Guests Nida Allam and Lela Ali are two trailblazing Muslim women in politics. Allam is the first Muslim woman elected to office in North Carolina as Durham County Commissioner, and she recently announced her bid for Congress (no big deal). Ali is Policy and Program Director at Muslim Women For, nurturing vibrant Muslim communities through grassroots organizing. In Part I, we discuss their motivations for entering politics and the challenges they face, including Islamophobia. Listener’s note: This episode discusses the anti-Muslim hate crime that took the lives of 3 Muslim students in Chapel Hill in 2015.

Guests Abdullah Dorgham and Ahmed Amer share the same confusion when filling out their race on forms. According to the US Census categories, those of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) descent are considered white. But Abdullah and Ahmed, who are of Palestinian and Egyptian descent, discuss why that racial category misses the mark on their identity.

Coming up in Season 2, we’ll be talking about how social justice intersects with our faith. And with a community as diverse as ours, there is no shortage of causes to get behind. Join us as we discuss race and racism, pioneering Muslim women in politics, and our hopes for social justice here and abroad.

In this excerpt from Season 1, guests Eiman Ali and Nigel Edwards discuss the Black Muslim experience, including topics like their experiences of racism within the Muslim community, navigating their layered identities, and the challenges of an interracial marriage.

In this excerpt from Season 1, guests Farris Barakat and Belal Ali discuss the emotional and personal consequences of wars in Syria and Iraq, their parents’ home countries.

Guests Kathia Guerrero and Shirley Puente are Mexican and Peruvian converts to Islam. In this excerpt from Season 1, we discuss what drew them to the faith, how they maintain their Latina identity with their Muslim identity, and how they discovered a bigger Latinx convert community than they expected.

My friends Lynn Zitawi and Sarah Derris were just toddlers when 9/11 happened. We talk about how they learned about 9/11 and navigated the realities of growing up Muslim in a post-9/11 world—including facing bullying at school, 9/11 “guilt” and the aftermath of the War on Terror.

Three friends join me on our last episode for season 1: Nida Allam, Mohammad Alsalti, & Abdullah Dorgham. But this date is really where the conversation on Muslim American identity started for us — 9/11, when we were sitting in our elementary school classrooms — and both our worlds and the world forever changed.

Guests Farris Barakat and Belal Ali discuss the emotional and personal consequences of wars in Syria and Iraq, their parents’ home countries.

Guests Kathia Guerrero and Shirley Puente are Mexican and Peruvian converts to Islam. We talk about the Latina convert experience as a whole, including what brought them to Islam, how their family took their decision, choosing hijab, and finding community.

On this episode of Me & My Muslim Friends, guests Eiman Ali and Nigel Edwards discuss the Black Muslim experience, including their experiences of racism within the Muslim community. Whether it’s going from a black woman to a black woman with hijab, or the challenges of an interracial marriage, we take it on in this conversation.

Get a taste of what we talk about on this season of Me and My Muslim Friends, from the experiences of Latina converts to dealing with wars in our parents’ home countries. So grab some tea and listen in — our stories might be yours too.