National Muslim Women’s Summit 2020: Malikah Won’t Let COVID-19 Stop Them From Visioning for Justice

By Deena Hadhoud, Community Manager

Every year, Malikah hosts the National Muslim Women’s Summit at Harvard University in Boston. This summit serves as one of the only nation-wide opportunities for social justice-minded Muslim women to connect and discuss the current status of Muslim women in America and vision for the future. Due to COVID-19, they could not fly these amazing women in from across the country, but were still able to connect online for the first ever virtual National Muslim Women’s Summit. Instead of a three-day event, Malikah hosted an 8 hour long virtual summit, consisting of eleven topics and at least ten powerful speakers.

Malikah’s founder, Rana Abdelhamid, started with an inspiring overview of how and why Malikah exists. Ten years ago, she experienced a hate crime on Jamaica Avenue in Queens when a man tried to rip off her hijab. With the help of her martial arts training, Rana was able to get away from her attacker. This inspired her to start teaching martial arts to other girls in her community at the age of sixteen. Rana’s grassroots organizing gradually expanded to Malikah’s four pillars of curriculum: self-defense, healing justice, financial literacy, and organizing. Currently, the organization reaches thousands of women across the globe.

Next, Kheira Bekaddja, an accomplished youth organizer from North Virginia, kicked off the summit as the first keynote speaker. Kheira organized a club at her high school, called Edison’s Minds Matter, which works to create a school environment that encourages open discussion of mental health, individual empowerment, use of appropriate mental health resources, and positive coping strategies. She also emphasized the need for peacebuilding education in schools, which she has tackled in her own community by planning the Open Peacebuilding & Leadership conference back in December.

Leah Vernon, a body positivity activist, author, and speaker, then facilitated a vulnerable discussion about fatphobia. She deconstructed how ingrained into our everyday lives it is, stating that “a lot of fatphobia is just so deeply rooted into our communities, into sometimes even our religions, our cultures, that we don’t even know when we’re doing it.” Leah also spoke on the issue of eating disorders in the current context of social isolation and COVID-19.

Next, Dalia Magahed, the Director of Research at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, blew us away with a discussion about the status of Muslim women in the U.S. from a data perspective. Based on her studies, one takeaway was that “islamophobia tends to be very gendered” and that “Muslim women bare the brunt of islamophobia.”

Then the summit shook things up with a well-needed healing justice session. Jaylan Elrahman is a longtime member of the Malikah community, who supported development of Malikah’s healing justice curriculum, and is currently seeking to explore the interplay between liberation psychology, decolonization and therapeutic practice. She facilitated a meaningful virtual healing session, providing the opportunity for participants to reflect on their intersectional experiences of womanhood as well as the COVID-19 situation. See Malikah’s Facebook page for how to join our weekly sessions.

Haleema Bharoocha, Advocacy Manager at Alliance for Girls and Malikah organizer, and Ryanne Olsen, Training and Curriculum Director at Emerge America, co-led an Emerge media training for Muslim women. The training tackled difficult subjects, like how to address hate speech online and the false feeling of responsibility to represent all Muslims on social media. The goals of this programming are to reduce the negative media representation of Muslims, end rape culture and other forms of violence against women using media tools and narrative strategies, and to equip people to share authentic stories.

The following session was run by Carolina Rivadeneira, a migrant justice and anti-gun violence activist. Carolina dove into organizing 101, powerfully defining organizing as “the process of organizing oppressed people to use their collective power to win changes in people’s lives and shift the balance of power.” Carolina argues that advocacy and direct action are the most effective ways to build people power and change existing power relationships, and that people should build campaigns based on the issues affecting their own communities.

Rana then returned to open up a conversation about safety and bystander intervention. During past National Muslim Women’s Summits, there would be a fully interactive self-defense training. Luckily, Malikah’s website has a series of training videos that are free and available online, which people can conveniently practice at home! Malikah is also hosting an upcoming bystander intervention training in the context of anti-Asian violence and COVID-19.

The agenda then turned to Lina Mohamed for a discussion about healing Justice and refugee engagement. Lina is a Malikah facilitator, who spent her last year in Greece, Lebanon, Tunisia, UAE and Palestine working on implementing projects and programs that help Refugee Women gain skills by providing them with vocational training. She also talked about her work to provide integrative mind and body care for displaced families in Athens, Greece, and her research around women who have faced trauma in war-torn areas like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and Cameroon.

Next, Maryam Ali, a passionate academic in the area of racial health disparities, talked about Malikah’s Solidarity in Struggle: South Asians for Black Lives program. This program was created by a group of Gen Z and Millennial South Asians from California who saw a need to reflect on their own identities and cultures, and to unlearn and hold themselves accountable for the anti-Black behaviors perpetuated within their communities. Maryam led a powerful discussion, asking participants to reflect on how they and their communities have perpetuated anti-Blackness, and what solidarity looks like to them. She also talked about how social, financial, and healthcare inequality contribute to the fact that the CDC reports 1 in 3 hospitalized cases of COVID-19 are African Americans.

After an eight hour long event full of inspiration from powerful Muslim- American women, Deena Hadhoud, Malikah Community Engagement Manager, discussed the different ways people can stay involved with Malikah. Many summit attendees are expected to apply to become a Malikah chapter leads, and share empowering curriculum with women in their own communities. Deena also discussed upcoming Malikah events, including the Virtual Women’s Healing Justice Circles, Bystander Training Against Anti-Asian Violence, and Global Women’s Iftar events. Follow Malikah’s Facebook and Instagram to get involved yourself!

The summit ended on a note of gratitude, and some final reflections: