In 2009, Sheikha Rima Al-Sabah was named by a prominent Washington D.C. magazine as one of the 100 most distinctive women in Washington in the field of advocacy and nonprofit work. She was the only Arab and foreigner to make the list.
Every year Rima Al-Sabah, along with her husband– Kuwait Ambassador to Washington Salem Al-Sabah–hold an Annual Gala Dinner to raise money for a different beneficiary.
Since 2005, Rima Al-Sabah, who is the Founder and Chairwoman of the Gala, has raised millions of dollars to support various causes: to USA for UNHCR, so as to assist Iraqi refugees wishing to return home; to UNICEF, so as to improve educational opportunities for children in Afghanistan, especially girls; to Project HOPE, so as to develop the Basrah children’s hospital in Iraq. Other money has gone to reducing malaria in Africa, fighting climate change, and helping build schools for girls in remote areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Rima Al-Sabath praises Kuwait as “one of the most philanthropic [countries] in the world.”
Lakkis is President of the Lebanese Physical Handicapped Union, a non-profit organization of people with physical disabilities, which has been working on issues related to different abilities since 1981. It is a national, non-sectarian organization with various forms of physical disability. The group has 1,100 members, relies heavily on volunteers, and includes community branches in seven areas of Lebanon: Beirut, Bar Elias, Ballbek Mashgara, Nabatieh, Tyre and Saida.
Lakkis has worked with the organization since 1986, and has been president since 2001. She has planned and implemented projects regarding disability rights and advocacy of those rights.
Rawya Al-Busaidi received her DPhill in Education with Honors from Oxford University. She has over thirty years of experience in basic education, higher education, planning and management of higher education institutions, quality assurance and accreditation. She was the first woman to be appointed to full ministerial rank in the Sultanate of Oman. In 2004, Al-Busaidi was appointed Minister of Higher Education.
Manal Qassim Shaheen Abdulla obtained her BSc in Business Administration, and is now the Executive Director of Nakheel, one of the world’s largest privately held real estate developers, developing residential, commercial, retail, and leisure projects in Dubai.
Nakheel’s developments spread across more than two billion square feet of land, which is projected to be worth more than US $80 billion. Its projects include The Palm, which consists of three man-made islands, The World, which is a collection of private islands that form a map of the world off the coast of Dubai, and Waterfront, the world’s largest waterfront development.
Abdulla is Vice-Chairperson for Forsa, an investment vehicle for women, and Vice-Chairperson of the Board, Dubai Women Establishment. She was the recipient of the Middle East Excellence’s 2007 award for Middle East Businesswoman of the Year.
El Hadidi is Executive Chief Officer at Al Alam Al Youm Newspaper in Egypt, a daily financial newspaper with offices in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and Jordan, as well as in Beirut, London, Bonn, Paris, Geneva, and New York. The paper targets opinion leaders, businesswomen and men, and decision-makers at multinational and private companies. It publishes 20,000 copies in Egypt and 40,000 in the Gulf Area.
El Hadidi has made numerous television appearances, including a recurrent position on the political program Itkallem, in Egypt. Among other past jobs, she was the Cairo Business Correspondent for Al Jazeera from 1996-2004.
Sayyidah Nafisa, or Lady Nafisa, was the great-great granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad. When she was first born in Mecca, her father Sayyid Hassan al-Anwar took her to the Prophet’s shrine, and afterward raised her with an extensive Islamic education. She accompanied her father to Madina, and took religious classes, visited religious sites, and engaged in numerous festivities. She memorized the entire Qur`an and learned Hadith, while studying Islamic jurisprudence in depth. Being extremely intelligent, she a became adept in explaining the Qur`an despite her young age.
Later in life, she extended her knowledge to her community and provided religious instruction to women and girls.
She married Isaq Ibn Ja’far went to Egypt with him, and bore two children al-Qasim and Umm Kulthum. She became renowned for her abstinence (zuhd) and piety (taqwa), for fasting the day, spending the nights in prayer and for her excessive devotion to worshiping Allah (swt). She moved from Medina to Egypt with her husband Isaq Ibn Ja’far. In Egypt she fasted all day and prayed all night and made the pilgrimage thirty times in her life.
When she began to feel her death approaching, Nafisa dug her grave with her own hands inside her home. Every day she would enter the grave and worship in it, as a reminder of the coming afterlife. She used to pray all her extra prayers inside that grave.
Egyptians admired her constant piety and comprehensive knowledge, and referred to her with many other names: Nafisat al-`ilmi wal-ma`rifat, (the Rare Lady of Knowledge and Gnosis) because of her knowledge of the Family of the Holy Prophet; Sahibat al-Karamat, “the Lady of Miracles”; Sayyidat Ahl al-Fatwa, “the Leading Lady in deriving rulings and verdicts”; and Nafisat al-Masriyyin, “the Rare Lady of the Egyptians”, because of the Egyptian people’s intense love for her and her love for them.
A beautiful mosque stands in her name (Mosque of Sayyida Nafisa) in Cairo, Egypt.
Zeynep Fadillioglu is one member of a team of interior designers and architects overseeing the construction of the Sakirin Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey. An accomplished and elegant interior designer of restaurants and hotels, Fadillioglu won a commission to redesign the mosque, her first religious structure.
Fadillioglu’s design blends modern techniques and materials into traditional religious art from the Ottoman era. She incorporates a large metal sphere over the entrance, a fountain, and a modern glass chandelier from China made from thousands of individually crafted shards of glass. The mosque was commissioned by a wealthy Arab Turkish family, as a memorial to their mother.
Fadillioglu assigned the second-floor balcony as the area where the women will pray. She has made this balcony as large and as beautiful as the men’s part of the mosque.
Highly-motivated and very determined, Princess Adila has taken a vocal stance on many issues relating to women and children in Saudi Arabia.
Adila serves as the vice chair on the National Family Safety Program. In 2009 she spoke about the country’s progress in recognizing and ending domestic violence in Saudi Arabia. “The biggest achievement” of the past year, the princess said, had been the increased coordination of all government ministries “to stop the phenomenon of family violence. Now we have partners in all sectors and that is an achievement.”
Adila has spoken out in favor of introducing sports at girls schools. She has been active with the Gulf Business Women’s Committee. Additionally, she has intervened in cases of disowned girls.
