Kecia Ali
Kecia Ali is Professor of Religion at Boston University, where she has taught since 2006. Her books include Sexual Ethics and Islam: Feminist Reflections on Qur’an, Hadith, and Jurisprudence; Marriage and Slavery in Early Islam; The Lives of Muhammad; and, most recently, a study of academic gender politics: The Woman Question in Islamic Studies. She has also edited two readers on American Muslim marriage and divorce, Half of Faith: American Muslim Marriage and Divorce in the Twenty-First Century and Tying the Knot: A Feminist/Womanist Guide to Muslim Marriage in America, both freely downloadable through OpenBU.
Contribution:
Lela Ali
Lela Ali is the Co-Founder and Program and Policy Director at Muslim Women For, a Muslim women-led and serving grassroots organization based in North Carolina. Muslim Women For organizes Muslim, Black, brown, and immigrant communities to build political power through political education, advocacy, and local organizing. Lela also serves as a Regional Southern State Advisor at Movement Voter Project, where she is working as a main liaison with local groups in top battleground states like North Carolina and Georgia, assessing the organizing, donor and political landscape, and advocating for resources to build sustainable long-term progressive power. Lela is a graduate of Duke University where she received her Master’s in International Development Policy and Middle East Studies. Her research focused on social network analyses of local Muslim-American –led networks in the South.
Contribution:
Halla Attallah
Halla Attallah is a scholar of religion specializing in qur’anic, gender, and disability studies. Her work focuses on the Qur’an’s narrative material. Currently, Attallah is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University where she defended her dissertation, “Gender and (In)fertility in the Qur’an’s Annunciation Type-Scenes” in April 2023. Recently, she served as the Visiting Muslim Scholar at the ICJS (the Institute of Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies). Her current and upcoming publications include “Abraham and His Family,” in The Routledge Companion of the Qur’an, “Disability Rhetoric and Ethics in the Qur’an’s Narratives,” in Behind the Story: Ethical Readings of Qur’ānic Narratives, and “The Birth of Jesus in the Qur’an,” in Son of Mary: Jesus in the Qur’an and Muslim Thought.
Contribution:
Chapter 12: Surat Yusuf and the MeToo Movement: A Reflection
Botaina Azouaghe
Botaina Azouaghe, M.A., is a research associate and doctoral candidate at the Center for Islamic Theology at the University of Münster. With a specialization in Intercultural Religious Education, she explores the intersection of Islam, gender, and education. She holds a Master’s degree in Islamic Theology from the same institution on the portrayal of women in the Qurˈan. Botaina’s research interests encompass gender-equitable theology and approach to the Qurˈan, Qurˈanic classical exegesis, Islamic feminism, feminist Qurˈanic exegesis, and interreligious and intercultural dialogue. As a member of the Center for Islamic Theology’s Intercultural Religious Education department, she actively contributes to the development of inclusive and diverse perspectives within Islamic education. Botaina is dedicated to advancing a comprehensive understanding of women’s roles and representations in the Qurˈan, promoting gender equality and social justice within Islamic discourse. Her work aims to facilitate dialogue, critical engagement, and positive transformations within religious communities.
Contribution:
Chapter 13: The Case of Sexual Assault in Sūra 12: Yūsuf and Zulayḫā in Premodern Qur’anic Exegesis
Sara Bawany
Sara Bawany is an award-winning published poet, clinical social worker and MFA Poetry student at Texas State University. She published (w)holehearted: a collection of poetry and prose in 2018, and her second book, Quarter Life Crisis, was published in October 2023. She is the Managing Editor at Porter House Review and is an instructor at House of Amal, a writing institution for Muslim youth. She manages her own private practice as an aspiring decolonial therapist and has a small freelance editing business that aims to empower and strengthen writers who seek her assistance. You can learn more about her work at www.sarabawany.com.
Contributions:
Haddijatou Ceesay
Haddijatou Ceesay is a health educator with HEART and recently graduated with her PhD from City, University of London. Her research is centered on young people’s sexual and reproductive health education in low and middle-income countries. She has experience working with survivors of sexual and gender-based violence both in the U.S. and abroad, including FGM and early child marriage survivors, and as a sex educator. As a Muslim, especially as a black Muslim woman, she believes it’s important that we have culturally competent conversations about our bodies and sex without fear or stigma and from sources that teach instead of shame. She is also a co-author of The Sex Talk: A Muslim’s Guide to Healthy Sex and Relationships.
