Muslim Women Archive | Page 25 of 79

Najmi Sarwar

Najmi Sarwar has over 15 years of project and people management experience in global firms in the U.S. and Asia. She was the Vice President in the Operations and Technology division at Citibank in New York from 2005-2010.

She is also the Founding Director of Developments in Literacy (DIL), a U.S. non-profit organization supporting the primary and secondary education of 15,000 underprivileged girls and boys in the rural areas of Pakistan. Sarwar has worked in DIL since 1998 and has led initiatives to expand DIL as a global organization to 12 chapters across North America, Canada, Singapore and the UK.

Sarwar received her Master of Science in computer science from New York University, and her bachelor’s from Quaid -I-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan.

Nahid Angha

Nahid Angha is the cofounder and codirector of the International Association of Sufism (IAS), the Executive Editor of the quarterly journal, Sufism: An Inquiry, and founder of the International Sufi Women Organization. She is the main representative of the IAS to the United Nations (NGO/DPI), and her work for global peace earned the IAS the “Messenger of Manifesto 2000” recognition by the UNESCO.

She is the first Muslim woman inducted to the Marin Women’s Hall of Fame in 2005. An internationally published author, she is one of the major Muslim writers and scholars of the present time with over fourteen published books, and she has compiled a series of biographies of contemporary Sufi Women. Her dedication to peace has led her to serve in various leadership roles in large-scale international interfaith organizations. Dr. Angha has given lectures and taught classes nationally as well as internationally. This includes speaking engagements at the United Nations, the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford, the Smithsonian Institute, State of the World Forum Conference: San Francisco, Parliament of the World Religions Conferences: Cape Town and Barcelona.

Shehrbano Taseer

Shehrbano Taseer is a Pakistani journalist and civil society activist. Her father Salman Taseer, the former governor of Pakistan’s Punjab province was assassinated in January 2011 for his stand that Pakistan’s discriminatory blasphemy laws should be revised.

Since her father’s murder, Shehrbano has become an outspoken civil society activist and one of Pakistan’s most articulate and recognizable critics of extremism.¹ She has written countless articles in some of the world’s most prominent newspapers, such as the Guardian and The New York Times, to pay tribute to her father and to draw attention to the dire circumstances for moderate voices in Pakistan.

According to Shehrbano, the voices of all those like her father, the millions who believe in the secular vision of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the country’s founder, must not be silenced. There are those who believe that Salman Taseer’s death was the final nail in the coffin for a tolerant Pakistan. However, Shehrbano believes that it was her father that was buried and not the courage he inspired in others.²

Along with her writing, Shehrbano is also known for her speeches in which she discusses how extremism affects Pakistani civil society, how it has taken root in the country’s political and religious culture and what young and moderates Pakistanis can do to challenge this extremism.

[1] Guardian: Salman Taseer Assasination Pakistan Blasphemy Laws.
[2] NY Times: My Father Died for Pakistan.
[3] ibid.

Mina al Oraibi

Mina Al-Oraibi is the Editor-in-Chief at The National. Previously she was the Assistant Editor-in-Chief at Asharq Alawsat, an international daily pan-Arab newspaper. Her work includes covering the UN approaches to searching for a solution to the Syrian crisis, Iraqi refugees, the development of the United States’ response to the Arab uprisings of 2011, along with high profile interviews including US President Barack Obama, US Secretary of State John Kerry, UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond and former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki. She is a regular guest contributor on television and radio news programs, including Dateline London for the BBC and Weekend Program for BBC World Service.

She was named a Young Global Leader in 2009 and is a member of the Global Agenda Council on the Middle East and the World Economic Forum. She also provides advice and support as a Special Advisor to the Global Dignity movement.

Al-Oraibi was born in Sweden and raised in Iraq, Australia and Saudi Arabia, before moving to the United Kingdom. She was awarded a Distinction for her MA History Dissertation on the 1958 coup d’etat in Iraq from University College London, where she also completed a Bachelors of Arts in History.

Mehnaz M. Afridi

Mehnaz M. Afridi is the director of Manhattan College Holocaust, Genocide, and Interfaith Education Center. The goal of the center is to “help eradicate human suffering, prejudice, and racism through education.”¹

She is also an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Manhattan College where she teaches Islam and the Holocaust. Her research primarily focuses on Islam and contemporary literature. She is also works on the intersections of Judaism and Islam. Her recent work has been on the Holocaust and the role of Muslims, antisemitism and Islamophobia. ²

Mehnaz has taught at Antioch University, National University, American Intercontinental University and Loyola Marymount University. She received her PhD in Islam and Religious Studies from the University of South Africa and master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Syracuse University.³

In 2006, she taught in Rome and participated in a seminar sponsored by the National Endowment of Humanities on how Muslims and Jews influenced and Italian Culture in Venice, Italy. She has been invited by the University of Munich to present her work on Egypt: A Nexus of Anti-Semitism and has published an article entitled Sacred Tropes: The Qur’an Cruel or Compassionate, published by Brill. And she is the author of The Shoah Through Muslim Eyes.⁴

[1] Manhattan College: Home page.
[2] Manhattan College: Mehnaz Afridi
[3] Connecticut Jewish Ledger: Conversation with Dr. Mehnaz Afridi
[4] Ibid.

