Faith, culture, and sexual health: Two leaders share how they’re changing the conversation in Muslim communities.

In this episode, I sit down with Nadiah Mohajir and Sahar Pirzada, leaders from Heart, an organization focused on advancing sexual health and reproductive justice within Muslim communities. Nadiah shares her personal story, growing up in a South Asian Muslim family, and how it led her to start Heart. She talks about the cultural and religious barriers women face regarding sexual health and gender-based violence, and how Heart is working to create safe, open spaces for these crucial conversations.

Sahar, who’s been with the organization for nearly a decade, reflects on her journey from teaching sex education in Singapore to leading grassroots movements at Heart. Together, they dive into the complexities of addressing sexual health in faith-based communities, highlighting the importance of centering marginalized voices, such as queer and trans Muslims.

They also introduce their latest reproductive justice campaign, which aims to provide Muslims with the knowledge and tools needed to make informed decisions about their health, all while staying true to their faith. Tune in for a conversation that blends faith, community, and health in a refreshing and insightful way.

Highlights:

• Nadiah’s upbringing in a traditional South Asian Muslim family and her path to founding Heart.
• Sahar’s experience bringing sex education to Muslim communities and advocating for reproductive justice.
• The unique challenges of tackling gender violence and sexual health in faith-based communities.
• Heart's new reproductive justice campaign and its efforts to empower Muslim women and marginalized groups.
• How the organization blends Islamic values with public health education to offer holistic support.

Nadiah’s Bio:

Nadiah Mohajir is a lifelong Chicagoan, Pakistani-American-Muslim, mother of three, public health professional, reproductive justice activist, and anti-sexual assault advocate.

She is the Co-founder and Executive Director for HEART Women & Girls. For over a decade, she has led the organization to provide reproductive justice, sexual health education and gender-based violence awareness programming and advocacy to thousands of individuals, organizations, and campuses across the country. HEART ultimately aims to dismantle the stigma, silence, and systems that prevent individuals from seeking information, healing, and justice.

Nadiah has worked in public health and reproductive justice for over twenty years in a variety of settings, including, but not limited to research, academics, policy, and community health. Her past work includes projects such as redesigning teen pregnancy programs, improving pregnancy outcomes in low-income communities in Chicago, running sex education programming for vulnerable youth, and evaluating innovative cross-sector partnerships in public health.

She earned her Master’s degree in Public Health in 2009 from the University of Illinois at Chicago and her Bachelor’s degree in Public Policy Studies from the University of Chicago. Nadiah has also participated in a number of fellowships, including the American Muslim Civic Leadership Institute, Germanacos Fellowship, is a recipient of the Women’s Innovation Fund and was selected to participate in Cohort 4 of the NoVo Foundation’s Move to End Violence program. She is also the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2018 Chicago Foundation for Women’s Impact Award and the El Hibri Foundation’s Community Builder award. 

In the past, she served on the executive board of directors for the National Women’s Health Network and currently serves on the advisory board for Third Wave Fund. Most recently, she co-authored the first edition of The Sex Talk: A Muslim’s Guide to Healthy Sex and Relationships.

Sahar’s Bio

Sahar is a Pakistani-American Muslim woman from the Bay Area, currently living in Los Angeles. Her dedication to serving the Muslim community draws from her extensive experience working as an organizer and educator within community spaces.

After graduating from UC Berkeley with a degree in Development Studies, Sahar moved to Singapore where she worked as a Project Coordinator for a UN-funded regional project on promoting gender-equitable interpretations of Islam for the full adoption of CEDAW (pronounced see-dah). Sahar passionately believes Islam is a religion that is sex positive and promotes healthy sexual relationships.

Since moving back in 2015, she has continued her activism by challenging Islamophobia as Co-Chair of #VigilantLOVE where she creatively organizes against the mosque-to-prison pipeline. She is currently the Manager of Movement Building for HEART, where she explores the intersections of islamophobia and gender-based violence and supports survivors of sexual violence in the Muslim community.

Sahar’s work with HEART has been featured in Teen Vogue, NPR, KPCC, Fusion’s Sex Right Now and #GoodMuslimBadMuslim.

