.

Known For: "Haute hijab" fashion designer
Country: United States

About

With her sister Tasneem Sabri, Marwa Atik designs handmade headscarves inspired by high fashion trends.¹  Together they started Vela Scarves, an up-and-coming label that specializes in stylish headscarves. Based on Southern California, Marwa sees headscarves as a piece of clothing that demands style, rather than as a mere accessory to outfits. She hopes her designs will show that modest fashion choices do not require women to abandon their sense of style.² 

Vela Scarves are playful yet sophisticated. The scarf, “Victorian Pleat,” features four layers of elegant, handmade pleating, and the “Cat’s Meow” is a fun leopard print wrap scarf.³  Marwa designed another coral pink scarf with a cream bow overlaid by a black velvet paisley print, and it is called the “Blaire” after the Gossip Girl character.⁴  The success of Vela Scarves has encouraged Marwa to launch a new clothing line as well as a bridal hijab line in the coming future.⁵ 

[1] Raja Abdulrahim, “Islamic Head Scarves Take Fashion Cues,” The Los Angeles Times, October 7, 2010.
[2] ibid.
[3] Velascarves.com
[4] Raja Abdulrahim, “Islamic Head Scarves Take Fashion Cues,” The Los Angeles Times, October 7, 2010.
[5] ibid.

Known For: Fashion Designer
Country: United States

About

Based in New Jersey, Brook Samad is a fashion designer who aims to create modest, yet stylish clothing. Using $8,000 she had in savings, Brook launched her fashion line Marabo in 2006.¹ Initially, Brook designed long skirts and sold them at a community bazaar.² Her designs were so successful that she began designing long sleeved shirts, tunics,jackets, and pants. Brook’s clothing balances fun prints with bold colors while always ensuring a modest touch.

After converting to Islam, Brook felt that fashionable Muslimahs were overlooked in the fashion world. As a teenager, Brook had designed her own clothes and wore them to school, so designing outfits came naturally to her. “I remember feeling like I had no idea how to dress once I became Muslim.  I wanted to maintain my identity as a stylish woman while not compromising my religious values.” She said in an interview with Hijabtrendz.  “I thought it would be nice to provide a one-stop shopping outlet for Muslimahs where you know the clothes will be stylish yet you never have to check for slits in the skirts or worry that the shirts in the summer will be sleeveless.”³

[1] “Marabo: New Fashions for Muslim Women,” Seyfettin.
[2] “VIDEO with Muslim Fashion Designer Brook Samad,” ModestFlair.com.
[3] “Maraboo Fashion” Hijabtrendz.com

Known For: Fashion Designer
Country: United States

About

Shifting from a career as a therapist, Bayan Jondy decided to pursue fashion after feeling frustrated with mainstream clothing designs. At first, Bayan began by sketching and designing her own clothing, but after encouragement from family and friends, she started her own clothing company, Zeena, which means “beautiful ornament” in Arabic.¹ 

Bayan’s designs aim to be modest and unique, striving to create “boutique-like” pieces.²  Zeena’s line offers scarves, skirts, tops, and jewelry. Using colorful prints, her clothing is fun yet sophisticated. In one outfit, Bayan designed a loose, ruffled tunic perfect for spring, which comes in forest green, violet, or ocean blue.³  In another, Bayan designed a more casual, comfortable knee-length hoodie that is meant for unwinding at home.⁴ 

In an interview, Bayan recalls the frustration of having to wear numerous layers of clothing, especially in the summer. “I truly wanted Muslim women to feel confident and beautiful wearing modest clothing. Up until we launched, I felt that our options for fashionable clothing in line with my beliefs were very limited. I was frustrated with not being able to find the kind of clothing that reflected my personality and uniqueness …I always knew I wanted to make my own designs, but I never imagined it on this scale.”⁵ 

[1] “Simply Zeena,” Hijabtrendz.com , January 24, 2011.
[2] ibid.
[3] “Ruffle top,” Simplyzeena.com.
[4] “Ribbed Hoodie,” Simplyzeena.com.
[5] Sarah Jawaid, “An Interview with Bayan Jondy,” Altmuslimah.com.

Known For: Fashion Designer
Country: Lebanon

About

Aheda Zanetti is a Lebanese-Australian designer, most famous for her creation of the “burqini/burkini”, a special swimsuit designed for Muslim women in 2003. The burquini was recently under scrutiny due to the French attempted ban on the suits, under the cause that they are not secular. In spite of the controversy, Zanetti’s swimsuit line is flourishing, and she continues to provide opportunities for Muslim women to participate in activities, that they might otherwise be excluded from.

Known For: Culinary
Country: United States

About

Yvonne Maffei, M.A., is a culinary educator and the founder and editor of “My Halal Kitchen,” a halal food and cooking blog. My Halal Kitchen’s mission “is to provide home cooks with the tools to prepare halal meals, including those with the necessary substitutions to make every dish halal. It aims to make the lives of readers better by expanding the list of available recipes that are healthy, delicious, economical and halal.”

