Mommying While Muslim

Chaplain Kirsten Jawad joins us today to engage in thoughtful conversation about parenting mindfully in an era when our young people are so much more dynamic than in the past–from flying the nest to staying in it and what work is required to keep our relationships healthy, faithful, and rewarding. While it’s great that our kids don’t want to leave yet, we still serve in our maternal roles to suppo...

When we asked Joy Turner, mom of 3 adults  ●      How do we conduct ourselves when adult kids don’t practice or act according to what we expect? ●      How do we retire the red panic button? ●      What keeps a mom from going nuclear? we didn’t expect to end up in tears. Joy threw us a curveball on this one because y’all know we like to end on a laugh, but instead we shared happy snot. “Just love...

Nora Abbasi, mom of 4 adult children, joins us today to share motherisms that helped her reach this glorious point as grandmother to 12 little Muslims, mashaAllah. Her advice and reflections are so helpful to those of us on the cusp of being empty nesters or those of who fear reaching that point. All things our kids face with us at their sides can be good. Caring about “what will people say,” sabo...

Our 9/11 special was featured by Fireside this month as one of the most compelling episodes of the year. For those who don’t know yet, Zaiba & Uzma host Breakfast Byelines weekly and WOC Book Club once a month on this innovative app that can best be described as “Clubhouse married Facebook Live.” Don't miss out on Fireside, but if you don't want to check out another app, get the reco...

Aisha Mshood joins us today as a mom who fostered to adopt and continues to foster children in America in hopes of building the family of her dreams. Her commitment to her children is awe-inspiring, as is her COMPLETE reliance on and in Allah SWT during a process that is not easy. From catfishing to fostering, to all the blocks falling into place just when they needed to be to be called “mom,” Ais...

Cultivating Families out of Texas has this core belief: when all faith communities care for foster and adopted children, NO CHILD WILL BE LEFT TO NAVIGATE LIFE ALONE. This really resonated with us and Executive Director and Rev. Amy Becezny and Board member Sarah Haider Alam of CF are on today to share their journeys of adoption, but more importantly, a lot of the challenges that come with buildin...

As co-founder of @muslimfostercare, Ranya Shbeib knows how to address deficiencies in the community. Namely, Muslim families licensed for foster care to take care of the 405K American children in need of fostering. There are only just over 13K licensed foster homes in America as of 2020. Do the math! ​ ​With the current discussion about Afghanistan and states gearing up to receive hundreds of unac...

Dr. Alia Irshad, pediatrician and adoptive mom, joins us today to talk about some of the hindrances to domestic adoption for Muslim parents, and the process of going international as she did. The process is demystified for us today, and her personal experience is the happy ending we want for every child of every faith and background. Let’s address some of the problematic beliefs the Muslim communi...

Hazel Gomez of Muslim Power Building Project joins us today to talk about Latinos at the forefront of social justice in America. As leaders in the movement for change, Latina Muslims especially are culturally endowed with assets and experiences that lend them towards success. She’s a great reminder of history and how Muslims have always been a part of social and political change in America, such t...

Monica Traverzo talks to us about being a Puerto Rican Muslimah, and how her intersectional kids are being raised in their PaliRico (@mon.del.tra is trademarking it) Arab Latino household. Her points on ethnic, cultural and religious pride should be listened to on repeat because they’re so simple, yet so many Muslim Americans miss the mark on these. What is the point of parenting Muslim children i...

Sakinah Gutierrez, co-founder of IslaminSpanish @islaminspanish discusses her journey to provide Islamic resources in Spanish besides just a translation of the Quran. Her media vision for the community is leaps and bounds ahead of what masjid boards consider mashaAllah, and we want her knowledge shared with the WORLD. Learn about her conversion story, her calling, raising her intersectional kids,...

Eva Martineau, Afro Latina of Mexican and Haitian lineage and nurse midwife, discusses persistent racial disparities in birth care that traumatize primarily minority populations in America. Find out why this researcher didn't stop at stats, but collected degrees as she decided to set the stirrups straight and serve her community to prevent further harm to future generations. She's taking...

Shownotes: There have been a lot of new listeners recently, and we thought, what better way to give them an intro to the podcast than to provide a montage of our top 5 most downloaded episodes? If you’ve already heard these, you’re ahead of the game, but take a listen to this production to see what the common theme is. Lucky guesses what your fellow listeners prefer to tune into every week?   Tune...