Contributions:
Chapter 5: Who Experiences Sexual Violence in Muslim Communities?
Samah Choudhury
Samah Choudhury is a Postdoctoral Researcher and Instructor with the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on Islam, comedy, race, and secularism. Her book manuscript, American Muslim Humor, asks how a “sense of humor” came to be a prized trait of the modern secular subject and why Muslims in the present are imagined to lack this comportment. Her work has been supported by the Asian American Religions Research Initiative, the Center for Islam in the Contemporary World, the UNC-Chapel Hill Asian American Center, the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, and the Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice. She previously taught at Ithaca College and earned her PhD in Islamic Studies from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2020.
Contributions:
Chapter 1: Locating Islam in the Language of Sexual Violence
Rose Deighton-Mohammed
Dr. Rose Deighton-Mohammed is a scholar of Islam, Gender, and Sufism. She works as an Assistant Teaching Professor at Emory University in the Institute for the Liberal Arts. Her research examines Sufi pedagogy and training methods with a focus on questions of gender, authority, and religious abuse. She is especially interested in Sufi theologies of the self and the body. Her current book project, Contemporary Sufism and Gender, analyzes how modern Sufis are redefining spiritual training, teaching pedagogy, and community dynamics on the basis of liberatory renderings of Sufism, trauma-informed ethics, and examinations of gendered power. Deighton-Mohammed’s research publications can be accessed in the Journal of Islamic Ethics, Religion Compass, Body and Religion, and Culture and Religion.
Contribution:
Chapter 17: A Critical Approach to the Study of Religious and Sexual Abuse in Sufi Communities
Anahita Farishta
Anahita Farishta (she/they) is the Reproductive Justice Coordinator at HEART. She is a recent college graduate from Pomona College in Claremont, CA where they majored in Asian American Studies with a concentration in Critical Muslim Studies. Her academic research has included a senior thesis on reproductive justice and Islam, which explores the subject through the lens of community and grassroots organizing. Anahita was also a member of the inaugural RJ & Bodily Autonomy Muslim Women’s Cohort at the Auburn Seminary in 2023. Anahita is an aspiring lawyer and wants to work in reproductive justice legal aid in the future.
Contribution:
Chapter 20: Barriers to Healing and Justice and Moving toward Abolitionist Solutions
Juliane Hammer
Juliane Hammer (she/her) is professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She specializes in the study of gender and sexuality in Muslim societies and communities, race and gender in US Muslim communities, as well as contemporary Muslim thought, activism and practice, and Sufism. She is the author of three monographs: Peaceful Families: American Muslim Efforts against Domestic Violence (Princeton, 2019); American Muslim Women, Religious Authority, and Activism: More Than a Prayer (Austin, TX, 2012), and Palestinians Born in Exile: Diaspora and the Search for a Homeland (Austin, TX, 2005). She is also the co-editor of A Jihad for Justice: The Work and Life of Amina Wadud (with Kecia Ali and Laury Silvers, 2012); the Cambridge Companion to American Islam (with Omid Safi, 2013), and Muslim Women and Gender Justice: Concepts, Sources, and Histories (with Dina El Omari and Mouhannad Khorchide, 2020).
Contributions:
Farah Hasan
Farah Hasan is a PhD candidate at the Theology Faculty, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany, and a research fellow in the DFG-NRF International Research Training Group “Transformative Religion as Situated Knowledge in the Process of Social Transformation”. Her research focuses on the production of discourses about Islam, Muslims’ global entanglements, and religious expression in Europe. Her broader academic interests relate to the sociology of knowledge, education, technology, religion, state and society. Recent chapters and articles published in Philipp Öhlmann et al (ed.) Lived Religion and Lived Development in Contemporary Society: Essays in Honour of Wilhelm Gräb (2024); Jessé Souza et al (ed.), Für eine menschliche Welt: Zum Werk von Boike Rehbein (2024), Religions (2022), and Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture (2021).
