I recently came to the realization that GirlBoss feminism (created by Sophia Amoruso in 2014) undermines the value of femininity in women’s lives, and that the idea of the Divine feminine (specifically, the idea of femininity in Islam) is far more useful in helping eradicate internalized misogyny. I grew up in…
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Earlier this week, a Muslim American rights activist brought up the issue of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) to Representative Ilhan Omar at the inaugural convening of the Muslim Collective for Equitable Democracy in DC. Ani Zonneveld, founder of Muslims for Progressive Values, asked a question regarding a recent case in…
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Over the last five years I have delved into the power of joy and pleasure to positively transform communities. I have developed a curriculum based on a multidirectional approach – combining Eastern and Western traditions, along with scientific and spiritual approaches. And like all people who stumble across their passion…
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Supporters of transgender ideology believe that they are freeing people from restrictive understandings of gender. In reality, the more our society tries to free itself from gender stereotypes, the more it becomes enslaved to them. By saying that people can be born in a body of the wrong gender, transgender…
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Sometime in the late 1950s, construction workers were digging the foundation of what was to be a large brick building at the corner of St. Peter and Federal Streets in Salem, Massachusetts, when they came across some large wooden beams. These, it turns out, were the beams from the “witches’…
Read MoreLast November, my journal was filled with pages blank from neglect. Donald Trump had just won the presidential election, and although writing often paves a way to truth for me, this time, I could manage only one sentence: I’m scared. I’m scared had hummed over the last two decades of my life: I had…
Read MoreWe landed at JFK Airport on a sweltering August day twenty-seven years ago. Me, my two younger brothers, and my parents – arriving to stay with a relative in Staten Island until my engineer dad could find a job. From Pakistan my parents had migrated to Saudi Arabia, and at…
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Hijabi. The word stumbles about my tongue in an ungainly fashion instead of rolling off gracefully. When it escapes my mouth, it falls flat. I realize then that I hate it. This word confines me within a box, reducing who I am as a human being to a dress code…
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