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Arts & Entertainment

Event Showcases Lives and Art of Muslim Women

The event was Empowered Women International's third annual "We the People Project 2011: The Lives, Art, and Cultures of Muslim and Arab Women."

Dozens of Muslim women artists and many more interested community members met all day at Takoma Park Community Center Saturday to share a love of art and a message of peace. 

They were part of Empowered Women International’s third annual “We the People Project 2011: The Lives, Art, and Cultures of Muslim and Arab Women.”  Empowered Women International, founded by Romanian immigrant Marga Fripp nearly a decade ago, helps immigrant and refugee women turn their art into businesses to support themselves and their families.   

The day was a mix of hands-on Muslim artists’ studios, film, book talks and an art exhibition.  Nadia Janjua, an American born architect and painter of Kashmiri-Pakistani descent, explored spiritual expression in Islamic architecture as well as modern Muslim painting. She helped participants create art buttons using Persian miniatures.  Jameela Alter displayed her hand-made cards and books and later spoke about her novel, Clipped Wings.  Huda Totonji,  MFA, Ph.D.  displayed photos of women with Arabic calligraphy projected over their images.  

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Two Moroccan sisters, jewelry designer Amal Derder and textile artist and decorator Kamar Derder, showcased their work in a model of a traditional Moroccan room where they also offered delicious mint tea.  Kamar is a student in the EWI entrepreneurship program and Amal is entering the program in the fall. 

There was a showing of the short film “My Fellow American,” which juxtaposes portraits of ordinary Muslims in the U.S. with the vituperative hate speech that has come to characterize too much dialogue in recent years.  Attendees also heard from exhibit curator Tom Block and from the exhibiting artists. Painter Helen Zughaib, an Arab-American Christian, called Lichtenstein her biggest influence when she began mixing images of the abeya (the cloak worn by some Muslim women) with Western art to create pictures of what she called, “my ladies.”  The displayed work of film-maker and photographer Jamiah Adams focused on the African-American ummah, or community, including a shot of “The Eid” at a park in Northwest D.C.   Haleema Rehman’s photo series, “Surveillance,” questioned notions of liberty and acceptance. 

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There were two panels with contributors to I Speak for Myself, a collection of essays by U.S.-born Muslim women under the age of 40. Nafees Syed talked about politics and the marginalization of the Muslim voting bloc during the 2008 elections.  Hadia Mubarak talked about traveling to her parents’ native lands, Jordan and Syria, as an adult and realizing that she was neither of those, “but some hyphenated American.”  Sevim Kalyoncu, who has a Turkish mother and American father, said, “I do believe that we are much more the same than different.”   Kameelah Rasheed, an African-American Muslim, emphasized that “this is my personal narrative rather than a holistic narrative for the whole Muslim world,” a sentiment echoes many times as participating artists and authors stressed the peril of viewing Islam, Muslims and Muslim women as monolithic.   

Capping off the day was Pakistani-born actress Rohina Malik’s one-woman show, “Unveiled.”  She portrayed several different Muslim women, from a hip-hop artist in London to an attorney, some stories disturbing tales of discriminatory treatment, others funny moments of family life.   During the post-performance conversation with the audience, she emphasized, “The most deadly of all weapons of mass destruction is ignorance and fear.”  The evening closed with a standing ovation.  

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