Yvonne Maffei is currently working on a cookbook and continues to write and develop recipes for her blog. She lives in Chicago, IL with her husband.

Known For: Culinary
Country: India

About

Nasima Aziz considers herself to be a poet, a playwright, a writer, and a cook. Originally from Lucknow, she seems to incorporate traditional recipes into her cook books. She has written a few cook books including Mughal Flavours and Indian Vegetarian Cuisine.  She also edited a cookbook titled The Original Organic Cookbook: Recipes for Healthy Living.  Aziz commented in an article in “The Economic Times” that she “tried to make the book reader-friendly with cross- references… It was easy to edit because the book had real substance.”

Known For: Head Chef at Günaydın, a chain of meat restaurants in Istanbul, Turkey
Country: Turkey

About

Ebru Akpınar is a head chef at Istanbul’s Günaydın steakhouse chain, responsible for 23 locations. She has been carving a niche for herself in a male-dominated world for 15 years. She readily debunks the traditional idea that girls learn to cook from their mothers in the home.  Her mother “cooks awfully,” she says, and her father, preoccupied with his work in the textile industry had no interest in cooking.¹ 

It was restaurateur Ömer Salur who poached her from her university studies in economics in order to learn the restaurant business. Though she learned the technical side of cooking and restaurant management from Ömer, she believes she also has an innate talent. “I believe God gives everyone a talent.  Some are born to make music, […] I was born to be a chef,” asserts Ebru.² Specializing in Turkish and Mediterranean cuisines, she has traveled to Antep, Urfa, Mardin, Trabzon, and Kayseri to master the nuances in the local cooking that contain different spices and ingredients.

As she has risen through the ranks and has been given more and more authority in the kitchen, Ebru has had to deal with men that were skeptical about being given direction by a woman. She has no tolerance for insubordination and says that the skeptical are soon swayed to her way of seeing things by her dedication to her work as well as her experience.³ 

[1]“Female chef in Turkey takes on male-dominated world,” Hürriyet Daily News.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

Known For: Crafts
Country: United States

About

Sisters Zahiyah and Hadiyah Majeed are the masterminds behind the stunning pieces of Obie K. Jewelry. They are two young American college students who started making handmade beaded jewelry when they were in elementary school. They have honed their craft and launched Obie K. Jewelry in the fall of 2009.

Their jewelry line incorporates semi-precious stones, acrylic, plastic, glass, metal, crystal, and wooden beads. They have said, “We are inspired by almost anything and we love to explore our creativity… We hand make our jewelry to the highest standard with love. We make jewelry for every woman.  We love to see the smiles and beautiful transformations that the jewelry creates when someone tries a piece on.” 

Their jewelry style is a mixture of bohemian chic, American contemporary, urban, and some ethnic elements. They have hopes of selling in high-end stores and they want to expand their business to clothing, shoes, and purses.

Known For: Crafts
Country: Indonesia

About

After noticing that her niece was playing with western Barbie dolls that were dressed in inappropriate clothing, Sukmawati decided that she wanted to create some sort of doll that Muslim girls could play with that maintained cultural values.  She worried that these western Barbie dolls that wore tight clothing and had disproportionately sized bodies might have a negative effect on the development of young girls all over the world.  Thus, she decided to create her own version of a Barbie doll that would be dressed in more appropriate clothing and that also would fit well with Islamic values.

Sukmawati named the doll “Salma,” which originates from the Arabic word that means peace.  She has her dolls imported from China and then she designs their outfits in typical Arab dress.  The dolls have the option of being dressed in the typical black abaya but can also be dressed in white colored prayer dresses.  Little girls who play with Salma can put on headscarves that match the colors of her outfits- all of which are full covering.

Sukmawati’s next plans are to export these dolls to countries such as Brunei and Malaysia, both of which have large Muslim populations.  She hopes that these dolls serve as role models for younger Muslim girls.

Known For: Fine Jewelry Artisan
Country: India

About

Shyama Baskar is a fine jewelry designer. From a young age, Shyama was taught to appreciate beauty and elegance as she grew up in Simla, India, a resort town in the Grand Himalaya Mountains where many festive balls and performances were held for the Indian viceroy and royal court.¹ In an interview with Azizah magazine, Shyama reflected on her childhood, saying, “I was taught to value beauty, grace, and elegance – truth and integrity. All these attributes are essential to design.”² Based out of Los Altos, California, Shyama Baskar now owns her own jewelry design business, Reveti. 

Shyama works with precious and semiprecious metals and gems – diamonds, pearls, rubies, gold, silver, emeralds, among others – in creating intricately luxurious necklaces, bracelets, and earrings. She also worked on designing a silver trophy chest, which was given by Queen Elizabeth to India on the 50th anniversary of India’s independence.³ After travelling at various design schools throughout Europe, she honed her skills under the supervision of Dennis Gardnier, the former master designer for Cartier. She finds inspiration for her work in spirituality. “Your work is an expression of yourself and you must have balance and harmony within before you can create it outside. You have to evolve as a person. Designs have to evolve out of you.”⁴

[1] Nuzalita, “Precious and Unique,” Azizah Magazine, Volume 4, Issue 1.

