Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur facts for kids
Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur, born on November 19, 1971, is an author and activist. She focuses on projects that involve different faiths and works to promote equality for women in Islam. Currently, she is a chief of staff and chief communications officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She also helps Malaria No More, a group working to end deaths from malaria. Saleemah also advises on projects that bring people of different faiths together and encourage volunteering.
Education
Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur graduated from Kent Place School in 1992. She then continued her studies at Columbia University, graduating in 1996.
Career Highlights
In April 2008, the US State Department invited Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur for a speaking tour in the United Kingdom. She visited eight cities to talk about Muslims living in Western countries. During this tour, she spoke at the House of Commons of the United Kingdom and the University of Oxford.
She has also been invited to speak at many other universities, including Harvard University, Emory University, and Yale University. Her work has been featured in major newspapers like The Boston Globe, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and The New York Times. She has also appeared as a guest on CNN and National Public Radio.
Before her current role, Saleemah worked as an associate director at Hands On Atlanta. This non-profit group organizes volunteer activities. She helped manage "Hands On Atlanta Day," a huge event where 17,000 volunteers worked on 250 different projects.
In 2003, Saleemah moved to Atlanta to join the team that created Azizah magazine. This was the first magazine specifically for American Muslim women. Before that, she worked for the Victoria Foundation, one of the oldest and largest private foundations. There, she managed $12 million in grants for non-profit organizations.
Activism for Equality
In 2006, Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur was chosen to join the Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow meeting. This event was hosted by the World Economic Forum in Copenhagen, Denmark. Thirty Muslim leaders from the United States and Western Europe met to discuss the future of Islam and Muslims in the West. From this meeting, they decided to work on gender issues within Muslim communities.
Saleemah has been involved in important events that challenge the traditional roles of Muslim women. In 2005, she helped organize a historic prayer in New York City led by a woman. This was a new idea in the American Muslim community. In 2004, she took part in an effort in West Virginia to create more space and opportunities for women in American mosques, where they had often been excluded.
Because of these actions, Muslim communities across the United States and the West have started to rethink how Muslim women participate in community life. Mosques in places like San Francisco, New York City, and Chicago now actively create programs for women. They have also removed barriers between women and men and allow women to serve on mosque boards.
Published Works
Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur is the editor of Living Islam Out Loud: American Muslim Women Speak. This was the first book to collect stories and thoughts from American Muslim women. The book shows how American Muslim women create their own identities while also contributing to public life. Famous contributors include poet Suheir Hammad and journalist Asra Nomani.
Saleemah often gives talks at workshops and conferences about popular culture, Islam, and women. She also wrote a piece for the book What Your Mama Never Told You: True Stories about ... and Love. She contributes to online magazines and blogs as well. One of her recent articles, "A Hajj for the Children of Mali," described a special trip to Mali to help save the lives of African children. Another piece, "Preach from the Ashes," shared her personal experience of the historic woman-led prayer.
Affiliations and Boards
Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur was a board member of the Progressive Muslim Union of North America. She is also on the advisory board for Atlanta Habitat for Humanity and its WOMENBUILD steering committee. Additionally, Saleemah serves on the Atlanta Women's Foundation's Faith, Feminism and Philanthropy steering committee. This committee works to connect people of faith and secular feminists to achieve common goals for women's empowerment.
