Hulya Alper is an assistant professor of Islamic Theology at the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Marmara. She is the first and only female assistant of Islamic Theology in Turkey. Hulva was born in Bursa, Turkey. She began her religious education at Uskudar Imam-Khatip , a religious high school. After graduating in 1987, she attended the Faculty of Divinity at Marmara University in Istanbul. She received her master’s degree from the Institute of Social Sciences at the Department of Theology at Marmara University. Later on she earned her PhD with a thesis entitled “A Problem of Kalam: the Psychological Structure of Faith” which was published in 2002. During the same year, she was a visiting scholar at the Dar al-Ulum Faculty at Cairo University. To date, she has published many articles and participated in a number of conferences about Islam and the role of women in Islam. Hulya is also one of the founders of Kadikoy Irfan Foundation which was established and managed by women to support the women and children who are disadvantaged and poor.
Archives: Muslim Women
Muslim Women Description
Hazami Barmada
Hazami Barmada is a young and visionary international affairs professional and social entrepreneur focusing on international collaboration, community development, and public diplomacy. Hazami is the cofounder, president and CEO of Al-Mubadarah: Arab Empowerment Initiative, an independent international NGO devoted to developing a global platform for Arab development initiatives and strengthening professional ties in and between the Arab World and its diaspora through innovative human and institutional capacity building programs.1
Barmada is also a program advisor for the Aspen Institute Global Initiative on Culture and Society, founder and executive director of the Iraqi Orphan Initiative, and the founder and president of the American Muslim Interactive Network.2 She works with numerous public and private institutions providing technical assistance on organizational management, strategy, and programming.
Hazami is actively engaged in grassroots organizing and public speaking on issues of faith-diplomacy and women and youth empowerment. She serves as an advisor and board member of several non-profit organizations including Peace x Peace, the 9/11 Unity Walk and as a member of the steering committee for the Refugees International Young Humanitarian Circle.3 Her initiatives and events have received recognition in major media outlets nationally and internationally and she was recently profiled on America.gov. Hazami has appeared as a guest on a number of media outlets including CNN international, BBC, Saudi TV, Alhurra, AlJazeera, ART and Voice of America.
Born in Manchester, England to Syrian-Palestinian parents, Hazami has traveled the world extensively. Hazami has a BA in Anthropology and Sociology from Rhodes College and is currently completing her graduate work in Public and Social Policy at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.4 She is the recipient of the 2010 Breaking Barriers through Travel Fellowship to work in woman and youth centers in Thailand, India and Nepal.5
[1] Al-Mubadarah: Arab Empowerment Initiative – About Us.
[2] America.Gov: Syrian-Palestinian Student Creates Empowerment Groups in America.
[3] United States Peace Federation: Freedom Faith and Family – A Muslim Perspective in America.
[4] Al-Mubadarah: Arab Empowerment Initiative – About Us, Our Team.
[5] Experiencing the World & Enriching the Soul.
[6] United States Peace Federation: Freedom Faith and Family – A Muslim Perspective in America.
Havva G. Guney-Ruebenacker
Dr. Havva G. Guney-Ruebenacker is a visiting post-doc researcher at Harvard Law School. Her dissertation is titled “An Islamic Legal Realist Critique of the Traditional Theory of Slavery, Marriage and Divorce in Islamic Law” and it focuses on traditional Islamic law and modern Islamic legal reforms in the area of slavery and family law with a comparative examination of modernization of American family law in the area of no-fault divorce and its economic consequences.
She studied both major schools of Islamic law (Sunni and Shiite) at a Qur’anic studies school in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and received a BA in Law from the University of Tehran. As a Visiting Assistant Professor, she taught Comparative Family Law and Islamic law at Boston University School of Law and was a teaching fellow at Harvard for classes in American constitutional history and Comparative Family Law. Dr. Guney-Ruebenacker holds S.J.D and LL.M degrees from Harvard and also an LL.M in European Union law and European legal history from University of Cambridge. She was a researcher at the European Court of Human Rights and the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva, and was a graduate fellow at the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies, Islamic Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School and Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard. She is fluent in Turkish, Arabic and Farsi.
Ghazal Omid
Ghazal Omid is the founder of the now defunct IranFuture.org, a non-profit organization dedicated to the liberation of Iran and education of women. Author of Living in Hell, a personal and political memoir of her life in and her eventual escape from the Islamic theocracy. Through her website, she remains active in Iranian politics and advocates for the humane treatment of political prisoners in Iran.