[2] ibid.

[3] ibid.

[4] ibid.

Known For: Ceramic Artist
Country: United Kingdom

About

Shahida Ahmed first discovered her passion for ceramics as student waiting for her sister’s pottery class to finish. In an interview, Shahida shares how a serendipitous afternoon changed her life. After the instructor of her sister’s pottery class invited her to come in, she fell in love with pottery. “I thoroughly enjoyed the manipulation of clay and the enjoyment I achieved from making sculptural pieces,…Clay related to me and my spirituality. Allah says He made man from clay; each piece of art is unique, handmade and represents various expressions of traditional arts.”¹  From that day on, her accidental foray in ceramics turned into a lifelong passion.

Today, Shahida is an acclaimed ceramic artist who incorporates Islamic calligraphy into her work. Azizah magazine described her work as a “feast for the eye and soul, as her ceramics evoke a time of handcrafted quality and its tradition in Islamic art.”²  Shahida also creates Arab script as three dimensional works of art, which is similar to the artistic style of the Mughals. Although it can be challenging for Muslim female artists to break into the mainstream art scene, Shahida has made a name for herself as a talented artist. In 2009, Shahida presented an elegantly crafted hollow ceramic cube decorated in Islamic calligraphy to Prince Charles in London.³  In addition, she has been nominated numerous times for awards and is the CEO of Creative Colours, a program to launch the first handwritten Quran in the United Kingdom.

Of Pakistani heritage, Shahida draws inspiration from the architectural styles of Pakistan, in addition to Sufi poetry and her travels to Turkey and Morocco. She says she hopes to use art as a “tool that can create dialogue and cohesion,” as exemplified in places built by Muslims that are now renowned, like the Taj Mahal and the Alhambra.⁴ 

[1] Kelly Izdihar Crosby, “Capturing the Beauty,” Azizah, June 21, 2011.
[2] ibid.
[3] ibid.
[4] ibid.

Known For: Olympics 2012
Dates: 1993 - Present
Country: Brunei

About

In 2012, Maziah Mahusin will be the first Bruneian Muslim woman to ever represent her country in the Olympics – she will be running the 400 meter hurdles at the 2012 London Olympics.

A determined athlete, and former national hockey player, Maziah is no stranger to tough competition. She has spent years preparing for this special moment and has competed in numerous international and national events. In June 2011, Maziah won the Best Athlete award at the Youth Sports Festival (PSR). In 2012, she competed at the IAAF World Indoor Championships in Turkey. In the recent 2012 Borneo Games, Maziah secured one gold and one silver medal for Brunei.

As the first Bruneian woman to fly the national flag of Brunei at the London 2012 Olympics, Maziah has determined to break her own record “even if by a second.”

Known For: Boxing/Olympics 2012
Dates: 1993 - Present
Country: Afghanistan

About

In 2012, Sadaf Rahimi will be the first ever female boxing Olympiad and the first Muslim woman boxer to take part in this inaugural Olympic sport. Ten years after the toppling of the Taliban, Sadaf will represent her country in an activity once forbidden to Afghan women.
 
Inspired by Laila Ali (daughter of world champion boxer, Muhammad Ali), Sadaf began training with the Afghan Olympic team in 2007. Given the restrictions on women in sports of any kind in Afghanistan, Sadaf trained for just three hours per week with basic equipment in Kabul’s infamous Ghazi Stadium. Her training sessions increased over time and, at the age of 18, Sadaf has become a recognized figure in the rare sport of female boxing in Afghanistan. She has been featured, along with other amateur female Afghan boxers, in the Canadian documentary “The Boxing Girls of Kabul.” The film follows the lives of a group of determined young boxers over the course of a year as they train and dream of becoming professional athletes.

In the months leading up to the Olympics, Sadaf practiced her boxing skills in a well equipped gym in Cardiff, Wales. Here, Sadaf would find herself a world away from Ghazi Stadium and just a few hundred miles from the Olympic boxing ring of her dreams. A realist at heart, Sadaf understands that her opponents in the London 2012 Olympics are more powerful and, she says, “even twice as good as me, but I have prepared myself to participate and win a medal.”

Known For: Lawyer/Diplomat/President of the 61st United Nations General Assembly 2006-2007
Dates: 1952 - Present
Country: Bahrain

About

Sheikha Haya Rashed Al-Khalifa is the first Arab Muslim woman to preside over the United Nations General Assembly and the first Bahraini female Ambassador to France.

