9/11

Our final episode of our Changemakers season is with Sarah Ahmed — a psychotherapist and CEO of Leena, a national mental health practice that addresses the unique needs of communities of color across Canada. She can be found sharing her expertise online @thepoctherapist through her popular accounts on Tiktok and Instagram.

This season we’re featuring Muslim Changemakers—people whose work has had an extraordinary impact in our community and beyond. And I’m so excited to share our conversation with outdoors enthusiast Ambreen Tariq. Her mission is to encourage Muslims and people of color to experience the natural world. She’s the creator of the wildly popular instagram account Brown People Camping and author of the children’s book Fatima’s Great Outdoors.

This season on Me & My Muslim Friends, we’re featuring conversations with Changemakers. And on this episode, we’re sitting down with Kashif Shaikh, philanthropist and co-founder of the Pillars Fund. We’ll talk about the characterizations of Muslims in TV + film after 9/11 and how Pillars is backing Muslim filmmakers and writers in an effort to change the narrative.

On this episode of Me & My Muslim Friends, we chat with Ronnie Malley, a Chicago-based musician and playwright whose work often focuses on the untold stories of Muslims. We’ll find out how he became a master of a traditional instrument called the oud, how Muslim slaves influenced the blues, and how his Palestinian heritage shapes nearly every part of his storytelling. We’ll also talk about his more recent work on the soundtrack of the Netflix series Mo, which features comedian Mo Amer.

This season we’re featuring Muslim Changemakers—people whose work has had an extraordinary impact in our community and beyond—and I’m so excited to share our conversation with Melanie Elturk. Melanie is the CEO of Haute Hijab, which she founded in 2010.