Muslim Woman Shehanaz Parveen’s Sermon at Coimbatore CSI All Souls’ Church
New Age Islam News Bureau
29 August 2022
• Laila Ikram, First In the United States History to
Wear a Hijab on the Bench
• Hassanah Al-Saba, Muslim Female Pilot in Jamaica
Soaring On the Wings of Ambition
• Saudi Woman Receives Excellence Award for Arab Youth
• Women Wearing Hijab Face Discrimination in Egypt:
BBC Arabic
• 10 Emirati Women Successfully Climb Mount
Kilimanjaro
Compiled by New
Age Islam News Bureau
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/muslim-shehanaz-sermon-csi-church/d/127830
--------
Muslim Woman Shehanaz Parveen’s Sermon at Coimbatore
CSI All Souls’ Church
Shehanaz Parveen
addressing the congregation at the CSI All Souls’ Church, Coimbatore, during
the Sunday service. | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
-----
Wilson Thomas
AUGUST 28, 2022
She was part of Jeeva Shanthy Trust, which CSI All
Souls’ Church in Coimbatore honoured at the Sunday service
The iconic CSI All Souls’ Church in Coimbatore
witnessed a rare event on Sunday.
“Our service to humanity is a real opportunity to
prove our genuine love for God, and God alone,” said Shehanaz Parveen, the
invited speaker at the Sunday service in the church.
During the sermon of the 8.30 a.m. service, presbyter
and church chairman Rev. Charles Samraj took a break and invited a woman in
hijab to the lectern.
“We do not have words to explain our happiness. I
truly believe that this type of gesture among different faiths is what we [the
country] need right now. After all, all religions emphasis love and harmony,”
said Ms. Parveen of Jeeva Shanthy Trust, which has arranged last rites for more
than 10,000 persons, including for unclaimed and abandoned bodies, to honour
them for their service to the society.
The congregation gave a standing ovation as Ms.
Parveen ended her three-minute address with a verse from the Bible, “One who is
gracious to a poor person lends to the Lord, and He will repay him for his good
deed (Proverbs 19:17).”
She thanked the church for the rare honour and giving
a glimpse of the trust’s services to the congregation.
The trust has members and volunteers from different
faiths. Trust founder Mohamad Saleem said the appreciation they received during
the Sunday ceremony had given them more strength to continue their services.
The church administration felicitated all
representatives from the trust with shawls. The church administration had
invited six persons, including Ms. Parveen.
According to Rev. Samraj, the service rendered by the
trust and its volunteers to society, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic,
deserved appreciation as they worked irrespective of the religion, caste, creed
or social status of people who were in need.
“We have a theme for every Sunday service. This
Sunday’s theme was ‘God: For people of all faith’. We found that it was
appropriate to invite key people from the trust and honour them as the services
they do go well with the theme,” he said.
Source: The Hindu
--------
Laila Ikram, First In the United States History to
Wear a Hijab on the Bench
Laila Ikram. Photo: Facebook
----
Sakina Fatima
28th August 2022
Phoenix: For the first time in the history of Arizona,
a Muslim female judge was appointed at the Downtown Justice Centre in Phoenix,
local media reported.
On Monday, June 27, 2022, Laila Ikram was sworn in as
a judge pro tempore by Judge Enrique Medina Ochoa, the justice of the peace.
Apart from being the first Muslim, Ikram is the first judge in the United
States history to wear a hijab on the bench.
She was also the first judge to swear the oath of
office on a Quran, Phoenix Business Journal reported.
She studied law at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of
Law at Arizona State University.
Laila Ikram’s roots lie in Palestine, however, she now
resides in North Carolina, US. Her parents are immigrants to the United States
from Gaza, Palestine.
In the past Ikram has held a number of important
positions related to the judiciary and law.
Laila’s journey in law:
Prior to her appointment as a judge pro tempore, Ikram
worked as a criminal defence attorney for the Maricopa County District
Attorney’s Office.
Laila’s workarounds included only taking civil and
small-claims cases. She used her earned paid time off, while doing bench work
for free.
