Highlighting Remarkable Women this Women’s History Month

by Aseel Elborno

This Women’s History Month, I was invited to speak on several platforms to represent Islamic Relief USA. There, I explained my role and the humanitarian advocacy campaigns we’re encouraging people to participate in. I spoke on Minarat Foundation’s podcast Advocacy Weekly, the Commission on the Status of Women 67 at the United Nations, and at the George Washington University (GWU) Arab Student Association Women’s History Month panel. Each opportunity was special and rewarding, but the most moving was the GWU event. I was honored to speak alongside three other women, each that came from unique backgrounds.

Because it is important to learn about Muslim women in the United States, I wanted to share their stories with you.

Amaal Sami is a real estate professional working in the DC-Maryland-Virginia metropolitan area. Before moving to the United States, she earned a degree in civil engineering, which she attained in Baghdad, Iraq. She has lived in the United States for 23 years. Sami strives to help people in many ways, like hosting a yearly bazaar for the Arab community to promote their small businesses. She also has a large following on social media where she educates the Arab community on investment and real estate opportunities in the Arabic language.

Dr. Nabila Hijazi is a Teaching Assistant Professor of Writing at the George Washington University. Her research interests include Muslim and refugee women’s rhetoric(s) and literacy practices, writing center theory and practice, and multilingual writing. She teaches classes in academic writing, writing across the curriculum, writing center theory and practice, and women’s studies. Her work received national recognition. Her dissertation, “Syrian Refugee Women in the Diaspora: Sustaining Families through Literacies,” received Honorable Mention in the 2020 President’s Dissertation Award by The Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition, and her essay, “Reclaiming Forgotten Literacies-Agency through Functional, Rural and Food Literacies” received Honorable Mention in the 2021 Council of Writing Program Administrators, Graduate Research Award for Writing in WPA Studies.

Isra Chaker is a Syrian-American activist, humanitarian advocate, and public speaker. She currently serves as a Campaign Strategist at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) where she leads national campaigns on issues including immigrants’ rights, racial justice, and work related to Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian (AMEMSA) communities and indigenous people.

She is an appointed Ambassador for One Young World (OYW), a global forum of young innovative leaders and has served as a speaker at their annual OYW Summit in London (2019) and Manchester (2022). She is a Public Advocate for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency USA (UNRWA) for her invaluable contributions in raising awareness and funds for their projects supporting refugees.

Isra created a social media platform @IsraSpeaks to empower people around the world to use their personal narrative to become active global citizens who use their voice to create positive change. Her narrative of choosing a life of purpose to shatter stereotypes of Muslim women due to islamophobia and discrimination she endured growing up Muslim in America, is the reason she is a powerful, eloquent and successful public speaker and engaging over 250,000 people on her social media platforms.

We shared our stories, the paths that we walked to arrive where we are, and the challenges that we faced along the way. Listening to the stories shared was very important opportunity for these young women in the audience. Growing up, I came from a community that had been displaced from Kuwait and resettled into North Carolina. Many of the women in our lives were struggling just to survive, let alone thrive. It’s important for this next generation of Arab and Muslim women to see what successful women can be like — to have role models to look up to and ask questions of. All of us as panelists put special emphasis on our religion and that true success is the one attained by the pleasing of Allah (swt).

I’m very happy to have been part of that learning experience for them and look forward to the next opportunity to lead.