From 2006 – 2007, Sheikha Haya served as the 61st President of the United Nations General Assembly. She was the third woman to preside over the General Assembly since it was founded in 1945. Before her prestigious election, Sheikha Haya served as Bahrain’s Ambassador to France. She also served as Bahrain’s permanent delegate to UNESCO, as well as Bahrain’s nonresident Ambassador to Belgium, Switzerland, and Spain.

Sheikha Haya practices law in Bahrain and manages her own law practice - the Haya Rashed Al Khalifa Law Firm. She graduated from the University of Kuwait with a Bachelor of Law degree 1974, and followed this in 1986 with a degree in Civil Rights Private Law from the University of Alexandria, Egypt, and Comparative Law from the University of Ain Shams, Egypt, in 1988.

Sheikha Haya is a tireless advocate for peace, education, gender equality, and the enhancement of women’s roles as decision makers and leaders. In 2007, Sheikha Haya received the United Nations Millennium Development Goals Special Award in 2007 and the Path to Peace Award for her efforts to global promote peace.

Known For: Chief Prosecutor, International Criminal Court (ICC) 2012
Dates: 1961 - Present
Country: Gambia

About

On June 16, 2012, Fatou Bensouda became the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal. As Chief Prosecutor, Fatou is the ICC’s second elected prosecutor and the first African woman to hold this esteemed position.

Fatou is known for her intellect, soft-spoken thoughtfulness, determined and forceful pursuit of justice, and leadership in pressing governments to support the rule of law. In 2012, TIME Magazine named her one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. In 2011 she received the World Peace Through Law Award by The Whitney Harris World Law Institute, Washington University.  In 2010, she was named the 4th most influential personality in Africa in the Civil Society Category by Jeune Afrique Magazine. In 2009, Fatou was presented with the ICJ International Jurist Award for her contributions to national and international criminal law.  Finally, in 2008, she was selected as one of the 100 most influential African personalities by Jeune Afrique Magazine.

Fatou was born and raised in Banjul, Gambia, and is fluent in English and French. She became Gambia’s first maritime law expert upon receipt of her Master’s degree in International Maritime Law and Law of The Sea from UN/IMO International Maritime Law Institute. She holds both a Barrister-at-Law from Nigeria Law School, as well as a Bachelor of Laws-LLB from the University of IFE (Now OAU University) in Nigeria. Before joining the ICC, Fatou was the Senior Legal Advisor and Head of The Legal Advisory Unit at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania. Prior to this, Fatou was the General Manager of a leading commercial bank in Gambia. Between 1987 and 2000, she held the following positions in Gambia: Senior State Counsel, Principal State Counsel, Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions, Solicitor General and Legal Secretary of the Republic, and Attorney General and Minister of Justice.  As Minister of Justice, Fatou served as the Chief Legal Advisor to the President and Cabinet of Gambia.

Known For: Civil rights attorney/writer
Dates: 1978 - Present
Country: United States

About

Nura Maznavi is a civil rights attorney, writer, and Fulbright scholar and the co-editor of the non-fiction anthology Love, InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women (Soft Skull Press, 2012).

Nura has worked with the national legal advocacy organization, Muslim Advocates, where she led its Program to End Racial and Religious Profiling. At Muslim Advocates Nura focused on federal policies that target the American Muslim community, including FBI surveillance and border profiling.

Prior to joining Muslim Advocates, Nura was an associate with the law firm Rosen, Bien & Galvan in San Francisco, litigating prisoner rights class actions on behalf of California state prisoners. Nura was also a staff attorney for the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and a Fulbright Scholar in Sri Lanka, where she worked with local and international non-governmental organizations on issues effecting Sri Lankan migrant workers. Nura received her BA in Politics from Pomona College and her JD from The George Washington University School of Law.

Known For: Feminist /Women's Rights Advocate/Egyptian Nationalist/Author
Dates: 1879 - 1947
Country: Egypt

About

Huda Shaarawi was one of the first outspoken female activists in Egypt. Born in Cairo in 1879 to a wealthy family, Huda lived the early years of her life in a harem only to become a central figure in early twentieth century Egyptian feminism. At the age of thirteen she was married against her wishes, as a second wife, to her much older cousin Ali Shaarawi, himself a leading political activist. She agreed to the marriage to pacify her parents and, in the initial years, remained separate from her husband to pursue her education. Ultimately, the marriage proved to be a mutually beneficial partnership; Ali supported his wife’s aspirations and often sought her council on political issues.