Contribution:
Chapter 3: Coercion into Marriage and Sex: How Islam is Instrumentalised
Fulera Issaka-Toure
Fulera Issaka-Toure is a Senior Lecturer in the Department for the Study of Religions, University of Ghana, Legon; and also, a Research Assistant in the Department of Islamic Studies at the University of Bayreuth in Germany. She has previously carried out field research in Ghana on Muslim family law in the context of the postcolonial state. Currently, she is working on Islamic practices, transnationalism, and gender among West African Muslims in Germany.
Contribution:
Nancy A. Khalil
Nancy A. Khalil is an Assistant Professor in American Culture, and Core Faculty in the Program on Arab and Muslim American Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her current research interests include Muslims, ethnography, higher education, racialization, and advertising. Her forthcoming book project with Stanford University Press is an ethnography of Muslim higher education accreditation and the path toward a profession for US imams. Dr. Khalil received her PhD in Anthropology from Harvard University in 2017 and afterward completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University’s Center for Race Indigeneity and Transnational Migration as well as the Collegiate Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Michigan. She previously worked as a Muslim Chaplain at Wellesley College, co-founded the Muslim Justice League, and served on the Board of Trustees for the Islamic Relief USA. She currently serves on the board of Pillars Foundation.
Contribution:
Mariam B. Khan
Mariam B. Khan is a Doctor of Unani Medicine with a passion for womxn’s health that is not restricted to sexual and reproductive health, but inclusive of the ways in which an androcentric, allopathic medical system disadvantages womxn and compromises womxn’s health overall. Her clinical, research and advocacy work lie at the intersections of race, gender, religion and health. Khan is available for virtual as well as in-person consultations at her Durban-based practice. She also produces and presents a weekly radio show that aims to nurture more nuanced conversations on Islam, on Lotus FM, the only national, Indian radio station in South Africa.
Contribution:
Yasmeen Khayr
Yasmeen Khayr, MA, is a Research Coordinator at the Center for Urban Research and Learning at Loyola University Chicago. She has worked on various community-based research projects since 2017 with the purpose of uplifting marginalized communities and creating practical knowledge with community partners. She has partnered with HEART as a research consultant to collaborate, implement, and analyze various research projects centering Muslim communities and their experiences with sexual violence. Her skills include qualitative and quantitative research methods, community-based research approaches, program evaluation, and project management. Ms. Khayr earned her Masters in Sociology and her Bachelor’s degree in Sociology-Anthropology, History, and Spanish from Loyola University Chicago in 2019 and 2018, respectively.
Contributions:
Chapter 5: Who Experiences Sexual Violence in Muslim Communities?
Maryyum Mehmood
Dr. Maryyum Mehmood is a ‘pracademic’ (practitioner academic) whose work sits at the interface between academia, grassroots and policy. She is a gender justice campaigner and specialist on gendered spiritual abuse, honour-based violence and harmful cultural practices. Maryyum is the Founding Director of The SHIFT (Social Harmony, Intercultural & Faith Training) organisation, where she provides advisory and ethical leadership training to tackle issues related to race, religion and gender. She has extensive experience of youth mentoring, movement building and mediation, which centres intergenerational engagement and empowerment. Maryyum holds a PhD in War Studies from King’s College London, as well as a master’s degree in South Asia and Global Security.
Contribution:
Wietske Merison
Wietske Merison is a licensed Muslim chaplain from the Netherlands. She has worked as a student chaplain and as a chaplain in a care home. Currently, she is pursuing her doctorate in Islamic Law at the University of California, Los Angeles, supervised by Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl. She holds both an MA in Theology and Religious Studies and an LLM in Public International Law (Human Rights Law). As an interdisciplinary scholar, her research interests are broad and diverse, including chaplaincy, eco-theology and environmental justice, human rights and global justice, and interreligious relations.
Contribution:
Nadiah Mohajir
Nadiah Mohajir is a lifelong Chicagoan, Pakistani-American-Muslim, mother of three, public health professional, reproductive justice activist, and anti-sexual assault advocate. She is the Co-founder and Executive Director for HEART to Grow, a national nonprofit working to promote sexual health, uproot gendered violence, and advance reproductive justice. She earned her Master’s degree in Public Health in 2009 from the University of Illinois at Chicago and her Bachelor’s degree in Public Policy Studies from the University of Chicago. Most recently, she co-authored the first edition of The Sex Talk: A Muslim’s Guide to Healthy Sex and Relationships.
