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Contributing
Writers - April 2012 Issue
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Aziza
Abdel-Halim AM is one of
Australia’s leading Arabic scholars and a prominent
Muslim leader. She grew up in Egypt at a time when her
birthplace was renowned for its progressive and
enlightened Islamic and literary debates. Aziza is the
founder and President of the Muslim Women’s National
Network and is the author of Did You Know? She has
served on numerous government committees including:
former Prime Minister Howard’s 2005 Muslim Community
Reference Group.
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Dr Anne Aly
is a research fellow at
Curtin University with an interest in terrorism studies
and radicalisation. She is the author of Terrorism
and Global Security: Historical and Contemporary
Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan). In 2011 she was
inducted into the West Australian Women’s Hall of Fame
for her work in international security and also received
the Minister for Multicultural Interests individual
community services award for her work in combating
racism and discrimination. Anne was born in Egypt and
lives in Perth with her two sons.
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Amal
Awad is
a Sydney-based writer and editor. She graduated
university with an arts/law degree and practised very
briefly as a lawyer before words beckoned and she moved
into editing and journalism. Her creative work has been
published in The
Sydney Morning Herald and Frankie
magazine. She recently published her first novel, Courting
Samira.
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Durkhanai Ayubi is a senior policy
analyst of Afghan origin who migrated with her family to
Australia in the 1980s, at the height of the
Soviet-Afghan War. She believes that the pen is mightier
than the sword; this spurs her passion for social
commentary and writing about the experiences of
minorities. She is ‘a lover of all things challenging
and a rejector of all things dull’. She holds a
Bachelor of Science, and an Honours degree in Chemistry
from the Flinders University of South Australia, and is
currently undertaking a Masters in Business
Administration at RMIT.
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Susan
Carland is a PhD candidate at the School of
Political and Social Inquiry at Monash University, where she is researching the
way Muslim women fight sexism within their own traditions and communities.
Readers will remember her as a regular on the SBS show Salam
Café and other programs like Q&A .She hopes one day to a write a
best-selling book about women in the Qur'an, but until then, you can find her
working in her garden or obsessively vacuuming, brewing coffee, tickling her
kids or buying new books for her kindle.
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Tasneem
Chopra is Chairperson of the Australian
Muslim Women’s Centre for Human Rights. ‘Equality
without Exception’ is the centre’s ethos. This new
human rights organisation was formerly the Islamic
Women’s Welfare Centre of Victoria, and Tasneema’s
involvement goes back almost twenty years to its
inception. She's an advocate for social justice issues
as they impact upon Muslim women and a strong proponent
of the contributions they have made, and continue to
make, to broader society.
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Hanifa Deen
is an award-winning
author who writes narrative non-fiction and lives in
Melbourne. Her books include: Caravanserai: A Journey
Among Australian Muslims; Broken Bangles; The Crescent
and the Pen and The Jihad Seminar. Her
latest book is Ali Abdul v. The King (UWA Publishers
2011).
Previous appointments include:
Hearing Commissioner, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity
Commission of Australia, the Board of Directors, Special
Broadcasting Services (SBS) as well as senior positions
in WA and Victoria in ethnic affairs bureaus.
Currently she writes full-time and
is an Honorary Fellow at the National Centre for
Excellence in Islamic Studies, University of Melbourne.
She is a great admirer of
disobedient women in history, literature and real life.
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Ruby Hamad is a Sydney-based writer
and filmmaker. She is a graduate of the Victorian
College of the Arts and is currently completing a Master
of Media Practice at the University of Sydney. Ruby has
written for The Sydney Morning Herald, Crikey,
Eureka St.
and New Matilda. ‘Sultana’ readers can look forward
to hearing more from Ruby Hamad who sustains both a
hard-hitting style of journalism, and a feminist
perspective on human rights and international events.
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Dr Shakira Hussein is undertaking a
McKenzie postdoctoral fellowship at the University of
Melbourne on Muslim women, gendered violence and
racialised political discourse. She completed her PhD at
the Australian National University and contributes
regularly to New Matilda and Crikey on issues including
gender, multiculturalism and Islam.
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Fattimah Imtoual is an
‘Adelaidean’ by birth, a Canberran by circumstance
and, she maintains that it’s not too late for the
nation’s capital to be relocated somewhere more
cosmopolitan—or at least warmer. A lawyer by training,
she’s nevertheless had a varied career including a
period of time which saw her wield power tools and wear
steel capped boots on the Darwin waterfront as a law
enforcement officer. She has frequently been accused of
having an overactive imagination, but disputes that
there’s anything wrong with this, and wishes that
there was a bit more whimsy in the staid world of the
public service.
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Dakhylina Madkhul is a practising
psychologist who hopes that nobody will hold that
against her. She works as a counsellor with families and
children from culturally and linguistically diverse
backgrounds, including new and emerging communities. She
is actively involved in the educational and community
welfare sectors, with a particular focus on women and
young people. She was also a regular panel member
appearing on the popular SBS TV show Salaam Café.
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Amra Pajalic is an award-winning
author born in Melbourne's Western suburbs to parents of
Bosnian background. A life-long reader, she realised
early on that books representing her kind of story were
rare: books about being from a migrant background and
the family expectations that come with this, while at
heart being ‘Aussie’. In her writing she relates
stories that might not otherwise be heard. She holds a
Diploma of Arts in Professional Writing and Editing and
a BA.
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Nur Shkembi is a Melbourne-based
contemporary Muslim artist and the Arts Officer at the
Islamic Council of Victoria; many of her projects have
introduced the wider community to the work of Australian
Muslim artists. Nur spent two years on the Arts and
Culture Committee for the Parliament of World Religions
and is an advocate of the Arts in interfaith and
cross-cultural dialogue. She is part of the team that is
establishing the Islamic Museum of Australia (IMA),
which is expected to open its doors in 2013. In her
‘spare time’ she’s undertaking a postgraduate
diploma in Community Cultural Development at the
Victorian College of the Arts (VCA), University of
Melbourne. She tells us she lives in ‘Falafel-land’
with her husband Zakariya, their five children, three
cats (and the occasional possum) in the heart of the
proudly diverse ‘Republic of Moreland’.
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Lisa
Worthington
lives in Sydney and is currently a PhD candidate at the Institute for
Culture and Society at the University of Western Sydney researching in the field
of Islam and gender. Outside of academia she has a penchant for t-shirts, Hello
Kitty and Rilakkuma.
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