Amina Zuberi is the Chairlady for Tangana Women Development Group – Mombasa, a CBO registered under the Ministry of Gender & Social Services in 2000.
Ms. Zuberi is an advocate for the fight against HIV and AIDS, drug abuse, human rights violations, and promoting girl child education. She has also represented women in constitutional review. With the help of IFH (U.K.), she produced an educational video on Muslim women, HIV, AIDS, AND reproductive health. She has been voluntarily educating primary school students on the dangers of sexual abuse, early pregnancies, drug abuse, and HIV/AIDS. Ms. Zuberi has been educating the Muslim women & youth on issues affecting them socially, politically, and economically through local radio programs and numerous television panels. However, her main focus remains on workshops and seminars.
Ms. Zuberi sits on the Board of Muslims for Human Rights in Mombasa and Centre for Minority Rights in Nairobi. She is also a volunteer for FIDA, monitoring rights violations against Women & Children. Ms. Zuberi received a Head of State Commendation Award in 2006 for actively participating in Women’s activities.
Uzma Farooq is the Vice President of the Muslim Women’s Coalition (MWC) and Director of the Greater Washington DC Area office. MWC is a non-profit, faith-based organization dedicated to upholding the inherent Islamic values of democracy, equality, justice, and communal welfare by uniting American Muslim women seeking to serve the worldwide community with compassion and respect for all humanity.
As an avid advocate for social justice, Ms. Farooq engages MWC members in a number of activities on local and international levels, including donating Ramadan Baskets to local abused women’s shelters and collecting aid for displaced women and children in Afghanistan. MWC also collected aid for Pakistan Earthquake Relief in 2005. In 2007, they launched “Women Care for Women’s Wellbeing,” an educational series meant to empower women on issues that affect them in the global community. To bridge the gap in understanding Islamic cultures, MWC provides a platform for interfaith dialogue at the grassroots level in the annual event, “A Day for Prayers and Talk.”
Ms. Farooq is also a member at large on the Arlington Interfaith Council. She was also on the steering committee of the Women, Faith and Development Alliance that launched the Women’s World Summit in 2008, in addition to the planning committee for the annual Sacred Circles Conference at the National Cathedral.
Ms. Farooq has delivered lectures regarding Islam and has been invited to attend conferences and seminars by governmental and non-governmental institutions like the State Department, the Department of Justice and USAID, the Hudson Institute, and Women Thrive Worldwide. She has participated in research on women’s role in society with the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, and has been interviewed by Voice of America. Her work has been published in Interaction’s Monday Developments magazine.
Farzana Hassan is a Canadian Pakistani-born public speaker, human rights activist, and author. Hassan is a former President of the Muslim Canadian Congress, where she involved herself in interfaith dialogue for many years. Hassan is a columnist for the Toronto Sun and author of several books that open the conversation about the origins of Islamophobia in the West: feminism and Islam. Farzana advocates for Muslim women’s rights in Canada and other countries. Hassan is a supporter of banning the burqa, that from her perspective, it has nothing to do with Islam, but with a patriarchal interpretation of the Quran.
Hassan is a writer, author of many publications covering topics related to gender issues and religion such as “Women and the Challenges of Today: Modernist Insights and Feminist Perspectives (2006)”, where she reflects about polygamy, wife battery, adultery, terrorism, religious fundamentalism, and Shariah Law. In “Unveiled: A Canadian Muslim Woman’s Struggle Against Misogyny, Sharia and Jihad (2012)” Farzana challenges the ideas nourishing radicalism among some of Islam’s adherents; additionally, the book speaks out against brutal and misogynistic honor killings and takes an honest look at political Islam. In Farzana’s later book “The Case Against Jihad (2018),” the author examines the conceptual roots of armed jihad, to seek solutions to a growing problem that threatens world peace and security. Farzana Hassan earned an MBA from the University of Massachusetts; she holds degrees from the Kinnaird College, the University of Punjab, and the University of Phoenix.
Hanan Gewefel is the founder of and senior breast imaging consultant at the Women and Fetal Imaging center (WAFI), a center that provides a new vision for women’s and fetal health by combining a holistic evidence-based approach to fertility, breast imaging, cancer screening menopause and female endocrine problems with the most up-to-date technology. For the past sixteen years, Ms. Gewefel has worked as a dedicated radiologist in breast imaging. For the past ten years she has worked with the mammography unit she helped build and personally manages. She founding member of the Breast Cancer Foundation of Egypt and has diagnosed thousands of cases of breast cancer.
Ms. Gewefel is a big believer in raising women’s awareness of the importance of early detection. She has spoken about this topic at numerous conferences on breast cancer, both nationally and internationally. She also manages the campaign Pink for a Week, that offers women free mammograms at WAFI.
Ms. Gewefel graduated for the University of Cairo in 2007 with a degree in Healthcare and Hospital Management.
