Daisy Khan co-founded American Society and served as the Executive Director of the American Society of Muslim Advancement (ASMA), a non-profit organization dedicated to fostering an American Muslim identity while building bridges between the Muslim community and the public through dialogues in faith, identity, culture, and arts.
To prioritize the improvement of Muslim-West relations and the advancement of Muslim women globally, Ms. Khan launched two cutting edge intra-faith programs to spur movement by change agents among the two disempowered majorities of the Muslim world: youth and women. The MLT: Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow (2004) and WISE: Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality (2006) programs seek to empower Muslim women and Youth to cultivate a leadership that is committed to social justice and which speaks with a credible, humane, and equitable voice in the Muslim community.
After eighteen years Ms. Khan stepped down as Executive Director of ASMA to assume a leadership role of WISE, a program that was spun off to be its own entity.
During her tenure at ASMA, Ms. Khan observed that throughout history, harmonious interfaith relations have existed between the world’s great religions, and at a time when many believed there is a “clash” between the West and the Muslim world, Ms. Khan challenged this wrong belief by increasing collaboration between the Abrahamic faith traditions to increase cooperative efforts where priorities overlapped.
Ms. Khan holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts and prior to doing community work, she worked as an architectural designer for 25 years. With a deep interest in the arts, Khan believes that one of the most effective mediums for bringing people together is culture and the arts. In the aftermath of 9-11 Khan identified a growing network of American Muslim artists from all fields including performing, literary, and visual arts and over time built an impressive database of artists including actors, comedians, filmmakers, musicians, painters, photographers, poets, Quranic reciters, sculptors, singers, and writers.
In 2002, Ms. Khan (ASMA) began building bridges between Americans and Muslims, by organizing major arts events showcasing the artistic and cultural expression of Muslims with people of other faiths. She went on to create groundbreaking interfaith arts programs to emphasize commonalities among the Abrahamic faith traditions. Over the past 18 years Khan has built an impressive track record of producing arts programs of high quality, high turnout, and high impact (listed below).