Huda’s early marriage and childhood harem experience, which she would later recall in her book, “Harem Years,” ignited in her a strong sense of resentfulness toward the patriarchal system in which she was raised. Thus, her role in the enlightenment of Egyptian women began. In 1908, Huda created the first Egyptian Philanthropic Society by and for Egyptian women.  In 1910, she created a school for girls, whose primary focus was to teach academic rather than domestic subjects. As Huda’s passion and activism for women’s rights evolved over the years, so too did her political passion and involvement in Egypt’s national struggle against British colonial presence.  She openly challenged the traditional perceptions of women in Egyptian culture as well as the lack of women’s participation in public and political spheres. In 1919 Huda organized an anti-British demonstration which brought Egyptian women out the streets in a show of both women’s solidarity and nationalist protest against the colonial existence. Huda then joined and was elected head of the Wafdist Women’s Central Committee. She would, however, soon grow disillusioned with this political party for ignoring the needs of Egyptian women. With this, Huda left the Wafdist party to concentrate her efforts on the Egyptian Feminist Union, an organization which she founded and headed. The organization published l’Egyptienne (el-Masreyya), a feminist magazine which advocated for Egyptian women’s rights, and was the first of its kind in Egypt,

In 1922, after her husband’s death, Huda traveled to Europe and represented Egyptian women at European conferences for women.  Huda continued as a staunch advocate for Egyptian women’s rights until her death in 1947.  She died at the age of sixty-eight.

Country: Philippines

Known For: Women’s rights and advocacy
Country: United States

About

Sara Khan is the Program Director at Maitri, an agency that works with families facing domestic violence, cultural alienation, family conflict and human trafficking. Sarah acts as the liaison between the staff and the clients on one hand and the executive board and the community on the other. She joined Maitri in 2004 as the Program Coordinator, starting with direct client interaction before taking her on the role of Program Direction in 2006.

Sara is a Commissioner for the Santa Clara County Domestic Violence Council and a member of the Police Victim Advocacy Committee and the Domestic Violence Immigrant Survivor Committee. She is also a member of the South Bay Coalition to End Human Trafficking, a collaborative of community-based nonprofits providing comprehensive services to victims of trafficking in the counties of Monterey, San Benito, Santa Clara, and Santa Cruz.  She is also a part of the APIIDV Gathering Strength Committee which focuses on gender equity for immigrants and refugees. Prior to Maitri, Sarah worked with Unified New Cassel Community Revitalization Corporation (UNCCRC) as Community Outreach. She volunteered and advocated for survivors of domestic violence at the Islamic Center of Long Island. She has been an advocate for survivors of domestic violence and cultural isolation for 13 years.

Originally from Kashmir, she is multilingual and multicultural. She has a BA in History, MA in political Science and an M. Phil in International Relations. She is fluent in various South Asian Languages like Urdu, Hindi, Kashmiri and can get by in Tamil. She lives with her family in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Known For: Entrepreneur/Columnist/Expert on Women & Investment/ Consultant /Speaker
Country: Canada

About

Tara Uzra Dawood is CEO of Dawood Capital Management Ltd. (DCM), a leading asset management company which she established in 2003. DCM is based in Pakistan, where Tara moved in 2000, and is sponsored by Asian Development Bank. With the success of DCM, Tara was able to launch LADIESFUND in 2007. LADIESFUND is a pro bono investment advisory firm, which works exclusively with women clients and entrepreneurs to help women in need financial guidance. As it has evolved, LADIESFUND has gained momentum and created a community unto itself. It is comprised of five wings: Investors and Supporters, Management, Brand Ambassadors, an Advisory Council, and a Student Advisory Board and Volunteers.

At the age of 14, Tara was selected as Canada’s Youth News Representative, which is the youth wing of the Associated Press. With her entrepreneurial savvy as a young journalist, Tara established a network of links with cosmetic labels, record labels and movie studios in Canada, the United States, and Europe. Tara went on to study at Cornell University, Oxford University, and Harvard Law School, where she won numerous awards, scholarships and fellowships , and became a member of the New York Bar. Tara relocated to Pakistan thereafter, where she revamped the venture capital company Pakistan Venture Capital Ltd. and followed this with the creation of her namesake company, Dawood Capital Management Ltd.

Tara is a recognized world speaker on issues regarding women’s investment and responsible investment, both sharia-compliant and conventional mutual funds. She has been a keynote speaker on these topics at numerous conferences around the world. She is also on the board of a number of high profile organizations. Tara is a columnist and freelance writer for magazines and online media, such as 85Broads, the Toronto Sun, and the Girl Friday column for The Friday Times of Pakistan.

Known For: Women’s rights activist, writer
Country: India

About

Naish Hasan is the founder and president of Muslim Manila Aandolan (Indian Muslim Women’s movement) which has been working in India since 2007. She is chief editor of “Musalman Auratein (Muslim women)” and writes on issues of Muslim women in a number of journals and magazines. She is committed to raising the voices of Muslim women in India through written and visual media.

During the communal riots which broke out in 1992 in Ayodhya, Naish witnessed the destruction of her parents’ home and the death of many household members. These riots had a negative impact on Muslim women and girls in this region. Women’s education came to a halt, burqa restrictions were increased, Muslim women were not allowed to go out freely and could no longer work. It was at this juncture in her life that Naish realized she had a role to play in combating the injustices toward Muslim women in her community and in India. A victim of violence against women herself, she struggled to complete her education, and eventually earned a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in Economics from Avadh University, as well as Master of Philosophy in Social Science from Lucknow University. Naish also joined a women’s organization which further inspired her to pursue a career in women’s rights and advocacy.

