Mona Eltahawy is an award-winning columnist and an international public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues. Ms. Eltahawy writes for Egypt’s independent daily Al Masry Al Youm, Qatar’s Al Arab and Israel’s The Jerusalem Report. Her opinion pieces have been published frequently in the International Herald Tribune, The Washington Post, and Denmark’s Politiken. She is a frequent media analyst.
Before she moved to the U.S. in 2000, Ms Eltahawy was a news reporter in the Middle East for many years. She worked in Cairo and Jerusalem as a Reuters correspondent and she reported for various media from Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Libya, Syria, Saudi Arabia and China. In 2006, the Next Century Foundation awarded Ms Eltahawy its Cutting Edge Prize for distinguished contribution to the coverage of the Middle East. In 2009, she was awarded the European Union Samir Kassir Prize for freedom of the press for her opinion writing.
Ms. Eltahawy was born on Aug. 1, 1967 in Port Said, Egypt and has lived in the U.K, Saudi Arabia and Israel. She calls herself a proud liberal Muslim. In 2005, she was named a Muslim Leader of Tomorrow by the American Society for Muslim Advancement. She is based in New York.
Irfana Anwer is currently a staff attorney and the Deputy Director of the Community Legal Interpreter Bank at Ayuda. Ms. Anwer represents low income residents of Washington DC, Virginia, and Maryland in matters of human rights and immigration law. She is closely involved in the national language access movement and is a member of numerous language access coalitions. She travels around the country regularly to speak about Ayuda’s cutting edge and unique interpreter bank.
Prior to her position at Ayuda, Ms. Anwer was the Executive Director and then the Director of the Family Law Division at Karamah: Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights. Ms. Anwer designed and implemented Karamah’s Law and Leadership Program for Muslim women around the world. Ms. Anwer managed a large Department of Justice grant that focused on training mainstream organizations about the Islamic perspective on domestic violence. She provided case management and referrals to Muslim women in domestic violence situations. She also gained expertise on the intersection of Islamic family law and American family law and spoke about the Muslim marriage contract at conferences and universities. Ms. Anwer traveled around the world to speak on the topic of Muslim women, Islamic law, and human rights.
Ms. Anwer currently works very closely with Karamah and other Muslim women groups such as the Peaceful Families Project and Muslim Advocates Against Domestic Violence. She is an advocate of Muslim women speaking out against violence from within the rich Islamic traditions. Ms. Anwer works with these groups in order to carve out strategies to combat violence against women and promote an understanding of rights women have under Islamic law.
Dilshad D. Ali is managing editor of the Muslim portal at Patheos.com, a multi-faith news outlet. She was an editor at Beliefnet.com, a subsidiary of FOX Digital Media and the largest multi-faith and spirituality website in the world, with more than five million daily hits and nine million newsletter subscribers. Ms. Ali has been with Beliefnet since 2005 and handles the site’s coverage of Islam, as well as Hinduism and minor Asian religions. She single-handedly developed a comprehensive “Understanding Islam” section for Beliefnet prior to the fifth anniversary of 9/11, created an “American Muslims Against Terrorism” gallery, and produced an award-winning online travel diary with Islam scholar Akbar Ahmed in 2006. Currently, she coordinates the site’s annual Ramadan and Hajj coverage, creates newsletters, and manages numerous prominent Muslim and other faith blogs on the site, including a Ramadan blog with Altmuslim.com’s Shahed Amanullah and a special Beliefnet blog on the crisis in Gaza.
Ms. Ali has appeared on CNN, MTV, the New York Times, Washington Post, and Newsweek. Prior to Beliefnet, she covered Islam, Asian and Middle-Eastern arts and culture for Islam-Online.net for five years (including the early chaotic days after 9/11 in New York) and has freelanced for many blogs and publications, including Newsweek, Azizah, Illume, and Islamica. She is a first-generation Muslim-American who makes her home in Virginia with her husband and three young children and telecommutes to her office in New York. Her other passion is autism education and awareness, as her eldest son has the disorder.
Aisha H.L. Al-Adawiya is the Founder and President of Women In Islam Inc., an organization of Muslim women which focuses on human rights and social justice. Ms. al-Adawiya organizes and participates in conferences, symposia and other forums on Islam, Gender Equity, Conflict Resolution, Cross-Cultural Understanding, and represents Muslim women in United Nations forums as a Non-Governmental Organization. She also coordinates Islamic input for the Preservation of the Black Religious Heritage Documentation Project of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
Ms. Al-Adawiya serves on numerous boards related to the interests of the global Islamic community, including the Interfaith Center of New York; KARAMAH: Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights; New York Jobs With Justice; Greater New York Labor-Religion Coalition; Muslim Consultative Network; The Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial Educational and Cultural Center (The Shabazz Center); The Malcolm X Museum; Collections and Stories of American Muslims (CSAM); Council on American Islamic Relations, New York (CAIR-NY); and Turning Point for Women and Families. She also serves as a consultant to numerous organizations and documentary projects on the Muslim American experience, including Columbia University’s Muslims in New York Project; Darfur Rehabilitation Project; Islamic Society of North America (ISNA); Media for Human Rights; International Museum of Muslim Cultures; Malaria No More’s Muslim Advisory Council; and Muslim Voices: Arts and Ideas.
