Inside the Lives of Muslim Women

By Connect Mason Reporter Paula Salamoun

The Muslim Students Association (MSA) held a panel discussion titled “The Lives of Muslim Women” on Tuesday night as part of Islam Awareness week. This event comes on the second day of a week that MSA hopes will shed light on the “making of a Muslim.”

• What the speakers said.
  
• Why are these events important?
  

At the panel discussion were three Muslim women who were there to speak about the role of Islam in their life. Speaker Narmeen Slim summarized the discussion as an “idea about how a Muslim woman lives her life.”

The panel’s topics ranged from Islam in daily home life to dealing with misconceptions in the workforce. Khatera Harrif, a GMU alum and panel speaker, hoped her words could be understood as advice to young Muslim women who are ready to enter the professional world. She discussed her experiences with employers and how “Mason’s diversity” helped her to have a positive outlook on life and Islam.

With the open-question forum at the end of the discussion, the speakers hoped to create a dialogue among students that would serve as a learning experience. Slim further wanted to “clarify ambiguous topics about women in Islam.” Referring to the use of head scarves, she went on to explain that “the way we look doesn’t make us any different.”

The event gave students an opportunity to appreciate and learn more about Islam. Attendant students felt that events such as this are important to Mason because of the widespread diversity on campus. According to the President of MSA, Farooq Yousuf, the Muslim population is around 2,300 students, though only 200 of whom he described as “active.”

MSA will be holding two more events this week. More information can be found here.