Earlier this year, after being nominated, Ikram had to
undergo a series of interviews and presentations to other judges and was
approved.
Enrique Medina Ochoa made it one of his duties as an
elected peace judge to bring more diversity to the court and sponsored several
minority attorneys to be judges pro tempore.
Laila wants to be an important part of the Muslim
community that seeks justice.
Pro tempore judges are judges who fill in things when
full-time judges cannot. Becoming a pro-tem judge is the starting point for
making the leap to appointment as a judge on a permanent basis.
“My whole goal with being an attorney is that I want
to serve the community. Justice Courts are the highest volume courts in the
county. Most people don’t have multimillion-dollar claims and issues, Justice
Court is where most people resolve their issues. I feel like I have the ability
to help people quickly and in a just way.”
Laila told Phoenix Business Journal
Ikram’s achievement is a first for a Muslim woman in
Arizona, however, it is not a first in the United States.
In January 2022, US President Joe Biden selected eight
judges, including Nusrat Choudhury who will become the first Muslim woman to
serve as a federal judge.
In October 2021, Michigan Attorney General Fadwa
Hammoud also made history when she became the first Arab-American Muslim woman
to argue before the US Supreme Court.
On Laila’s achievement, social media users took to
Twitter and congratulated her.
Here are some of the congratulatory tweets and
messages for Laila Ikram
Source: Siasat Daily
https://www.siasat.com/meet-laila-ikram-arizonas-first-hijab-clad-muslim-judge-2400351/
--------
Hassanah Al-Saba, Muslim Female Pilot in Jamaica Soaring
On the Wings of Ambition
August 29, 2022
Hassanah Al-Saba said she always knew she would have
achieved the rare feat of being a locally trained female Muslim pilot in
Jamaica.
On August 25, she completed enough flight time to
receive her private pilot’s licence, 10 days after her 22nd birthday.
Al-Saba, who grew up in Portmore, has been in love
with aeroplanes since infanthood. And even as an adult, she still oozes an
almost childlike passion for aeronautics.
She was first smitten in Trinidad when she was two or
three years old and longed to take control of the cockpit.
“Just the feeling when you take off, when you land, it
was just so great, and ever since then, every time an airplane passes by, I’m
always looking up at it ... ,” Al-Saba, a past student of St Andrew High School
for Girls, said in a Gleaner interview.
“It was so fascinating to me how a metal body can just
be in the sky like that. It just blew my mind.”
She didn’t have a huge support cast propelling her
towards her dream, and her parents had expressed reservations that gender and
religious stereotypes would marginalise her chances of success in aviation.
Al-Saba‘s parents encouraged her to pursue the
sciences at high school, and sometime after she got her Caribbean Advanced
Proficiency Examination (CAPE) Unit One results, she was bitten again by
flying’s love bug. She started researching how to become a pilot and applied to
aviation school abroad but could not finance the courses.
Soon after, the Aeronautical School of the West Indies
started offering training at the Tinson Pen Aerodrome in Kingston. And although
she was in pursuit of a bachelor’s degree in computer science at The University
of the West Indies, Mona, Al-Saba said her heart was set on aviation school.
“I don’t want to wake up to a job I hate,” she said,
beaming, in reference to her preferred immersion in aviation school.
She signed up in November 2020 after the school was
approved to do ground pilot training, kick-starting ground courses in May 2021,
all while pursuing her computer science degree at The UWI.
Another challenge, she said, was paying for her
pilot’s licence.
“It’s a really expensive feat. I wrote to a lot of
companies during my training to see if I can get some support. Maybe they
didn’t see the dream behind it at the time, but I did it without their help,
and most of my support was from my friends and family,” Al-Saba said.
In order to convince persons in her mission to raise
the required US$12,000, she conducted PowerPoint presentations and generated
donations of as little as US$50.
Balancing academics and aviation was “really rough”,
said Al-Sabah, who endured sleepless nights studying for her university
courses.