Recognized as an Islamic and Iranian expert, she has made more than 200 radio and television appearances and is a frequent guest on Fox and Voice of America as well as Farsi language media outlets. She writes weekly blogs for UPI and Global Politician, maintains six websites and is active with dissident Iranian groups in Iran and abroad.
Born in 1970 in Abadan, Iran, Ghazal is the youngest of eleven siblings born to her polygamist father’s two wives, both of whom he abandoned during the revolution and the Iran/Iraq War. Ghazal lived through the conflict in a heavily bombed area in Isfahan and refugee camps in Bandar Abbas. Her faith, lost at age thirteen due to her difficult life, was restored by her pilgrimage to Mecca. Denied entrance to medical schools because of her record of non-conformity to non-Islamic dictates and her demand for equal rights for women and men, she studied French, preparatory to a law degree, at universities in Isfahan and Tehran. Abducted by the secret police, she escaped by jumping from a speeding car and made her way underground to Canada where she is now a citizen and continues work on a PhD in Psychology and eventually a law degree.
Dekha Ibrahim Abdi
Dekha Ibrahim Abdi was an internationally acclaimed conflict resolver and peace activist. In 1992, Dekha, with a concerned group, began to organize mediation between warring parties in an open conflict that afflicted Wajir after the end of the Shifta war. Her strategy combined grassroots activism, leadership, and spiritual motivation based on the teachings of Islam.1 Dekha encouraged individuals and communities affected by conflict to analyze themselves using verses from the Quran that, she said, will enable change on a religious and spiritual basis.2
After an agreement was reached, representatives from various clans, government security agencies, parliamentarians, civil servants, Muslim and Christian religious leaders, NGOs, and others formed the Wajir Peace Committee to make sure it was implemented. Dekha was elected Secretary.
Subsequently, the Wajir Peace Committee led to the formation of an interfaith committee for peace that has undertaken further activities to intervene in religious conflicts. Her methods have been used and implemented in other parts of Kenya and around the world.3
In 2008, she and others developed a plan to prevent violence, and possible civil war after disputed elections in Kenya.
Abdi is a 2007 recipient of the Right Livelihood Award, a prize given to those who are working towards solutions to address the most urgent challenges facing the world.
In 2011 she died from injuries she sustained from a car accident, she was 46. 4
[1] African Success: Biography of Dekha Ibrahim Abdi.
[2]Right Livelihood Award: Dekha Ibrahim Abdi.
[3] Ibid.
[4] The Guardian: Dekha Ibrahim Abdi Obituary
Dalia Ziada
Dalia Ziada is an Egyptian blogger, human rights activist socio-political analyst and writer championing women’s rights, civil rights, and liberal democratization. She has been honored by Newsweek as one of the 150 most influential women in the world and by Time magazine as a Muslim rights champion. She was selected by Daily Beast as one of the world’s 17 bravest bloggers and is also a recipient of the Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Journalist Award and Tufts University Presidential Award.1
Dalia’s interest in activism began as a child when she wanted to change her family’s stance on women’s rights. As an undergraduate, she launched a campaign together with four classmates to create awareness about the consequences of female genital mutilation. After graduation, her interest evolved to encompass not only women’s rights but human rights more broadly including freedom of expression in the Middle East.
In 2007, she began her work with the Cairo office of the American Islamic Congress (AIC). Her accomplishments include the inauguration of the Middle East’s first human rights film festival and the launching of the 5F campaign to promote religious tolerance in Egypt. Through her work at AIC, she has advised local and regional policymakers along with members of the US State Department and Congress. In June 2009, she was invited to attend the historical speech of President Obama to the Muslim world in Cairo.
Currently, Ziada is the Founding Director of Liberal Democracy Institute of Egypt (LDI), a youth-led think tank, established in November 2014, with the goal to promote and advocate liberal democracy in Egypt and the Middle East, through promoting liberal values of human rights, civil liberties, and individual freedom as the basis for a democratic state.
She has a MA in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. She received her BA in English Literature from Ain Shams University and published her first book of poetry in 2010.2
[1] Dalia Ziada: About Me.
[2] ibid.
[3] Dalia Ziada: Muslim Youth on Obama’s Speech.