Contributions:
Chapter 22: It Takes HEART to Grow: Cultivating Communities of Belonging
Sabreen Mohammed
Sabreen Mohammed holds a Bachelor of Arts in Public Health and Ethnic Studies from the University of Colorado and a Master of Public Health from Emory University. She is the Manager of Health Education and Research at HEART. Sabreen’s professional experience includes program implementation, community development, and public health education. She has also worked directly with women and adolescent girls in violence prevention and sexual health programs, as well as creating new public health initiatives for communities.
Contributions:
Chapter 5: Who Experiences Sexual Violence in Muslim Communities?
Chapter 20: Barriers to Healing and Justice and Moving toward Abolitionist Solutions
Shafieka Moos
Shafieka Moos is a South African Muslim social worker with over two decades experience in gender-based violence counselling and community education. She holds a PhD in Religion Studies, and her research focuses on the construction of gender, ethical and religious subjectivity at the intersection of race, class and sexuality. In her current research she explores the lived experiences of South African Muslim mothers and the ways in which their maternal subjectivities inform a contemporary understanding of Muslim ethics. She is an NIHSS (National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences) awardee and currently holds a Post Doctoral Fellowship in the Department for the Study of Religions at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
Contribution:
Chapter 4: Muslim Sexual Assault Survivors’ Experiences: Reflections from the Trenches
Dina El Omari
Dina El Omari is Professor of Intercultural Religious Education at the Center for Islamic Theology in Münster. Since October 2019, she has also headed the project “The Ambiguity of Islamic-Emancipatory Discourses in History and the Present” at the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” at the University of Münster. In May 2021, she completed her habilitation procedure with the habilitation thesis “The Qur`anic human couple in creation and eschatology – an attempt at a historical-literary commentary”, which was published by Herder Verlag in winter 2021. Her main research areas are: Islamic feminism, gender, interreligious dialogue, feminist exegesis of the Koran, Koran and exegesis.
Contribution:
Margherita Picchi
Margherita Picchi (PhD University of Naples l’Orientale, 2016) is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Department for the Study of Religions at the University of Cape Town. Her main research interest lies at the intersection of gender studies and modern Muslim intellectual and exegetical history and is rooted in a deep personal commitment to social justice that dates back to her high school years. After completing her PhD and dissertation, focused on Muslim gendered discourses in contemporary Egypt, she shifted the focus of her research toward South Africa. Her current project explores the genealogy of progressive Islam in that context, with a focus on the Claremont Main Road Mosque in Cape Town. Besides her academic work, she has been active in Italian grassroots feminist movements such as Non Una di Meno (“not one woman less”)amid the “Me Too” wave.
Contribution:
Sahar Pirzada
Sahar Pirzada is a Pakistani-American Muslim woman from the Bay Area, currently living in Los Angeles. Her dedication to serving the Muslim community draws from her extensive experience working as an organizer and educator within community spaces. After graduating from UC Berkeley with a degree in Development Studies, Sahar moved to Singapore, where she worked as a Project Coordinator for a UN-funded regional project on promoting gender-equitable interpretations of Islam for the full adoption of CEDAW (pronounced see-dah). Sahar passionately believes Islam is a religion that is sex–positive and promotes healthy sexual relationships. Since moving back in 2015, she has continued her activism by challenging Islamophobia as Co-Chair of #VigilantLOVE where she creatively organizes against the mosque-to-prison pipeline. She is currently the Manager of Movement Building for HEART, where she explores the intersections of Islamophobia and gender-based violence and supports survivors of sexual violence in the Muslim community.
