Genetics counselor Lama Eldahdah spends most of her time thinking about reproductive probabilities, but when she sits down with Muslim patients who are battling infertility, the conversation rarely focuses on odds. “Religious people say it’s God’s will, non-religious people say it’s statistics,” said Eldahdah, who works for Chicago’s Reproductive Genetics…
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This article responds to Yusra Gomaa’s piece on altM, Placing Muslim orphans into real homes. In 1961, Frantz Fanon wrote his seminal work The Wretched of the Earth. In the section of the book entitled “On National Culture”, he indicts the colonial system of both his native Martinique as well…
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Bare, grey walls tinged with a hint of yellow inside this familiar Moroccan orphanage. Crib after crib lined up next to one another with no spaces in between. Toddlers, laying silently on their faded green polka-dot sheets, likely funded by a charitable relief program. One child, perhaps walking now, is…
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This election cycle has been difficult to experience, even for adults. Civil conversations and respect for diversity have been sidelined, and the loudest voices in politics and on television now are frighteningly extreme. Unsurprisingly the hateful rhetoric has filtered into American schools. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has just…
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[tweetthis] Creative solutions to American Muslim lifestyle questions abound. [/tweetthis] Salaam Nutritionals is one such solution. As it explains on its site, the product was “born out of the necessity to address the growing frustrations from parents whose children were not getting adequate nutrition and not being able to swallow…
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Mariam: The biggest challenge I face as a working mom is striking the right work-home balance. I’ve taken various career detours to make sure that I’m able to be home as much as possible when the kids are home. This included changing my area of legal specialization, going on flex-time schedules,…
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A letter to my daughter. I often feel lonely. Being surrounded by supportive family and friends is wonderful, but after losing your dad Amr, there has been a loneliness in my heart that I’ve had a hard time filling. Amr listened to me talk for as long as I needed…
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I have died many times, but your breath made me alive again, Should I die thus a hundred more times I happily shall die! A child that dies in mother’s bosom, that’s how I am, my friend… -Rumi Much poetry has been written about the beauty of dying in the…
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Western etiquette dictates that there are three topics never to be discussed at a dinner party – personal finances, politics and sex. Somehow my Indo-Pakistani /Muslim compatriots missed the memo on the first two topics. At parties I am routinely asked what my husband makes and how much we paid…
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My son, Ibrahim, arrived small yet mighty in a Central Asian hospital one February morning, a miniature version of his Afghan father; brown skin, dark hair, a broad brow. On the inside, he carried my O- blood. I knew that this child was cut from the same cloth as my…
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