June 19, 2019

I remember always watching hairstyle tutorials when I was younger, absolutely fascinated with how I could express myself through curls or pigtail braids. That’s why when I faced with wearing a hijab, I was petrified, and the decision was an excruciatingly tough one. Hijab was a symbol of modesty that screamed of horrifying uniqueness and […]

Reem is one of many ambitious and remarkable young leaders who applied for MALA’s Scholarship Program in 2018-2019. To learn more about MALA’s scholarship opportunities, click here. Riding the bus on a rainy day, I aimlessly starred at the water droplets run down my window. My focus suddenly skewed towards one specific raindrop. I watched

At a young age, Zena and Mena Nasiri realized that their community libraries did not have books that represented Muslim Women. In an effort to change this, and to enrich other community libraries with books that focused on Muslim women in story, they founded Girls of the Crescent, a nonprofit organization that collects and distributes

I am an East African Muslim American undergraduate student. That is the world’s general classification of me, my identity. But if you look past that, like most people, the things I have been through in my nineteen years of life will prove to demonstrate so much more. There is no specific experience that defines me.

Coming to America at 10 years old with little knowledge of what life would be like outside Singapore, I blindly but confidently followed my mother and sister on this journey. While our moving experience was not to flee the country but rather to start afresh seeking new opportunities, I was reluctant to make the move.

I was born in Bangladesh, a country in Southeast Asia with a population of more than 160 million. Around 90% of the population in Bangladesh is Muslim, rest are Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians. As a Muslim in a secular Muslim majority country, I came to know a lot about my religion, as well as learned