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Contributing
Writers - August 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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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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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.
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Farah
Farouque is a senior journalist who covers
legal and social policy issues for The Age. She
caught the media bug early when she was selected to be
one of the child hosts of a TV program, Kids Only,
on Channel Seven in Adelaide in the early 1980s. After
graduating with Law and Arts degrees from the University
of Adelaide, she then trod the journalism road and moved
to Melbourne. Her career has taken her to hotspots from
the Canberra Press Gallery to Bali in the aftermath of
the 2002 terrorist attacks. Her toughest assignment was
23-days straight, hitting the road after the Boxing Day
tsunami devastated coastal Sri Lanka. In her spare time,
Farah also serves as the board chair of The Social
Studio, a Collingwood-based not-for-profit that trains
refugee youth.
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Feriyal
Glaidous
is
studying naturopathy and has a Bachelor of Science,
majoring in
forensics. As well as her studies, Feriyal works in the
community sector and is a volunteer Coordinator with the
Ansaar halal food bank. Feriyal’s parents are from
Eritrea and they migrated here when she was 2yrs old.
Her interests are traveling and ski-diving.
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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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Sherene
Hassan is
the secretary of the Islamic Council of Victoria (ICV)
and has served on the board of the ICV since 2004.To
date she has conducted over 800 information sessions on
Islam to diverse audiences ranging from the Flying Fruit
Fly Circus School to the Australian Federal Police. She
is heavily involved in interfaith dialogue and serves on
the board of the Islamic Museum of Australia due to open
doors in 2013. Formerly a chemistry and physics teacher,
she is married with four children.
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Yasmin Khan’s family have been in
Queensland for nearly 150 years and are into the fifth
generation of Maroon supporters! Yasmin has been a
Muslim community advocate for nearly 30 years; and
appears regularly in the media talking about Muslim
issues. She
also has her own Islamic radio program, is a regular
weekly panellist on 612ABC ‘Evening Show’ with Steve Austin, is a
contributing producer/journalist to ‘The Wire’ radio
program broadcast to over 200 stations across Australia,
and has written for the Courier-Mail and Crikey. Yasmin
co-founded ‘Eidfest’, the multi-award winning
festival held in Brisbane. Dignitaries and celebrities
she has interviewed include: Imran Khan, the Governor
General, Hazem El-Masri, and the Queensland Governor.
Yasmin was also a representative on Prime Minister
Howard’s Muslim Community Reference Group.
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Joumanah
El Matrah
trained
as a psychologist and has been working in the community
welfare sector for fifteen years. She is currently
a board member of the Victorian Equal Opportunity and
Human Rights Commission and has just completed two terms
on the Australian Multicultural Advisory Council. In
addition to her Australian work she is a
member of a number of international initiatives by
Muslim women seeking to empower Muslim women including
the Musawah
Movement.
She
is also the Executive Director of the Australian Muslim
Women’s Centre for Human Rights, and has published
research and opinion works on Muslim women in Australia.
Under her directorship, the Centre has come to be
recognised as key organisation for Muslim women in
Australia and increasingly overseas.
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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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Mariam
Veiszadeh
is of Afghan
heritage and a practicing corporate lawyer and community
advocate based in Canberra. Mariam has also been sought
for comment by the media on issues pertaining to Islam
and Australian Muslims and has also had several opinion
pieces published both in the Daily Telegraph and The
Sydney Morning Herald
on various topics including the public discourse about
Muslims in Australia.
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