For over a decade Naish Hasan has been working in the women’s rights field in India, and specifically with Muslim women. She is a passionate advocate for Muslim women’s identity in India. Her aim is to protect Indian Muslim women who experience simultaneous exploitation by their male counterparts in the name of religion and by the government due to their minority status. Naish has conducted trainings on the subjects of gender violence, women’s law, women’s rights, and women’s rights in the Qur’an. Her goal is to create society free of discrimination and gender based exploitation where human rights, dignity, and secularism are the foundation of one’s existence. 

Known For: Professor/Author/Gender and Social Justice
Country: Canada

About

Ayesha S. Chaudhry is Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies and Gender Studies in the Department of Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies and the Institute for Race, Gender, Sexuality and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia.  Her teaching and research interests include Islamic law, Qur’anic exegesis, and feminist hermeneutics.  She is the author of Domestic Violence and the Islamic Tradition: Ethics, Law and the Muslim Discourse on Gender (forthcoming, Oxford University Press).  This book explores the relationship of modern Muslims to the inherited Islamic tradition through a study of legal and exegetical discussions of wife-beating in the pre-modern and modern periods.

Currently, Ayesha is working on a collaborative project of inter-faith feminist hermeneutics, which explores and challenges the limits of feminist interpretations of patriarchal religious texts in the three Abrahamic faiths.  She is also developing methods of bridging the academic and community divide by translating her research interests into theatre based performance art that might appeal to a wider audience.  This project is entitled “Re/Covering Identities” and explores the meanings of multiple intersecting political discourses surrounding Muslim women’s sartorial choices.

Known For: Religious scholar, Resistance Fighter
Dates: 1830 - 1863
Country: Algeria

About

Lalla Fatma N’Soumer was born in 1830, the year the French colonial powers landed in Algeria. Known for her excellent memory as a child, her strong-willed personality, extreme intelligence in Qur’anic and Hadith scholarship, and her bravery in the face of French military assaults on her town, Lalla Fatma is among Algeria’s most prominent female historical icons. Her real name was Fatma Sid Ahmed; “Lalla” is a term of respect and honor which was attributed to her for the various roles she played as a dignified member of her town during the early Algerian resistance. The name N’Soumer is an attribution to the Kabyle town in which she lived, Soumer.

Lalla Fatma’s life appears to have been shaped by three main moments. First, as a young girl, she insisted on attending her father’s Qur’an lessons, where she learned and memorized the Qur’an alongside her father’s male students. Upon her father’s death, she played a pivotal role in the continuation of his Qur’an school. Second, as a teenager, she refused the marriage which had been arranged for her, and preferred instead to continue to educate herself. In result, Lalla Fatma became well known far and beyond her hometown and was sought after for her religious knowledge and, it is said, for her ability to predict the future. Finally, in 1854, Lalle Fatma joined the forces of the Algerian hero, Boubaghla, against the Algerian advance, which eventually led to the defeat of the French General Rondon in the battle of Azazga. The French ultimately called for a ceasefire that same year, which they broke three years later in 1857. At that time, Lalla Fatma rallied troops and mobilized volunteers, both men and women, and led the army in response to the surprise French attacks. Despite the strong and determined resistance, Lalla Fatma’s army was ultimately overwhelmed by French military might and the battle was lost to the French. Many of Lalla Fatma’s army died and many were imprisoned, including Lalla Fatma. She died in 1863, having succumbed to the effects ill health and incarceration. Lalla Fatma N’Soumer was 33 years old at the time of her death.

Known For: Politician, Social Justice Activist
Dates: 1965 -
Country: France

About

In 2011, Fadela Amara was named France’s Inspector General for Social Affairs.  Fadela is a French politician, author, and an outspoken activist for social justice and women’s rights. One of eleven children born to working class, Algerian immigrant parents, she was raised in one of the many poor suburbs of Paris, known as “ghettos.” Fadela’s activist heart was awakened when, at the age of fourteen, she witnessed the death of her five-year old brother, who was killed by a drunk driver. Incredulous at the insults and mistreatment her parents received at the hands of French police, who subsequently sided with the drunk man, Fadela began taking on myriad causes which highlighted the injustices experienced by the marginalized, immigrant populations of the ghettos.