She started flight training in January this year,
while in her final year at The UWI, and was hoping to complete her training and
get her pilot’s licence in time for her birthday on August 15, but instead
completed her required flights 10 days after.
Al-Saba also obtained her computer science degree and
has secured a job as a network centre operations engineer at Digicel Jamaica in
June.
Her next major goal is to become a commercial airline
pilot.
“Wherever the road takes me, I just know that I want
to become an airline pilot … and I know it is going to be an even steeper cost,
but I want to show Jamaicans and young women that just because an industry is
male dominated, it doesn’t mean there isn’t room for you,” she said.
Five years from now, she sees herself becoming an
aviation class instructor.
The Al-Qaeda-led September 11, 2001, attacks on the
World Trade Center in the United States remains a fault line in the global
airline industry, causing increased profiling of Muslims.
But those stereotypes have not fazed Al-Saba one bit.
“Yes, there will be stigma with me flying a plane,
because they’ll be like, ‘You’re a terrorist’ and dem things, but I’m not going
to let that stop me.
“There are so many Muslim women who are pilots across
the world and it hasn’t stopped them, so why should it stop me?” she asked.
Source: Jamaica Gleaner
https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/lead-stories/20220829/muslim-female-pilot-soaring-wings-ambition
--------
Saudi woman receives Excellence Award for Arab Youth
NADA HAMEED
August 28, 2022
JEDDAH: A Saudi woman has received a regional award
for youth volunteer work after providing her community with two sports
initiatives.
Ibtisam Fadel Al-Enezi, from Arar in the north of the
country, was nominated for setting up “An Hour for Your Health” and the “I Walk
” female sports team.
She contributed to establishing and chairing the first
non-profit sports body in the Northern Borders province, the Sports Fitness
Association. It is now under the supervision of the Saudi Ministry of Sports.
She won third place in the Excellence Award for Arab
Youth in the field of youth volunteer work for 2022.
The Excellence Award is organized by the Egyptian
Ministry of Youth and Sports in cooperation with the Arab League.
It was launched by Dr. Ashraf Sobhi, Egypt’s minister
of youth and sports, in May to honor and encourage young people with
initiatives and projects credited with enriching the youth and sports
movements.
Al-Enezi was nominated for the award by the Ministry
of Sports, where she was the only Saudi participant and the first Saudi woman
to receive this award.
“The moment my name was announced as a winner gave me
a beautiful feeling, indeed reaping the fruits of one’s labor can be literal,”
she told Arab News. “I feel proud and honored to be one of the honorees in this
award, and I am happy to represent my beloved country, the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia.”
The award also aims to enhance competitiveness among
Arab youth, highlight their efforts, and support their initiatives.
She was also honored by Prince Saud bin Abdulrahman
bin Nasser bin Abdulaziz, deputy governor of the Northern Borders, for winning
the award and representing her country.
She started volunteering in sports in 2018 and has
received several awards.
She won an Education Excellence Award in 2014 as a
distinguished teacher in the Kingdom from the Ministry of Education.
In 2019 she received a merit from Saudi Arabia’s
ambassador to the US, Princess Reema bint Bandar Al-Saud, for volunteering in a
sporting event.
In 2021, she won first place in the Kafu awards in the
volunteering field and was honored by Prince Faisal bin Khalid bin Sultan,
governor of the Northern Borders.
The Kafu awards seek to motivate individuals and
organizations to develop competitiveness and creative initiatives in
development.
She is a member of several committees in the Northern
Borders, including the region’s youth council and the Saudi Red Crescent. She
is also the coordinator for women’s sports activities in the region.
“The awards motivate me to present and create
volunteer initiatives, especially in the sports field,” Al-Enezi said.
She praised the efforts of Saudi and Arab youth and
the support they received from government and private agencies in the Kingdom
and the Arab world for volunteer work.
Source: Arab News
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2152091/saudi-arabia
--------
Women wearing hijab face discrimination in Egypt: BBC
Arabic
August 28, 2022
LONDON: Businesses in Egypt are discriminating against
women who wear a hijab, a BBC Arabic investigation found.
