Wise Women with Daisy Khan

What if the birds around us were inviting us to see the world—and ourselves—in an entirely new way? Daisy Khan speaks with Perin Gurel, a University of Notre Dame professor, about her novel Laleh and The Language of the Birds and its roots in Attar’s Conference of the Birds , real ornithology, and her daughter’s original story idea. They explore Laleh’s coming-of-age journey after her ornithologis...

 Daisy Khan interviews coach and author Rina Makhdoom (Rina Motivates) about redefining success beyond salary to include faith, family, and purpose.   Rina describes feeling empty in a six-figure engineering career, then pivoting motherhood by building a home-based cosmetics business during commutes and lunch breaks, facing fear, income instability, and rejection. They discuss prioritizing “faith...

Juneteenth, Islam, and the Legacy of Liberation | Wise Women with Daisy Khan ft. Quran Shakir Daisy Khan honors Juneteenth by connecting America’s emancipation to Islam’s early anti-enslavement teachings through stories of Barakah’s freedom, Sumayyah’s martyrdom, and Bilal’s liberation. With educator Quran Shakir (“Madam Q”), she explores how enslaved Muslims in America faced bans on language and...

A Texas governor branded a planned Muslim community a "Sharia city" and moved to block its construction. The residents owned the land. Zoning was approved. Every document the Constitution requires was already in order. What followed was the latest chapter in a quiet, decade-long legal war over whether Islam even counts as a religion in the eyes of American law. In this episode of WISE Wo...

What if everything you've been told about Sharia is wrong? In this episode of WISE Women with Daisy Khan, host Dr. Daisy Khan sits down with legal scholar and author Sumbul Ali-Karamali to dismantle one of the most weaponized words in American politics. Together, they trace how a 1,400-year-old ethical framework rooted in protecting life, family, intellect, and human dignity was deliberately...

A thousand years of anti-Muslim tropes didn't stay buried in medieval manuscripts. They followed Christians into modern sanctuaries, Sunday school classrooms, and even progressive interfaith circles. So what happens when two ordained Baptist pastors decide to trace the roots and rip them out? In this episode of WISE Women with Daisy Khan, host Dr. Daisy Khan sits down with Rev. Dr. Anna Piela...

In this episode of WISE Women with Daisy Khan, with host Dr. Daisy Khan, Dr. Denise Ziya Berte, Executive Director of the Peaceful Families Project and a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in trauma, torture, and interpersonal violence, dismantles the myth that domestic violence is a Western problem.  She examines how the power and control tactics used by dictators operate identically ins...

When a Grammy-connected Malaysian songwriter lost her music to religious gatekeepers who banned female voices and forbade instrumentation, she did not walk away from Islam. She walked straight into it, through theology, human rights law, and eventually the United Nations. In this episode of WISE Women with Daisy Khan, with host Dr. Daisy Khan, singer, activist, and the founder of Muslims for Progr...

Kamin Mohammadi is an author, journalist, broadcaster, editor and public speaker. Born in Iran, she and her family moved to the UK during the 1979 Iranian Revolution. She has written for the British and international press including The Times, the Financial Times, Harpers Bazaar, Marie Claire, Condé Nast Traveller (UK and Italy), Psychologies, Donna Moderna (Italy), Men’s Health, The Sunday Times...

There is a night hidden inside Ramadan with no fixed date. Muslims spend the entire month looking for it. That is entirely by design. Many fast and gain nothing but hunger and thirst. Intention is everything. Ramadan is not about food.  Ramadan is the month that gives every Muslim the tools to close that distance. In this episode of WISE Women with Daisy Khan, host Dr. Daisy Khan, Imam Feisal Abdu...

In this episode of WISE Women with Daisy Khan, host Daisy Khan sits with Professor Asma Afsaruddin, author of the Oxford Handbook of Islam and Women and a scholar of Middle Eastern languages and cultures at Indiana University Bloomington, who has spent decades reading the original Arabic sources that most Muslims never access. What she found is a trail of deliberate edits, borrowed myths, and poli...

In this episode of WISE Women with Daisy Khan with host Dr. Daisy Khan, Sheikha Maryam Kabeer, author of Journey Through 10,000 Veils, shares the extraordinary story of her lifelong spiritual unfolding - a journey that began in Hollywood and led her across continents in search of divine truth. Raised in a liberal Jewish family in California, she describes sensing from early childhood that her life...