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Dr Sameena Rahman (0:0.240)

at the end after so I can say like, know, we talked about X, Y, and Z, so stay tuned. So we'll just jump right into it. Hi everyone, it's me, Dr. Samina Rahman, Gyno Girl here for another amazing episode of Gyno Girl Presents, Sex, Drugs, and Hormones. Today I have a great treat for you guys. We are speaking to two amazing community leaders that are known nationally for the work that they're doing in sexual health and reproductive justice.

from the community organization HART, that is an organization that promotes sexual health and gender violence as well as advancing reproductive justice within the Muslim community. So I've talked about the fact that I'm Muslim many times on this podcast. So I'm excited to have the voices of both Nadia and Sahar.

And we're gonna talk about what brought them into this community organization, how they grew up and some of the new initiatives coming forward. So let's just get started. Thanks guys for being on the podcast today. Thank you for showing up and talking to us today.

Nadiah Mohajir (1:7.906)

Thank you for having me.

Sahar Pirzada (1:8.123)

Thanks for having us!

Dr Sameena Rahman (1:9.848)

Yes, so I mean, maybe I'll start with you, Nadia, since you're kind of like the OG when it comes to lot of this. Because I met Nadia, I want to say like maybe eight years ago or something, like almost, I think I had just, because I'm 10 years into my practice, I think I was like a year or two into starting my practice. And I'd heard about your organization from someone else in the community. And I thought it was a good intersection of what I was already dealing with with my Muslim patients.

Nadiah Mohajir (1:14.990)

Hmm.

Nadiah Mohajir (1:20.300)

A long time ago, yeah.

Dr Sameena Rahman (1:36.496)

how are a lot of sexual dysfunctions I found out about you guys who are creating so much awareness about sexual health issues and gendered violence and other things like a whole slew of things actually but Nadi tell us a little bit about like how you were brought up and then what how that eventually led you into this line of work

Nadiah Mohajir (1:55.416)

Thanks so much, Dr. Rahman. Once again, I want to thank you for having Sahir and I today. It's an honor. We love your podcast. So my name is Nadia Mohajar. I'm founder and executive director of HART. And as you mentioned, it is a national nonprofit that is working to advance reproductive justice and prevent gender-based violence in Muslim communities. And how did I come into this work? mean, part of it is my own lived experience and my understanding of

the social and religious context in faith communities that sort of intersects with folks sort of taking control or not taking control of their reproductive health and violence decisions. And then part of it was by accident because of the work that I was already doing in some of the spaces that I was already in.

In terms of my own lived experience, I was raised in a very traditional, culturally traditional and moderately religious South Asian Pakistani family. a lot of the conversation was, it was a little stigmatized, but my mom was proactive enough to want me to still be exposed to accurate information.

You know, I was the one Muslim kid. I grew up in Chicago in the suburbs and I was the one Muslim kid that was allowed to go to sex education because my mom thought it was important. You know, and she did the best that she could. You know, I remember her going to the field trip and then coming back home and her cooking dinner at the stove and being like, so what did you learn today? Anything new? And me just saying nothing I didn't already know. And then that was like the...

Dr Sameena Rahman (3:24.304)

grew up in Chicago, Yeah.

Dr Sameena Rahman (3:32.014)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Nadiah Mohajir (3:53.120)

end of our conversation. But, you know, she sent me and she did not, she let me not only go to those field trips and, and learn about all of that through school, but you know, she was the mom who also let me order the teen magazines that also, you know, gave sex education that way and things like that. So I actually informally found myself playing that role for my friends who didn't have access to that information.

Dr Sameena Rahman (4:21.544)

Yeah, I think you told me. Wait, did your parents come from Pakistan or did your grandparents come? are they? Okay, so that's really progressive actually for like, you because I'm a doctor of immigrants too and it wasn't as progressive.

Nadiah Mohajir (4:22.400)

And so like.

Nadiah Mohajir (4:27.050)

No, my parents came from Buxham. Yeah. Yeah.

Nadiah Mohajir (4:34.518)

Yeah, but I remember like sitting at like family parties and you know, we're holed up in one of the girls rooms and then me being playing the role of sex educator and them asking questions about, what about this? And what about this? And you know, me kind of sharing, well, this is what I read in this magazine or this is what my teacher said about this. And so that's sort of how I fell into that role.

Dr Sameena Rahman (4:53.498)

Yeah.

Nadiah Mohajir (5:0.822)

You know, informally as a sex educator and then as we got older, serving as a resource for folks who were navigating relationships and abuse and violence and, you know, coming to me and saying, one, we need someone to believe us and someone to hold space with us. But then more importantly, we need someone who can actually help. So do you know who can help us? Can you show us what we need to know in order to get to safety?

And so I think that's how like I ended up here. And I'm gonna let Sahar share her story too.