In 1983, Fadela joined an equal rights march for second generation North African immigrants. The march began in Marseille with just a few protestors and grew to almost 100,000 protestors by the time it reached Paris. For the next decade, Fadela’s activist path would continue to address the social decomposition of immigrant neighborhoods, violence against women in immigrant communities, and the ethnic and cultural diversity of contemporary French society. In 2001, Fadela was elected as a municipal member of the Socialist Party. Soon after, in 2003, she organized a march entitled Ni Putes Ni Soumises (Neither Whores Nor Submissive) in response to violent attacks against women in the immigrant suburbs.  Fadela would later become president of a women’s rights advocacy organization by the same name.  In 2007, Fadela was named Junior Minister of Urban Policy by President Sarkozy, where the core responsibilities of her position concentrated on the rehabilitation of the ghettos. This job would bring Fadela full circle to her roots as a young activist for the rights of immigrants in the suburb “satellite cities” of France and earn her the title “ghetto warrior” by one French newspaper. In a gesture characteristic of her humility and passion for social justice, the new minister continued to live in the suburbs rather than move to the Parisian ministerial residence to which she was entitled as a minister in the French government.

Fadela is the co-author of Breaking the Silence: French Women’s Voices from the Ghetto. This book tackles the silence which surrounds violence against women in French suburb and immigrant communities, as well as the larger issues of ethnic identity in France and national identity as they relate to a secularist sate.

Known For: Special Agent WWII / Writer / Nurse
Dates: 1914 - 1944
Country: United Kingdom

About

Noor Inayat Khan is known for the heroic role she played as a clandestine special agent in the French resistance against Nazi Germany.  Noor was born in Moscow on New Years Day in 1914. She is a direct descendent of the Indian warrior Tipu Sultan.  Noor’s father was a Sufi musician from India and her mother was an American from New Mexico. As a Muslim woman, Noor’s cultural diversity and interfaith background placed her in a unique historical, religious, and linguistic position. A trained Red Cross nurse who was fluent in English and French at the advent of WWII, Noor joined the English Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and was trained as a wireless operator. Her French fluency brought her to the attention of the Special Operations Executive who recruited her to be a British special agent. Codenamed “Madeleine”, Noor was covertly flown into France to join the French resistance against Nazi Germany and their Vichy collaborators. In 1943, Noor spent a year in Paris clandestinely transmitting messages to the British before ultimately being caught by the Nazis.  Noor was executed in the Dachau concentration camp by the German Gestapo in 1944. She was 30 years old at the time of her death.

Noor studied medicine and psychology, was a skilled musician, and authored a number of children’s books, which include a collection of Indian stories published in 1939. Noor Inayat Khan is a hero to the British, the French, the allied forces of WWII, and a model of bravery for all Muslim women.

Known For: Turkish instructor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Country: United States

About

Dr. F. Canguzel Guner Zulfikar is the Turkish instructor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She started the Turkish Studies Program at UNC-Chapel Hill. She teaches Turkish language, culture, and history courses. With a Ph.D. degree in History from Hacettepe University, Turkey, Dr. Zulfikar specializes in the socio-economic and institutional history of the Ottoman Empire. She is also interested in charitable endowments and their activities as civil society institutions and Sufism (Islamic Mysticism). Her research is based on original endowment documents from Aziz Mahmud Hüdayi’s Sufi shrine complex in Istanbul, which records charitable community activities from the sixteenth to the twentieth century.

Known For: Regional Consultant, Regional Bureau of United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)
Country: Egypt

About

Gihan Abou Zeid is an Egyptian activist of the development field and an authority on women’s rights in development in Egypt and the Arab world. Currently she is a consultant for the regional bureau of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA); she supports the integration of religious leaders in the UNFPA’s regional programs. In 2010, Ms. Zeid worked as a policy adviser for the Minister of Family and Population in Egypt. She developed a nation-wide study of initiatives on violence against women as part of a larger attempt to present concrete recommendations to the Egyptian government and civil societies.

Ms. Zeid has 20 years of experience in research, training, editing, and program direction and management in gender, human rights, and democracy. She has participated in international research projects on youth, democracy, gender, and development with UN agencies, the Arab League, universities, and civil society organizations. She has written two books and contributed to scholarly books and journals. She is also an honorary member of numerous youth and human rights initiatives in the Arab world.

Ms. Zeid has always worked with a strong commitment to women’s rights. She has been actively engaged in women’s networks; she served for nine years as a board member of the NGO Forum for Women in Development.

Known For: Member, TURKKAD
Country: Turkey

About

Aylin Yurdacan has been an active member of Turkish Women’s Cultural Association TURKKAD, Istanbul since 2000. During her time with TURKKAD, she has participated in many international tasavvuf (sufism) symposiums organized by her organization. She has also translated TURKKAD President Cemalnur Sargut’s speeches and papers delivered in various international sufism conferences in the UK, the United States, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Malaysia. She received her BA and MA in Teaching English as a Foreign Language and has been teaching English at state and private universities in Turkey since 1991.

Known For: Research Fellow, Department of Islamic History and Civilization at the University Malaya
Country: Malaysia

About

Dr. Rosey Wang Ma is a Research Fellow at the Department of Islamic History and Civilization at the University Malaya. She writes on various aspects of Chinese Muslim communities. Of Hui parentage, she was raised in Pakistan and Turkey. She was a French language lecturer for more than twenty years before taking up a career in Education Counseling, counseling for students, and training teachers and caregivers. Her personal and scholarly interest in Chinese Muslims has led to research, conferences, and publications on various aspects of the topic.

