- Jamaica, NY
1990s
Event flyers and brochure from the Muslim Women's Help Network.
Notes: As a mujadilah, a woman who advocates for her heart, Umi was a long-time women's advocate. Some of my early childhood memories of her advocacy include temporarily hosting at least one houseless woman in our home and helping another sister and her kids flee from an abusive husband — I can still vividly recall stuffing garbage bags filled with their things into my mother's baby blue Chevy. In the late 90s, she began to work with a new organization called Muslim Women's Help Network (MWHN). My mother's good friend and brother [in Islam], Dr. Abdus-Salaam Musa, had long been working with people who found themselves in crisis. Director of UMMAH (United Muslim Movement Against Homelessness), a project of ICNA (Islamic Circle of North America) Relief at the time, Dr. Musa would get multiple calls from women seeking assistance from houselessness and abuse. Seeing the need, he put out a community call for Muslim women to create an organization to address these needs of Muslim women. At the first meeting, about 30 women, including Black, Pakistani, and Indo-Guyanese US Americans, came to the meeting. Of that, 10‐15 women based in Queens became the core group of organizers who established MWHN. Some of those original members included Umi, Khayriyyah Ali, Josette Moore, Darlene Roots (who served as first president), Khateja Shakoor, and Shalimar Yameen. While cultural norms pressured most of the Pakistani US American women to step away, this group included at least one Pakistani US American sister. One of the major accomplishments of MHWN was establishing the first women's shelter for Muslim women in Queens, NY. MWHN was founded in 1998 and the home opened in 2000. Today, the home is managed directly by ICNA Relief as part of their network of women's transitional housing.