Women of Excellence Luncheon
Sunday, October 22nd | 1:00-4:00pm | GCASL Grand Hall
Join us for the First Annual ICNYU Women’s Initiative Benefit Luncheon! We will be honoring female community members and colleagues for their inspirational achievements. Our honorees embody strength, courage, wisdom and leadership. These women are true pioneers and trailblazars setting the stage and paving the way for women all over.
We invite you to an afternoon of food, fun and and inspiring stories. You’ll also have the opportunity to learn more about the Women’s Initiative and future programming. Our goal is to empower Muslim women, create strong bonds of sisterhood and provide space for spiritual, social, emotional and personal growth. Your contributions will support us in providing women’s events and programming such as women’s health, self defense workshops, community service and outreach work.
Stay tuned for more information to come regarding our honorees and ticket information. If you have any questions, please reach out to icwomensinitiative@gmail.com
Scroll below to buy tickets and learn more about our honorees
Honorees
Ibtihaj Muhammad
Ibtihaj Muhammad is a member of the United States Fencing Team and currently ranks No. 2 in the United States and No. 7 in the world. Named to Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential list, Ibtihaj is an important figure in a larger global discussion. Her voice continues to unite both the sport s and the non-sports world.
Ibtihaj is a 2017 Olympic medalist, 5-time Senior World medalist, including 2014 World Champion in the team event. In August 2016, she became the first American woman to compete in the Olympics in hijab. Muhammad was a 3-time All American and graduated from Duke University with a dual major in International Relations and African Studies, and minor in Arabic. In 2014, Muhammad launched her own clothing company, Louella, which aims to bring modest fashionable clothing to the United States market. She is also a sports ambassador, where she serves on the U.S. Department of State's Empowering Women and Girls Through Sports Initiative. She has traveled to various countries to engage in dialogue on the importance of sports and education.
Dr. Su'ad Abdul Khabeer
Su'ad Abdul Khabeer is a scholar-artist-activist who uses anthropology and performance to explore the intersections of race and popular culture. Su'ad is currently an associate professor of American Culture and Arab and Muslim American Studies at the University of Michigan. She received her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Princeton University and is a graduate from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and completed the Islamic Studies diploma program of the Institute at Abu Nour University (Damascus). Her Latest Work, Muslim Cool: Race, Religion and Hip Hop in the United States (NYU Press 2016), is an ethnography on Islam and hop hop that examines how intersecting ideas of Muslimness and Blackness challenge and reproduce the meanings of race in the U.S. Su'ad's written work on Islam and hip-hop is accompanied by her performance ethnography, Sampled: Beats of Muslim Life. Sampled is a one-woman solo performance designed to present and represent her research and findings to diverse audiences as part of her commitment to public scholarship.
In line with this commitment, Su'ad leads Sapelo Square, the first website dedicated to the comprehensive documentation and analysis of the Black US American Muslim experience. She has also written for The Root, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, Ebony Magazine, the Huffington Post, Religious Dispatches and Trans/Mission, and has appeared on Al Jazeera English. Additionally, Su'ad is a Senior Project Advisor for the US Public Television award-winning documentary, New Muslim Cool and her poetry was featured in the anthology Living Islam Out Loud: American Muslim Women Speak.
Shahana Hanif
Shahana is a community organizer, disability rights activist, and writer born and raised in Kensington, Brooklyn. She's a loyal Brooklynite and only says Brooklyn when asked where she's from instead of New York. you can't get her to travel to Queens unless it's for pizza.
Shahana recently returned from Bangladesh where she stayed for seven months learning to read and write Bangla, cultivating transnational sisterhood with feminist leaders in the Global South, and deepening her scholarship around disability and Lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease she's been surviving since 2008.
Shahana was previously a Public Housing tenant Organizer at CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities, where she organized low-income, working class, limited-English proficient Bangladeshi public housing tenants around racial and economic justice, immigrant power, improving language access services, and housing rights. She was particularly committed to deepening her intergenerational friendships with Bangladeshi women tenant members and leaders who fed her after outreach and meetings and shared memories of living in Bangladesh, their visions for a just world, and the feminist teachings of Begum Rokeya. Also during her time at CAAAV, she helped launch and publish the first-ever survey research project and report on Asian immigrant public housing tenants in NYC.
She is the founder of Bangla4Justice - Justice Translators, a Bengali/Bangla resource for urgent social justice, community organizing, and feminist translation needs in NYC. She serves as Co-Director of a Bangladeshi community organizers' collective for women called NAree Shongothok: Bangladeshi Women Organizing for Social Change, based in NYC. Shahana is a fellow in CORO's Immigrant Civic Leadership Program.
Shahana holds a Bachelor's degree in Women's & Gender studies from the Scholars Program at CUNY - Brooklyn College. She's currently the Bangladeshi Community Liaison to City Council Member Brad Lander, who represents her home district.
This event has been sold out.
Donations & Volunteering
Donate
The Islamic Center of NYU Women’s Initiative is an all-encompassing initiative aimed at serving the Muslim female community of the New York City region. Our goal is to empower Muslim women, create strong bonds of sisterhood and provide space for spiritual, social, emotional, and personal growth. The group is open to women of all ages and backgrounds. Please support the IC Women's Initative by making a donation today--thank you!
Volunteering
We are looking for volunteers to help ensure our first annual Benefit Luncheon is a success. This is a great opportunity to become more involved with the IC Women's Initiative and make new friends so please sign up today!