Known For: Writer; Designer
Country: Turkey

About

Fatma Unay received her MBA and BSc (Hons) from the University of Salford, School of Management in England. As a PhD candidate, she focused on “Fashion and Management” in the contemporary world and the “Modernization of Ottoman Style.” Ms. Unay is also a fashion designer; she prepares special collections for women and children. She is currently working on “Hz. Khadijah as a first entrepreneur of the Muslim World,” which will be published in the near future. She writes in various journals and columns about women entrepreneurs, social responsibility, NGOs, and fashion. She is also a coordinator of the “Muslim Women Entrepreneurs Working Group” and a member of the Management Culture Commission in Istanbul.

In the past, Ms. Unay was the President of International Women Dialogue Group (IWD-UKAD), an organization which aims to establish international economic, social, and cultural networking between individuals and institutions throughout the world.

Known For: Board Member, TURKKAD; Board Member, Nefas Publishing
Country: Turkey

About

Nese Tas was born in Ankara in 1965. She graduated from M.E.T.U.‘s Department of Economics. Currently, she is a board member of TURKKAD (Turkish Women Cultural Association) and Nefes Publishing. She has been studying tasavvuf with Cemalnur Sargut for 26 years.

Known For: Founder and Mangar, Pusula Training and Management Consultancy
Country: Turkey

About

Sema Suvarioglu is the founder and manager of Pusula Training and Management Consultancy. She graduated from Istanbul Robert College and received her degrees in Psychology (BA) and Clinical Psychology (MA) from Bogazici University. Ms. Suvarioglu started her career by directing qualitative market research and conducting focus groups at Unilever. Afterwards, she worked as a private psychotherapist. While working as a market researcher at Pars McCann Erickson Advertising Agency, she began her studies in a Ph.D. program on Organizational Behavior at Marmara University. She completed her Ph.D. dissertation on “Creative Problem Solving.”

Ms. Suvarioglu worked as a trainer and consultant in a consultancy company for seven years. She completed ACT’s (Advantage Coaching and Training) “Corporate Coach Program” and Erickson College International’s “Coaching Certification Program.” Since 1996, she has worked as a certified professional coach at Pusula. Over the years, she has taught at Bilgi, Sabancı, Marmara, Boğaziçi (BÜYEM), and Koc University in MBA and EMBA Programs.

Known For: Politician; Sociologist
Country: Turkey

About

Aysenur Bilgi Solak’s active political life began with the founding of the Ak Party (Justice and Development Party), which was the ruling party in Turkey in 2001. Currently, she is the Deputy Chairperson of the Istanbul Akparti Organization and the party’s public relations representative. Apart from her political career, she writes about modernization in the context of Turkey’s history and women’s issue in Turkey. She is also a civil activist and works with many different NGOs. Ms. Solak completed her secondary education in Innsbruck in Austria and later attended Imam Hatip School, a religious lycee in Istanbul. After completing her secondary education, she studied sociology, politics and foreign relations at Bogazici (Bosphorus) University in Turkey.

Known For: Associate Professor in Linguistics and Gender Studies, Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah University
Country: Morocco

About

Dr. Souad Slaoui is an associate professor at Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah University in Fez, Morocco. She is a senior lecturer in Linguistics and Gender Studies. She currently directs the Women and Development Unit at Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah University in Fez, Morocco.

She is also the Moroccan Coordinator of the Exchange and Cooperation Agreement among Members of the Gender and Women’s Studies Across Cultures (GWS) Consortium for 2007 to 2013.

Dr Souad Slaoui is also a founding member of the Isis Centre for Women and Development; The Union of Feminine Associations in Morocco, and a member of the laboratory of Research and Studies in Linguistics (GREL). Dr. Slaoui is a member of the editing board for the book, Feminist Movements: Origins and Orientations, published in 1999. She is also a co-author of the book, Grammar of Moroccan Arabic (1999). Her research interests include women and their relationship to religion, politics, and culture as well as feminist movements in the Arab world. She participated in national and international conferences on issues related to Moroccan women (e.g., cultural values).

Known For: Author; Dancer
Country: Turkey

About

Rabia Christine Brodbeck Sezai is the author of several books and articles. She is also a world-famous dancer who began her training at the age of 12. She continued to dance and perform until 1998, when she retired. Following her conversion to Islam in 1986, Ms. Brodbeck began to write books with a focus on spirituality. One of her books, From The Stage to the Prayer Mat: The Story of How a World- Famous Dancer Fell in Love with the Divine, was recognized in the “Spirituality” category during the New York Summer Book Festival in 2009. Apart from writing, she was selected to participate in a TV documentary for the European Union about European Muslims. Currently, she teaches dance, gives seminars and conferences, and writes articles in Istanbul.