Shirin Neshat is a well-known Iranian artist whose work addresses women in Islam. Neshat was born in Iran into an upper middle-class family. She attended a Catholic boarding school in Tehran, then moved to Los Angeles at age 17 to study art. She returned to Tehran, but moved back to the United States a year after the 1979 Iranian revolution, this time to the San Francisco Bay area. She eventually enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley, from which she earned a B.A., an M.A, and a Masters of Fine Art.
After graduating, Neshat moved to New York, where she began to work as an artist. Her first project, “Women of Allah,” was inspired by a visit to Iran in 1990, where she saw firsthand what drastic changes had occurred since she had left ten years before. “Women of Allah” is comprised of a series of portraits of Muslim women overlaid with Persian calligraphy.
Neshat has also created short films and sound installations, and she won first prize at the 1999 Venice Biennale for her installation, “Turbulent.” Since then, she has worked on a few short films, as well as a feature-length film based on Shahrnush Parsipur’s novel, Women without Men.
Neshat continues to exhibit her work in both solo and group exhibitions around the world.
Aboulela is a celebrated author whose literary work focuses on cultural identity and assimilation issues for Muslim expatriates. Religion is also a major theme throughout Aboulela’s work.
The daughter of an Egyptian mother and a Sudanese father, she was born in Cairo and raised in Khartoum. She attended Khartoum University and received a degree in Economics. She then moved to London in 1987, where she attended the London School of Economics and obtained a masters degree in statistics. The economic crisis in Sudan and concern for her growing family led Aboulela to stay in Britain. Aboulela and her family then moved to Scotland, where she lectured in Statistics and worked as a part-time research assistant.
Living in exile inspired Aboulela to begin writing in 1992; her stories were first broadcast on BBC Radio and published shortly thereafter. She has written several short stories, including The Museum,” which earned her the first-ever Caine Prize for African Writing. Her first novel, The Translator (1999), was long-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction and shortlisted for the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award. Her second novel, Minaret, was published in 2005. She has also written several radio play broadcasts, including The Mystic Life (2003) and The Lion of Chechnya (2005). The Translator is taught in universities in Sudan.
Shadi Ghadirian is an Iranian artist best known for her series of photographs, “Like Every Day” and “Qajar Series,” which have brought her international acclaim.
Ghadirian was raised in Iran and studied photography at Azad University in Tehran. After finishing her B.A. she began a professional career in photography. Her first project, the Qajar Series (1998-2001), featured women as her subjects. Her project consisted of a representation of 19th-century Iranian women in Qajar style, mixed with symbols of modernity and globalization, such as a newspaper, mountain bike, or Coca-Cola can.
She later worked on her “Like Every Day” series after her marriage to the photographer, Peyman Hooshmand-Zadeh. This project is a commentary on women’s daily routines inside the home and how that role has come to define them.
Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout Europe and the United States; it is part of the permanent collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Ghadirian currently works at the Museum of Photography in Tehran.
The daughter of Sheikha Mozah and His Highness the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, Sheikha at Al-Mayassa has played an active role in humanitarian efforts and the promotion of the arts in Qatar. Sheikha Al-Mayassa graduated from Duke University in 2005 with a B.A. in political science and literature.
Sheikha Al-Mayassa serves as the chair of the Qatar Foundation’s “Reach Out to Asia” initiative, as well as chair of Qatar’s National Foundation of Museums. She is an assistant to the Chief of Staff of Qatar’s presidential palace, Emiri Diwan.
In 2003, she worked with Qatar’s Red Crescent organization to raise money for clothing and school equipment for the children of Iraq. She is currently the director of the Qatar Museums Authority, which opened the Museum of Islamic Art in 2008. She is married to Sheikh Jassim and has one son.
Betty Shabazz was a prominent social activist, health professional, and educator.
Betty Shabazz (born Betty Dean Sanders, later on known as Betty X) was raised in Detroit, Michigan by adoptive parents and attended the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. After two years in Alabama, Betty moved to New York to begin nursing school at Brooklyn State Hospital. It was during her time as a student there that Betty Shabazz met Malcolm X, the dynamic civil rights leader and Nation of Islam member. They married in 1958, two years after meeting.
In 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated while giving a speech in Harlem, New York, leaving Betty to raise their six daughters on her own. Soon after her husband’s death Betty, returned to school and earned a doctorate in education from the University of Massachusetts in 1975. She then began working as an administrator at Medgar Evers College, eventually overseeing the college’s Office of Institutional Advancement and Public Relations.
In addition to her work, Betty traveled extensively, speaking on racial equality and civil rights.
Betty died in 1997 three weeks after suffering from third degree burns from a house fire set by her grandson, Malcolm. More than 2,000 people attended her memorial service.
Ziba Mir-Hosseini is an anthropologist who specializes in Islamic law, gender, and development. She has been a Hauser Global Law Visiting Professor at New York University School of Law since 2002. She has also been a senior research associate at the Middle East Institute and at the Centre of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law (CIMEL) at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.
Ziba is currently a member of the Council of Women Living under Muslim Laws and a founding member of Musawa Global Movement for Equality and Justice in the Muslim Family. Her publications include: Marriage on Trial: A Study of Islamic Family Law in Iran and Morocco; Islam and Gender: The Religious Debate in Contemporary Iran; and Islam and Democracy in Iran: Eshkevari and the Quest for Reform. She has also co-directed two award-winning, feature-length documentary films on contemporary issues in Iran: Divorce Iranian Style (1998) and Runaway (2001). Ziba received a B.A. in sociology from Tehran University and a Ph.D. in social anthropology from the University of Cambridge.
Robina Niaz founded and serves as the Executive Director of Turning Point for Women and Families (www.turningpoint-ny.org). Founded in 2004, it is the first non-profit in New York that directly addresses domestic violence in the Muslim community and has a youth development program for Muslim girls and young women. Ms. Niaz has 16 years of non-profit experience, is a fierce advocate of Muslim women’s rights, and has dedicated her life to working against domestic violence.
Over the years, she has served on the boards of Sakhi, Queens Women’s Network, Interfaith Council of New York and Coalition for Battered Women’s Advocates. She has also served as a Social Work consultant to ICNA-Relief and Domestic Harmony Committee at the Islamic Center of Long Island. Ms. Niaz currently serves on the Boards of Muslim Consultative Network and Hartley Film Foundation. She is also a member of the Social Work Advisory Council at Medgar Evers College and Field Education Advisory Board at the Social Work School at Adelphi University.
Ms. Niaz was born and raised in Pakistan and has been living in New York since 1990. She has received multiple awards and fellowships for her work and has an M.S in Applied Psychology and an MSW from Hunter College, New York. She speaks four South Asian languages.
Al-Hajjah Khalilah Karim-Rushdan is the former Chaplain to Smith College and its Muslim student advisor. Ms. Karim-Rushdan divided her time at Smith between the Chapel and counseling center where she was a Psychotherapist. In 2006 she founded Alasto Women’s Collaborative which brought together both women of faith and secular women to identity common ground.