According to the news outlet, several Egyptian women
have claimed venues refused them entry because they were wearing the
traditional headscarf.
BBC News Arabic tried to make reservations at 15
upmarket venues in Cairo that had been accused of discrimination.
Most of the venues requested the social media profiles
of all guests, and 11 of them said that hijab-wearing women were not allowed
entry.
An undercover couple, with the woman wearing a hijab,
were later sent to some venues that said head coverings were not permitted.
When the couple arrived at one venue, L’Aubergine,
they were told by the doorman that the headscarf was prohibited because “there
is a bar inside, which might offend women wearing a hijab.”
“The headscarf is forbidden.” the manager confirmed.
When L’Aubergine was presented with recorded evidence,
it denied having any policy to refuse entry to hijab-wearing women. “We have
reiterated our house policies to staff to avoid any confusion in the future,”
the venue said.
Doormen at Kazan, a fine dining restaurant, told the
couple: “The problem is the headscarf.”
“These are the house rules,” they said.
Egypt’s constitution prohibits discrimination based on
religion, sex, race or social class.
Evidence gathered by BBC Arabic was presented to Adel
El-Masry, chairman of the Chamber of Tourism Establishments and Restaurants.
“Never in any era of the ministry of tourism has a
decision been issued banning veiled women (from leisure venues),” El-Masry
said.
“This is not acceptable. Discrimination is
unacceptable, these are public places,” he added.
BBC Arabic’s investigation also found that La Vista, a
company with projects in Cairo and several high-end coastal developments, was
preventing hijab-wearing women from buying holiday apartments.
Posing as a buyer whose wife wears a hijab, BBC News
Arabic contacted six property brokers about a unit at a La Vista coastal
project. They said it would not be possible.
“Can I speak to you frankly? Definitely look for an
alternative,” one broker told the undercover reporter.
“To be frank with you, regarding the North Coast and
Sokhna projects, they are discriminatory,” said another.
A third broker explained: “They will not say that we
won’t sell you a unit, but they will say that this project you have selected is
closed now and when it’s open, we will call you, and they won’t.”
An undercover reporter who called La Vista and said
that his wife wore a hijab was told that he would be put on a waiting list, as
there were no available properties.
However, when he visited the La Vista office weeks
later without mentioning his wife, he was told there were properties available
immediately.
Asked what kind of people lived in the development,
the agent replied: “The idea is that all the people we have look like each
other.”
He added that one La Vista development “has no veiled
women at all.”
The developer has not yet responded to BBC Arabic’s
requests for comment.
Egyptian MP Amira Saber, a women’s rights advocate,
said that the Egyptian constitution is clear that such discrimination is
prohibited.
“I will certainly use one of my parliamentary tools to
ask the officials in the government how we can ensure that this does not happen
again, and if it does happen, the perpetrator must be punished,” she said.
Source: Arab News
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2152151/middle-east
--------
10 Emirati women successfully climb Mount Kilimanjaro
August 29, 2022
DODOMA: Ten Emirati women have completed a six-day
climb up Mount Kilimanjaro, Emirates News Agency reported on Sunday.
The mountain in northeastern Tanzania is Africa’s
highest peak, rising 5,895 meters above sea level.
The trip was organized by Majalis Abu Dhabi to
celebrate Emirati Women’s Day, according to the WAM report.
At the summit, the climbers raised the UAE flag.
According to WAM, the successful ascent demonstrates
the will and determination of the nation’s women to work collaboratively and
overcome obstacles.
The UAE’s Women’s Day falls on Aug. 28 every year. It
was celebrated with several activities across the country on Sunday.
WAM reported on the praise for the nation’s leadership
in promoting the empowerment of women and girls.
This includes the critical role played by Sheikha
Fatima bint Mubarak, who heads the General Women’s Union, Supreme Council for
Motherhood and Childhood, and Family Development Foundation.
Source: Arab News
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2152266/middle-east
--------
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/muslim-shehanaz-sermon-csi-church/d/127830
New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism