Raissa Jajurie is the Moro Program Coordinator of the Alternative Legal Assistance Center (locally known as SALIGAN). Prior to this position, Ms. Jajurie was SALIGAN’s Researcher, Publications Officer, Women’s Unit Coordinator, Mindanao Branch Coordinator and Executive Director. She has been with the organization since 1989.
As an alternative lawyer and advocate for Muslim women’s rights, Ms. Jajurie believes in justice for Muslim women in accordance with Islamic teachings, as well as human rights standards. After more than a decade of working with other Muslim women, she co-founded Nisa Ul-Haqq fi Bangsamoro (Women for Justice in the Bansamoro), which now conducts grassroots trainings for women, community dialogues, researchers, and policy advocacy. She is Vice-Chair of Nisa.
Ms. Jajurie is a Tausug, one of the ethno-linguistic groups that make up the “Bangsamoro” (or Moro Nation), which has been struggling for their right to self-determination. The Moro peoples are largely of the Islamic faith, and have waged a war against the Spanish colonizers for 300 years and against the Philippine government in contemporary times. Ms. Jajurie’s work has been in the area of human rights of the Moro peoples as well as other marginalized sectors and identities, including Muslim Moro women.
Shahina Akbar is an attorney at the High Court in Islamabad/Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Ms. Akbar works with the Behbud Association of Pakistan, an organization devoted to empowerment of women. She conducts educational sessions to target women’s groups in the communities on legal issues, using the legal system and Qur’an as a source of law. These lectures focus on family laws, marriage contract, child labor, child custody, child sexual abuse, laws of inheritance, Shariah, drug laws, women’s empowerment, domestic violence, female education, women’s rights in Islam, etc. She arranges workshops for women and men’s groups, and provides legal advice and remedies on critical issues. Additionally, Ms. Akbar has provided legal advice through the telephone on live radio shows in regards to family problems of British Pakistanis living in England.
Ms. Akbar has worked with the Ministry of Women Development in updating the Act of Baitul Mal, and has drafted the 2003 Bill on National Commission for Social Welfare. She is the Legal Advisor for the First Women Bank Limited, a bank committed to the enhancement of status of women.
Ms. Akbar holds a Bachelor’s degree in law (LLB) and a Master’s degree in Home Economics from Punjab University, Pakistan. She has been a practicing attorney since 1997.
Ms. Anbreen Ajaib is a development professional and human rights activist. As Program Manager of the Women’s Rights program at Bedari, Ms. Ajaib’s role includes psychological counseling to the survivors of gender-based violence. She is an active member of the campaign to develop laws that address sexual harassment at workplace under the umbrella of AASHA.
Ms. Ajaib has worked in the development sector for the last ten years, focusing primarily on women and youth rights. She began her career at grassroots development and moving on to senior management, working with different national and international organizations and managing a number of projects on human rights. Her work included grassroots mobilization of women to form institutions for their collective development, building capacities of partner organizations to work on women’s rights and policy level advocacy for bringing structural changes. Additionally, Ms. Ajaib has conducted trainings of women’s groups and Training of Trainers (ToT) for different organizations on violence against women.
Anbreen is author of two papers: “Strategy Paper for working with youth” published by Action Aid, and “Violence against young girls at schools” published in a book edited by Professor Fiona Leach of University of Sussex England.
Ms. Ajaib has an academic background of organizational psychology from The Quaid-e-Azam University Islamabad and a diploma in Social Enterprise Development from LUMS University in Lahore. She has attended numerous trainings on women and youth rights from well known national and international institutions and persons.
Yamina Mermer is Associate Professor of Islamic Studies at Carthage College (Wisconsin, US). Dr. Mermer’s areas of expertise are Quranic Studies, Islamic theology, as well as religion and science. She is fluent in Arabic, French, English and Turkish and has translated and published in several languages. Dr. Mermer holds a PhD in theoretical physics from Durham University in England and has since published extensively on Islamic philosophy of science. Her second doctoral degree is in Arabic and Islamic Studies from Indiana University at Bloomington, US.
Dr Mermer has been active in community work, leading study circles and counseling. She has also been active in interfaith dialogue. She is a member of the Scriptural Reasoning Group that brings Jewish, Christian and Islamic scriptures in a faithful conversation with each other. She has regularly participated in its yearly meetings at the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, UK. Dr. Mermer also helped in establishing an interfaith (Scriptural Reasoning) study group among Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faculty and students at Swarthmore College, where she taught before moving to Carthage College.
Nurah W. Amat’ullah (Rosalie P. Jeter) currently serves as a manuscript librarian in the Manuscript, Archives and Rare Books Division at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a New York Public Library Research Center. Ms. Amat’ullah is a member of working committee for the USA group in the Trans-Atlantic Dialogue between the Chicago based Council for the Parliament of World Religions and the Protestant Academies of Germany. She is also an executive committee member of the Consultation for Inter-faith Education.
Ms. Amat’ullah was born in Trinidad and Tobago. She immigrated to the United States in 1987. As the founder and executive director of the Muslim Women’s Institute for Research and Development, she developed a number of faith-based community development initiatives and has participated in a number of multi-faith and religious NGO efforts. In the last 5 years, Ms. Amat’ullah as dedicated much of her time to her vocation in the arena of ecclesiastic work/pastoral care. She has developed and directed social services projects aimed at easing the human suffering of a large new immigrant population in the southwest Bronx.
Ms. Amat’ullah earned a master’s degree in Library and Information Science, along with a Certificate of Advanced Studies for Archival Management from Long Island University in 1996. She recently earned a Graduate Certificate in Islamic Chaplaincy at Hartford Seminary.
Lena Alhusseini is the Executive Director of the Arab American Family Support Center (AAFSC) in New York. Before joining AAFSC, Ms. Alhusseini worked at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) where she served as international outreach project manager on issues of child protection, abduction and child trafficking. She has also worked for the Gateway Battered Women’s Shelter in Denver, Colorado where she developed the shelter’s children’s program. There, she was able to work with diverse populations including Latino and Arab-American women and children on issues of domestic violence.
Before coming to the U.S., Ms. Alhusseini served with a number of international organizations on issues pertaining to child protection and human trafficking, including USAID and UNICEF. Most notably, she established the Jordan River Children under the direction of HM Queen Rania Al-Abdullah of Jordan. The organization was the first in the Middle East to address the issue of child abuse and protection.
Ms. Alhusseini is a recipient of the Auburn Seminary Women of Commitment Award 2007 and a Brooklyn District Attorney Extraordinary Woman of 2008 Honoree. She is an Arab American of Palestinian/Saudi origin.
Raheemah Abdulaleem is an attorney whose practice focuses on traditional labor, employment and civil rights litigation. Ms. Abdulaleem has experience litigating complex discrimination cases and counseling employers regarding their employment policies. She has significant pro bono experience that includes; representing a client in a successful petition for asylum, and providing legal services to the National Commission on the Voting Rights Act in connection with the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act. Ms. Abdulaleem was elected to the American Law Institute in March 2009.
Ms. Abdulaleem’s personal interests focus on increasing cross-cultural awareness and understanding amongst people of different racial, ethnic and religious backgrounds. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of Operation Understanding, an organization aimed at increasing cross-cultural awareness between the African-American and Jewish-American communities. In 2006, Ms. Abdulaleem was selected by the US Ambassador to the Netherlands and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights to participate in a program held in the Netherlands to foster dialogue between Dutch and U.S. Muslims on increasing civic participation. She was also selected to participate in the 2009 Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow conference held in New York. Ms. Abdulaleem is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School.
Aishah Shahidah Simmons is an independent documentary filmmaker and activist whose work focuses on using the moving image, the written and spoken word to centralize the literal and metaphorical margins. Ms. Simmons, a survivor of sexual violence, produced, wrote, and directed NO! The Rape Documentary (www.NOtheRapeDocumentary.org). This Ford Foundation-funded documentary explores the international reality of rape, other forms of sexual violence and healing through the first person testimonies, scholarship, spirituality, and activism of African-Americans. NO! also explores how rape is used as a weapon of homophobia. NO! is a recipient of the Audience Choice Award and a Juried Award at the San Diego Women’s Film Festival; and Best Documentary Award at the India International Women’s Film Festival. Subtitled in Spanish, Portuguese, and French, NO! has been widely distributed internationally to battered women’s shelters, rape crisis centers, government agencies, NGOs, and colleges/universities.
A recipient of numerous awards and grants, Ms. Simmons has lectured extensively and her writings have been anthologized in the U.S. and in Europe. Her cultural work and activism have been highlighted in several media outlets including NPR, Radio France, BET, Ms. and Essence magazines. She is also featured in Farah Nousheen’s documentary Nazrah: A Muslim Woman’s Perspective. Ms. Simmons is now turning her cinematic lens to a feature length documentary, which she is working on with her mother Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons, on African-American Muslim women.
