It Takes HEART to Grow: Cultivating Communities of Belonging

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Nadiah Mohajir

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Muslim women are fighting battles on multiple fronts simultaneously: within their communities to advocate to challenge gender norms and traditions and with external forces that see us as caricatures of the stories they have created about us. This chapter hopes to shed light on the uphill battles many Muslim women face when building their organizations, organized in the following sections:

• The Road to HEART: What conditions led to the founding of HEART?
• More than one way and Leading by Unlearning: How do we disrupt that there is more than one way of leading? What did I have to unlearn in order to reach my full potential as a leader?
• Reclaiming Agency through Islam: How have I and my team turned to Islam to build faith-inspired programming to prevent sexual violence?
• Building HEART: the hard, the messy, the ugly: What do power and privilege look like in Muslim communities, and how can that create barriers or opportunities for organizational growth? How do traditional models of philanthropy work and fall short for Muslim-women-led nonprofits in gender justice and gender-based violence? What does community care look like for those who are directly impacted by the very issues we are trying to combat?