Claire Alkouatli is a writer, editor and educator based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. In 2006, Ms. Alkouatli founded Jeddah’s first mother and baby group to offer developmental activities within an Islamic context, out of her conviction that the advancement of Muslim societies must start with mothers and children. This group grew into Enchanted Garden, Mother and Child Enrichment Center, an extracurricular activity center aimed at holistic development and raising a new generation of Muslim leaders. As one of five founders, Ms. Alkouatli currently holds the post of Research and Development Manager.
From 1998 to 2002, Ms. Alkouatli was the Executive Editor at Blue magazine, an adventure travel magazine based in New York City. During her time at Blue, the magazine won several awards including Life Magazine’s Best Photos of the Year Award (2000) and FOLIO’s Editorial Excellence in the Travel Category award (2001). Ms. Alkouatli’s writings have appeared in diverse publications including Canada’s national newspaper, the Globe and Mail, Parabola magazine, Arabian Woman (Dubai), Bangladesh Today and a Seal Press anthology called, Bare Your Soul: The Thinking Girl’s Guide to Enlightenment. Her book, Islam, which introduced Islam to a non-Muslim audience, was published by Benchmark Books in 2006.
Travel is what initially brought Ms. Alkouatli to Islam, which she embraced under the guidance of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf in November 2001. Resonating with the words of the Sufi saint Jalaludin Rumi, “The spirit teaches the body to travel,” she roamed the Muslim world for many years, including Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Oman and Bangladesh, before accepting Islam as a practice in 2001. Ms. Alkouatli is married to Syrian Creative Director, Saadi Alkouatli, and they have two young boys.
Dr. F. Cangüzel Güner Zülfikar is the Associate Director of The Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Zülfikar has taught courses on Islam, Muslim Civilizations, Sufism, History of the Middle East and Turkish at both UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke University.
Dr. Zülfikar studied the economic, institutional and social history of the awqaf of the Ottoman Empire. Her special interests are in charitable endowments and their activities as civil society institutions, and Sufism (Islamic Mysticism). Her research is based on original endowment documents from Aziz Mahmud Hüdayi’s Sufi shrine complex in Istanbul, which records charitable community activities from the 16th to the 20th centuries. She is now currently working on her book project about the contemporary Sufi master Kenan Rifai’s approach to Secularism, Fundamentalism and Islam in 20th century.
Dr. Zülfikar has also been studying Turkey’s Sufi-Muslim women’s activities and she serves as a connecting point between Turkey and North Carolina, USA. She translated Carl Ernst’s world-wide recognized, award winning book Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary World into Turkish. She received her Ph.D degree in History from Hacettepe University.
Amal Mahmoud Fayed is the Secretary General for the Forum for Women in Development, a network of 105 NGOs in Egypt. Ms. Fayed also serves in Cairo as the special advisor to the V-Day Karama, addressing strategies to end violence against women in the Arab world. A development expert and trainer, in 2002 and 2003 Ms. Fayed ran a series of Oxfam GB–Yemen workshops, engaging civil society organizations to examine an Arab training guide focusing on violence against women and domestic violence. In 1995, she led the participation of Egyptian NGOs in the Beijing +5 assessment of progress on implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action. As Chairperson of the Arab Organization for Human Rights, Ms. Fayed advocated for the ratification of the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women by Arab governments to protect the rights of Arab women against discrimination. She earned a BSc in Commerce and Accounting in 1976 at ‘Ain Shams University in Egypt, where she was secretary of the Culture & Politics Club, responsible for rescue and nurse training during the October 1973 war, and president of the ‘Ain Shams Fatat Association.
Alaa Nasief is the founder & General Manager of Hadara, a consultancy that aims to promote educational and individual excellence and positive social change through training, research and empowerment programs. Over the last ten years, Ms. Nasief has been active in implementing social development programs in various sectors of Saudi society. Her extensive academic and professional background is in developing community service programs for youth as well as tackling various social issues related to education, curriculum studies and girls/women.
In 2003, Ms. Nasief pioneered an innovative leadership program for Saudi girls that focuses on teamwork, discipline, social skills, and spirituality in order to expose the girls to new ideas and ways of thinking. This program, which runs every summer, has been highly successful in producing leaders who are active in both their communities and other fields.
In 2007, Ms. Nasief was the Associate Dean at Jeddah’s College of Business Administration, a post that put her on the pulse of youth issues. She was also the Country Program Manager for the Women in Technology program that seeks to educate and enable unprivileged Saudi females, and a coordinating member of Bonyan, an organization for volunteer and community services.
In all her work, Ms. Nasief strives to ensure quality improvement and institutional effectiveness, and draws upon her extensive foreign experience and intimate familiarity with Saudi objectives. Ms. Nasief has a Masters in Education and a Ph.D. in Curriculum Studies, both from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