In this episode of WISE Women with Daisy Khan with host Dr. Daisy Khan, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf explains why Muslims fast and what Ramadan is meant to transform within the human being. The ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar marks the first revelation of the Quran, when the command to read changed history. Fasting disciplines appetite, strengthens will, sharpens self-awareness, and builds emp...

A single question about faith and harm sent Dr. Daisy Khan into a years-long investigation of female genital mutilation. She discovered a hard truth that many still resist. FGM is not required by Islam and it violates the very principles the Quran was revealed to protect. In this episode of WISE Women with Daisy Khan, survivor and social activist Mariya Taher joins host Daisy Khan to separate cult...

A Black History Month book report changed everything. A Madison, Wisconsin, public school student discovered Malcolm X was Muslim and realized Islam predated her Egyptian family in America. That revelation transformed Dalia Mogahed into one of the most influential Muslim voices in the country. In this episode of WISE Women with Daisy Khan with host Daisy Khan, Dalia Mogahed shares research that ch...

Muslim students experience bullying at nearly double the national rate. Between 27% and 50% of Muslim youth in K–12 report being targeted, compared to 19-20% nationally. In 25% of those cases, teachers are identified as the perpetrators. These are not isolated incidents. They reflect systemic attacks on identity and belonging. In this episode of WISE Women with Daisy Khan, Dr. Daisy Khan sits down...

Twenty-five years after 9/11 devastated New York and brought backlash against Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians, New Yorkers elected Zohran Mamdani as the 112th mayor of the largest city in America. He's the youngest mayor in over a century, the first Muslim mayor, born in Africa to South Asian parents. He took his oath on two Qur'ans underground in the historic Old City Hall subway stati...

Jesus is revered by 4.6 billion people, representing 56% of the global population. Christians honor him as the Son of God. Muslims venerate him as a prophet born miraculously to the Virgin Mary. Yet most people have never explored how these two faiths view the same figure. In this episode of WISE Women with Daisy Khan, Dr. Daisy Khan sits down with Mustafa Akyol, author of The Islamic Jesus. They...

Mary is mentioned more in the Quran than in the Bible. There's an entire chapter named for her in Islamic scripture. Both Christians and Muslims revere her as the ultimate example of purity, devotion, and surrender to God. Yet most people don't know the full scope of her story or how deeply she connects these two faiths. In this episode of WISE Women with Daisy Khan, Dr. Daisy Khan sits...

Muslim women were granted complete financial independence in the seventh century. They controlled their earnings, owned property, kept their inheritance, and received mahr as a binding marital gift. Centuries later, cultural practices buried most of these rights. In this episode of WISE Women with Daisy Khan, Dr. Daisy Khan sits down with Dr. Rabab Gomaa-Razik, scholar of Islamic law and author of...

Muslim women are not oppressed by Islam. They were empowered by it 1400 years ago with rights that remain revolutionary even today. In this episode of WISE Women with Daisy Khan, Dr. Daisy Khan sets the record straight on what the Quran actually says about women versus what politicians and pundits claim. She reveals 10 specific rights Islam granted women in the 7th century that were centuries ahea...

This is Wise Women with Daisy Khan – because every story matters. The journey ends not with what we acquire but with what we become. The qualities that sustain us through difficulty often become the very gifts we offer to the world. For more such inspiring stories and discussion, like, follow, and connect with Dr Daisy Khan. #WISEWomenwithDaisyKhan #WISEWomen #MuslimWomen #EpsteinFiles #EpsteinCov...

Zohran Mamdani just became mayor-elect of New York City at 34 years old. The working class elected him while establishment Democrats and Republicans tried to stop his campaign by telling voters a Muslim couldn't lead America's largest city. In this episode of WISE Women with Daisy Khan, Dr. Daisy Khan sits down with Farrah Khan, Former Mayor of Irvine, the first Muslim woman of color to...

A viral map shows 2,700 red dots across America, each representing a mosque, with captions screaming about Muslim takeover. But nobody mentions the tens of thousands of churches covering that same map. In this episode of WISE Women with Daisy Khan, Dr. Daisy Khan sits down with Dr. Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, professor of religion at Carleton College and expert on Islam in America, is to expose the real...