Which one of us has met a deaf Muslim? Chances are, very few, but it’s most likely because we aren’t creating spaces where we can, as Andaleeb Elayan, Executive Director of Global Deaf Muslim discusses today. We learn A LOT about accessibility and inclusivity and the most important pearl of the day from Andaleeb herself, “Your deaf child can do EVERYTHING except hear.” Treat them as such. ​For our...

It’s hard to imagine that schools would discriminate against students with disabilities, but Saadia Qureshi leaves us breathless as she discusses her fight to obtain inclusive education for her daughter with Down syndrome. The system is not designed to help our disabled students succeed, and the “separate but equal” model is anything BUT. Learn not just about the emotional weight of a diagnosis wi...

Sara Minkara continues our Disability Awareness series this month by talking about her blindness, the challenges of blind Muslims, and how to change the disability narrative from one of charity to the “suffering,” to one of value-based inclusion: you are important because you are you in every way you are created. The current “favor” dynamic perpetuates ableism and disempowers the disabled, so we h...

​Dilshad Ali shares a day in the life of a mom raising an adult child with autism, inspiring and teaching us today. Tune in to hear all the things we take for granted, and all the beautiful things we miss. Rather than perpetuate cultural behavior and silence around disabilities, we break the sound barrier for Muslim Americans to better support moms in the same position as Dilshad. We don't pi...

Feroza Syed speaks about her experiences as a transgender Muslim, her transition, and what made her go public with her history. Adoption discrimination against LGBTQi+ couples is the anti motherhood story we know will touch us today. ​We learn terms, more about unmosqueing marginalized Muslims, and how we can be better allies to our momsisters and their kids from all walks of life. ​ ​It's a...

Fawzia Mirza AKA Ayesha Trump, storyteller, actor, and director, (oh, yeah, AND lawyer) joins us to talk about all the transformations we make as humans in order to learn our personal identity. It's not just queer Muslims who have to come out--we all have to decide at some point who and what we are going to be. The path is unique, just like us. We all get to decide what we do about people who...

We get a lot of SOS messages from queer Muslim kids and what better way to answer them than by bringing on Erum Rani, founder of Iftikhar Community, who shares her journey of coming out and what that meant mentally and spiritually for her. Hear firsthand what it’s like inside the mind and heart of a queer Muslim child before rejecting them, and how cultural taboos oppress the most important relati...

Shenaaz Janmohamed of Queer Crescent joins us today to discuss her experiences as an LGBTQi+ person. Find out how that informs her exploration of and work towards social justice and equity. What do I do if my kid comes out? How do masajid make ALL kids feel safe? What is gender and what is sex? These are a few of the questions we discuss today. ​Tune in at 6pm EST on Spotify, Stitcher, Apple podca...

Noor Tagouri, journalist and storyteller, talks today about representative stories and how THAT's news. Or the NEW news. Find out how she uses stories to unearth truths we want to hide, or ones we just don't know because mainstream voices aren't telling them. WE need to do it. Pick up the mic or the pen.   It's our turn.    Links: Learn more about Noor: https://www.noortagouri....

Nargis Rahman joins us today to talk about her dreams, her path to journalism with its U-turns forced by motherhood, and how she practiced her mommying philosophy of “wing it” with her own return to work. Her gems on our God-given potential, and the right of the people upon us to use it, are more than inspirational. They’re aspirational.  Learn about storytelling as a function of community journal...

Rowaida Abdelaziz joins us today to talk about the accidental journalism bug and why it’s important in our endeavor to experience fair and balanced news coverage.  We also discuss moms’ roles in supporting their kids’ dreams, role models and mentors when there are so few, keeping our heads down and ears up listening for the scoop, and getting paid in pizza. What opportunities does the media landsc...

The first to kick off August’s Muslims in the News series is Laila Alarian, Emmy and Peabody award winning journalist and Executive Producer of the Al Jazeera English investigative documentary program Fault Lines . She takes over the soapbox today, which is not to be missed.    While she’s breaking news on narcotics and Palestine, she’s also dealing with pandemic homeschooling and the emotional st...