Marzia Basel

Marzia Basel was previously a judge and has extensive training in the areas of international relations, women in development, and law. She founded the Afghanistan Progressive Law Organization after the Afghanistan Supreme Court suspended the Afghan Women’s Judges Association and has been serving as its director since 2009. She is also a volunteer member of the Afghan Independent Bar Association Women’s Committee and the advisory committee for the Afghan Women’s Ministry.¹

During the rule of the Taliban, Maria ran a private, home-based school for women to whom she taught English. Some of her students included wives of the Taliban who would warn her if she was about to get a visit from the now defunct Ministry for the Protection of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.²

After the fall of the Taliban, she participated in state reconstruction by serving on the Kabul Public Security Court, acting as a representative for the establishment of the Independent Afghan Judicial Commission and acting as an officer for the Emergency Loya Jirga Commission.

Marzia also has experience working with various UN agencies. She worked for UNICEF Afghanistan as a Juvenile Justice Project Officer and for UNIFEM Afghanistan as a Gender Justice Officer.

In addition, she has been working as a National Advisor to the German government’s assistant for Afghanistan GTZ (now the GIZ Rule of Law Project) since 2006.

Marzia received a bachelor’s in law and political science from Kabul University and a master’s in international law and comparative studies from George Washington University. She has served as a judge in both civil and criminal courts in Kabul.³

[1] The Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict: Speakers
[2] Washington Post.com: Diplomatic Dispatches
[3] The Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict: Speakers
[4] Washington Post.com: Diplomatic Dispatches

Maria Ebrahimji

Maria Ebrahimji is the Director and Executive Editorial Producer for Network Booking at CNN Worldwide. In this position, she leads a team of editorial producers in guest coverage, newsgathering, and story planning for CNN’s special events, breaking news, and multi-platform programming. She is based at CNN’s global headquarters in Atlanta.

Maria has been an editorial producer for CNN International, where she worked on high-profile programs such as “Your World Today”, “Q&A”, “Diplomatic License”, and “Inside Africa.” She is the former lead editorial producer for CNN U.S. weekend programming, where she produced elements, researched, and wrote for guest segments on current and feature domestic news stories.

In her twelve years at CNN, she has been an integral part of CNN’s award- winning programming. Her work on CNN Connects: The New South Africa garnered a 2007 NABJ Award of Excellence in the Television-Public Affairs Program. She is also the recipient of a 2006 Myers Media Innovation and Creativity Award for CNN’s Inspire Summit, a George Foster Peabody Award for CNN’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina, and an Alfred Dupont-Columbia Award for CNN’s coverage of the Asian Tsunami.

At CNN, Maria serves as Vice Chair of the CNN Diversity Council and on the Turner Broadcasting Corporate Responsibility Council and Green Task Force.

In her community, Maria is on the Board of Directors of the Atlanta Press Club and the Atlanta chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association. She serves as an advisor to Tau Chapter, Alpha Chi Omega, Inc. and is on the Advisory Board for the Emory Development Institute and Southern Proper, Inc. She is a former Manfred Woerner, BMW Transatlantic, and Knight Digital fellow, and a former Aspen Young Professionals program graduate. Ebrahimji has also participated in the East-West Center’s Sr. Journalism Seminar in Southeast Asia. She is the co-editor of I Speak forMyself (White Cloud Press, May 2011), a collection of essays written by 40 American-born Muslim women.

Ebrahimji received a bachelor of arts degree in mass communications from Brenau Women’s College and a master of arts degree in international affairs from Georgia State University.

Kamela Sediqi

Kamela Sediqi began her first company, a tailoring business, under Taliban rule in Afghanistan to support her mother and brother.¹ She set it up at a time when women were forced into the home and were prohibited from attending school, teaching school, practicing medicine, working in an office, or serving in government. If women went out during the day at all, they had to be covered from head to toe with only their eyes showing through a webbed slit that “turned the world slightly blue.”²

Her story is chronicled by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon in The Dressmaker of Khair Khana which describes how Kamela and other Afghani women had to navigate the restrictions placed by the Taliban to support their families. Kamela’s story begins when she feels the pressure to help her family in hard economic circumstances. She convinces her sister to teach her how to make a dress and then has her brother take her to the market to sell it. A local shopkeeper buys the dress and orders more, changing the course of Kamela’s life. Through her business venture, she goes on to employ her siblings, friends and neighbors.³

Kamela now runs Kaweyan Business Development Services, a consulting firm that operates in Kabul, Heart, and Mazar-e Sharif. Her firm which employs 25 men and women, more than half of them full time, trains adults in basic business skills such as idea development, marketing, and accounting. Her goal is to grow Kaweyan into one of South Asia’s leading consultancies.⁴

[1] CS Monitor: Afghan woman is all about business.
[2]CS Monitor: The Dressmaker of Khair Khana.
[3] ibid.
[4] CS Monitor: Afghan woman is all about business.
[5] ibid.