Ausma Khan
Ausma Zehanat Khan is a Canadian novelist and author of crime and fantasy novels. Khan published her first novel The Unquiet Dead in 2015; the book received “best first novel” accolades from both the Arthur Ellis Awards and the Barry Awards in 2016. She was the editor in chief of Muslim Girl magazine, a bi-monthly publication that is the first magazine to target young Muslim women. She describes Muslim Girl as an opportunity to reshape the conversation about Muslim women in North America.1
Despite the overall positive reception of Muslim Girl, certain aspects of the magazine have been criticized as being too Western with critics saying that all the women and girls depicted should be wearing headscarves or looser clothing.2 Interestingly, one of ideas behind the magazine is to emphasize the diversity of practice among American Muslim communities which include women who do and do not wear headscarves.3
A longtime community activist and an accomplished Muslim women, Ausma been featured in publications around the world including Asharq al Awsat, the Organization of Islamic Conference Journal, Arabian Woman, Al Ahram Shabab, the India Times, Kristeligt Dagblad, Agence France-Presse and the International Herald Tribune. She also is a contributor to an anthology entitled Her Mother’s Ashes 2 and writes for Muslim Girl.4
In addition to advocacy and writing, she has taught international human rights law at Northwestern University and human rights and business law at York University. She received a PhD in international human rights law from Osgoode Hall Law School, where her research specialization was humanitarian intervention and war crimes in the Balkans. Ausma completed her LLB at the University of Ottawa and practiced immigration law in Toronto.5
Ausma left her teaching position at Northwestern University to become editor-in-chief at Muslim Girl.6
Her forthcoming book, Ramadan, is a non-fiction book aimed at middle-grade students and is to be published by Orca Books as part of the Origins series in Spring 2018. This volume introduces Muslims’ month of fasting and gives a taste of how it is celebrated around the world. The personal perspectives included in Khan’s work elevate it above an average informational book; readers, both non-Muslims and Muslims, can step into the shoes of someone from another background.
[1] Women’s Leadership and Activism in the Muslim World: A Daylong Public Symposium and Community Event – Biographies.
[2] NPR: ‘Muslim Girl’ Magazine Marks One Year in Print (Transcript).
[3] Teens Not Terrorists: Muslim Girls Get a Voice in Muslim Girl Magazine.
[4] Women’s Leadership and Activism in the Muslim World: A Daylong Public Symposium and Community Event – Biographies.
[5] ibid.
[4] Teens Not Terrorists: Muslim Girls Get a Voice in Muslim Girl Magazine.
Moushumi Khan
Moushumi Khan is an attorney and business consultant in private practice in New York City. She has had extensive experience in the non-profit, economic development, and legal sectors. Since February 2001, Moushumi has been in solo legal practice concentrating on corporate and civil rights law. Her clients include the Muslim immigrant populations, and companies with Muslim employee and community relations matters.
Moushumi is a leading emerging voice on civil liberties, religious accommodation, interfaith relations, and Muslim identity issues. She has advocated for the American Muslim communities on post-9/11 civil rights issues, including with the Special Registration Process and racial profiling. She is a frequent speaker at various venues, including legal, public and private institutions on the impacts of 9/11 and on being a Muslim lawyer. The national media has consulted her opinion on topics related to Islamic or immigrant matters. She has served on Advisory Committees at the Council on Foreign Relations on immigration, national security and public diplomacy topics, including for the Council Special Report “A New Beginning: Strategies for a More Fruitful Dialogue with the Muslim World.”
Moushumi has published articles on subjects important to the Muslim American community. She is a co-founder and President of the Muslim Bar Association of New York, and a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She has won numerous awards for her community service. Moushumi is an active participant in interfaith activities and in public diplomacy efforts between the United States and the Muslim world. She has extensive international travel experience, especially in the Muslim world.
In 2014, she became the Country Director of The Foundation for Charitable Activities in Bangladesh (FCAB), an organization of Bangladeshis living abroad giving back to their country of origin.
She is fluent in Bengali and has a working knowledge of French. Moushumi earned her JD degree from the University of Michigan Law School in 1996 and received an AB degree in critical social thought, cum laude, from Mount Holyoke College in 1993. She was awarded a Certificate in General Course in the Government Department of the London School of Economics in 1991. Moushumi is admitted to practice in New York.