Contribution:
Chapter 20: Barriers to Healing and Justice and Moving toward Abolitionist Solutions
Navila Rashid
Navila Rashid is a Muslim, Queer Bangladeshi-American. She’s a trauma-informed forensic social worker, and community educator. She joined HEART in 2019 full-time, and is the Director of Training and Survivor Advocacy. Before HEART, Navila was consulting for public defenders, government agency staff and nonprofits to support in creating safe(r) spaces for victims & survivors either through organizational programming or 1:1 case management. She earned her Master’s in Social Work from Long Island University-Brooklyn, a Post-Baccalaureate Degree in Biology from University of North Carolina-Greensboro, and a BS in Health Science and Creative Writing from University of the Sciences in Philadelphia. Most recently, she co-authored the first edition of The Sex Talk: A Muslim’s Guide to Healthy Sex and Relationships.
Contribution:
Sa’diyya Shaikh
Sa’diyya Shaikh is Professor in the Study of Religions at the University of Cape Town. She specialises in the study of Islam, gender ethics, and feminist theory, with a special interest in Sufism. Her study of Islam is animated by an interest in the relationship between the realms of spiritual and the political. She has published on interpretations of the Qur’an, hadith and Sufi texts; Islamic feminism; gender-based violence; Sufism and Islamic Law; and contemporary Muslim women’s embodied ethics. Sa’diyya is Director of the research unit at the Centre for Contemporary Islam at UCT. She is co-editor of Violence Against Women in Contemporary World Religions: Roots and Cures (2007); author of Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn ʿArabī, Gender, and Sexuality (2012) and co-author/co-editor of The Women’s Khutbah Book: Contemporary Sermons on Spirituality and Justice from around the World (2022). Involved in a number of socially engaged networks, she is a scholar-activist invested in ways to promote gender justice and social transformation.
Contribution:
Hera Syed
Hera Syed is a Research Intern with HEART and a second-year Master’s student at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies from New York University, where she conducted research on the impact of colonialism on labor conditions in the GCC. Hera is a recipient of the Critical Language Scholarship, the Dean’s Undergraduate Research Fund, and, more recently, the Huo Summer APEx Scholarship. She has professional experience working with community-based nonprofits and is currently based in NYC.
Contributions:
Chapter 5: Who Experiences Sexual Violence in Muslim Communities?
Chidera Stephnie Uwaeme
Chidera Stephnie Uwaeme is a young and enthusiastic scholar. Her area of specialization is in religion, culture, and society. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Religious and Cultural Studies from the University of Port Harcourt, where she graduated with first-class honours. She is now pursuing a Master’s in Data, Inequality, and Society at the University of Edinburgh. Chidera is committed to fostering intercultural dialogue and addressing societal challenges through education and advocacy. She is certified in Intercultural communication, Faith, Environment, and Climate Change. Her work underscores her passion for bridging cultural divides and driving positive societal change. She is happily married with kids.
Contribution:
Kiran Waqar
Kiran Waqar is the Social Media and Youth Engagement Coordinator at HEART. Kiran enjoys, studies, and participates in storytelling. Kiran has competed internationally at Brave New Voices, spoken nationally, and been featured in publications such as Teen Vogue, the Huffington Post, and the New York Times bestselling book Rad Girls Can. Kiran is the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Education Association SuAnne Big Crow Award, the 2020 and 2021 Critical Language Scholarship, the Gail Short Hanson Award for Advocacy, and is a Frederick Douglass Distinguished Scholar. Kiran recently graduated from American University with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Transcultural Studies with a concentration in Community-Based Research. During college, Kiran participated in and co-led three programs on student organizing and transnational solidarity in South Africa. She also helped build student coalitions, such as the Settler Colonialism Event Series and the Jewish-Muslim Deconstructing Christian Hegemony Dialogue.
Contributions:
Chapter 5: Who Experiences Sexual Violence in Muslim Communities?
Chapter 20: Barriers to Healing and Justice and Moving toward Abolitionist Solutions
Saadia Yacoob
Saadia Yacoob is Associate Professor of Religion at Williams College. She holds a PhD in Islamic studies from Duke University and studied Islamic law in Egypt and Jordan. Her first book, Beyond the Binary: Gender and Legal Personhood in Islamic Law was published by the University of California Press in 2024 and investigates the intersections of gender, age, and enslavement in the construction of legal personhood in Hanafi law. Her research interests more broadly include Islamic legal history, Muslim feminist studies, history of sexuality, and slavery studies.
Contribution:
Sexual Violence in Muslim Communities: Towards Awareness and Accountability 