Ms. al-Adawiya is a guest host and producer on Tahrir, WBAI Pacifica Radio in New York City and specializes in developing educational forums on human rights and social justice, interfaith initiatives, cross-cultural understanding, and peace building.
Asli Sancar is author of Ottoman Women Myth and Reality, a book which challenges the Orientalist myth that Ottoman women were erotic, indolent and suppressed. The book, which gives a realistic account of Ottoman women and harem life based on valid documentation, was awarded first place in the history/politics category in the 2008 Benjamin Franklin Publishing Awards and was a finalist in cover design. It was also published in Turkish in March, 2009.
Ms. Sancar has written intermittently on women’s issues for the last twenty-five years. Most of her articles have been published in Turkish in the Istanbul-based magazine, Women and Family. She has two other books published in Turkish: Awakening to the Light of Islam (1986) and Women and Family in Ottoman Society (1999). Ms. Sancar also lectures extensively in Turkey and the U.S. and has been featured broadly in the Turkish media. In addition to writing, she does English/Turkish translation professionally. Born and raised in the U.S., Ms. Sancar converted to Islam in 1968 and is the mother of three children.
Ayisha R. Jeffries is Vice President of Global Affairs and Senior Policy Advisor on Gender Equity to the President of the African American Islamic Institute (AAII), a non-governmental international organization based in Senegal, West Africa. AAII’s mission is to lead sustainable development that promotes education, health care, the empowerment of women and children, the alleviation of poverty, and the promotion of peace. Joining AAII as a Resource Strategist, Ms. Jeffries developed numerous multi-lateral partnerships from global organizations to grassroots community initiatives. These included the United Nations, AmeriCares, US Doctors for Africa, and Wassukafo (community advocates for the eradication of Female Genital Mutilation and Cutting in the Gambia). These and over thirty-five other ongoing partnerships have resulted in half a billion dollars in resources and sustained change in the quality of life for the people of West Africa.
In her current position, Ms. Jeffries develops strategic policies and strategies that foster enhanced relationships between the Islamic World and the West with an emphasis on gender equity within faith communities. She has co-developed over twenty conferences centering on women’s rights in Islam, health, education and economic development and serves as the Alternate Representative to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) at the United Nations. Independent of AAII, Ms. Jeffries has launched a grassroots movement, Conversations with Our Fathers, a public education project addressing domestic violence. She is in the final stages of planning Sun in My Belly, a green transitional community for women rebuilding their lives after Intimate Partner Violence.
Faeeza Vaid is Coordinator of the Muslim Women’s Network UK (MWN-UK), which primarily aims to provide a channel between Muslim women in the UK and the UK government in order to ensure that more Muslim women are involved in national policy and decision-making processes relevant to their lives.
Ms. Vaid is also Chairperson to the grassroots group, Sister 2 Sister, which is particularly dedicated to younger women. Through highly interactive question and answer sessions, the emphasis of the group has not necessarily been to learn “Islamic lessons” by rote, but rather strives to facilitate discourse on a variety of topics affecting the Muslim women who attend.
Ms. Vaid is originally from South Africa but has resided in Birmingham for the past 15 years. After completing a law degree at the University of Leicester, UK in 2005, she went on to do an Honours degree in Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town, focussing on feminist theology and its relation to Islamic law. She is currently completing a LLM in Socio-Legal Studies at Warwick University, UK. The specific topic of her dissertation is; “Notions of Authority in Muslim Society and the Example of Muslim Women’s Movements in the UK as Challenges to the Status Quo.”
Sobia Malik has currently been recruited as an Education Consultant and specialist to combat alienation amongst young Muslim, male, teenagers in the North West of England. Ms. Malik has been a leading practitioner in tackling educational underachievement in schools across the UK for over a decade. She has presented on a national and regional level on Government strategies for improving English/literacy across the curriculum in mainstream schools as well as for the current project she has devised.
Ms. Malik’s work allows her to use her own ethnic and religious background to focus on the growing concerns for disaffected young Pakistani Muslim boys who are consistently under achieving in schools. Her innovative work includes pioneering strategies to tackle Islamophobia and engender community cohesion by enlisting the support of wider community organisations. One such strategy has Imams and young Muslim professionals as mentors in order to strengthen links between parents, mosques, schools and the community. Her work in this area is also set to be the foundational research for her master’s degree.
Ms Malik is in the process of undertaking a project targeting support for Muslim women. The aim of the project is to enable those who are the most vulnerable in society, prioritizing women who have suffered from domestic abuse, socio-economic deprivation and are mothers’ of young children, through building training provisions in English, citizenship, life skills and self esteem and confidence.
Apart from her career background in Education, she is also trained as a therapeutic Counselor and aims to empower Muslim women through self awareness training.