Dr Sameena Rahman (5:37.456)

Yes, Sahara. Welcome, Sahara. Thanks for being with us. Tell us, tell us everyone about you as much as you want to reveal.

Sahar Pirzada (5:44.742)

Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Sahara. I use she her pronouns. I'm the director of movement building at heart. I've been with the org for about a decade now. So I've

Dr Sameena Rahman (5:55.632)

Wait, how long has Hart been around? Give the reader 15 years.

Sahar Pirzada (5:58.778)

Dr Sameena Rahman (6:8.099)

Yeah, that's good.

Dr Sameena Rahman (6:17.188)

Oh.

Sahar Pirzada (6:22.810)

gotten married and moved to Singapore with my husband who was doing his masters out there. So he was doing his masters and I was working at a nonprofit in Singapore that was working on like gender equity and I was the like programs associate. And part of my role as the programs associate was to run sex ed workshops for private schools in Singapore. So

know, Singapore had like an abstinence only until marriage curriculum, which is basically nothing. And so a lot of the private schools there would hire our organization to come in and offer like comprehensive sex ed. And so the ways that I actually learned about sex ed as a Muslim was through creating curriculum to then teach these students. And so I would have to like do like condom demonstrations and like teach about like

Dr Sameena Rahman (6:58.672)

you

Dr Sameena Rahman (7:14.608)

That's the reason.

Dr Sameena Rahman (7:19.408)

Right.

Sahar Pirzada (7:21.668)

you know, consent and all these incredible things. And I basically got to curate, like, what I felt would be a helpful and effective curriculum for, and these are like, think, maybe seventh and eighth graders, like, they were on the younger side. But it was great. So I had a lot of, like, colleagues that I worked with who exposed me to a lot of really incredible information. But one of the things that I felt was kind of missing from this curriculum

Dr Sameena Rahman (7:25.776)

you

Sahar Pirzada (7:51.426)

was the faith aspect, was to really talk about how does faith inform our decision making or our ideas or influence our understandings of sex. so, you know, I think that I also grew up in like a Pakistani household in the Bay Area in California. And it's not like there was a stigma or any kind of like discomfort with talking about sex.

Dr Sameena Rahman (7:53.104)

Mm-hmm.

Sahar Pirzada (8:20.586)

it just wasn't something that like came up at the dinner table, you know? So, you know, like my family wasn't like, oh, we have to censor out like scenes whenever we're watching movies or television or, you know, they were not like that. They were like, whatever, like, this is part of life. So just deal with it. You know, like we could watch the kiss scenes in the Disney movies. And I think us ourselves were a little awkward, like we were awkward as kids. Yeah. But it was like, it was

Dr Sameena Rahman (8:34.224)

They weren't like that? Oh.

Dr Sameena Rahman (8:40.988)

No. No. No.

What are you, everyone, yeah, in front of your parents, you know.

Sahar Pirzada (8:50.214)

like a big deal, right? And they didn't make it a big deal. And then I went to Islamic school and I remember, like, I think it was like in seventh grade, you know, they separated the classroom. So it was like the guys on one, the guys went with one teacher, the girls went with the other teacher, and they did do a sex ed class for us. And, and I think it wasn't like, again, it wasn't like something that they were trying to make a hush conversation.

Dr Sameena Rahman (9:6.277)

Yeah.

Sahar Pirzada (9:19.366)

But they didn't also give a lot of information. It was very biology-based, like you have sex to reproduce type of thing. so not in the context of healthy relationships and consent and all of that. And the only thing I remember is that my Islamic school, in my Islamic school, the science teacher was like, and you have to do a whistle after you have sex. Okay, cool.

Dr Sameena Rahman (9:34.938)

Yeah.

Dr Sameena Rahman (9:45.117)

Yeah, for those of you who don't know, this is a blue shin, like it's washing afterwards that we do.

Sahar Pirzada (9:50.982)

Yeah, it's like a ritual, it's like a ritual bath or shower. so, which I was like, okay, cool. So yeah, so up until that point, I hadn't seen faith be an explicit conversation in conversations about sex and healthy relationships and even reproductive health until I was reached out to on Twitter by Nadia. And so Nadia...

Yeah.

and I participated in some Twitter town hall about Muslim sex ed. And she reached out to me on Twitter and was like, I'd really love to connect with you. I liked what you were saying on Twitter. so at that time there was no zoom. And so we Skyped while I was in Singapore and she was in Chicago. We had like a Skype session and I was like, all right, this is great. I love what heart is doing. And so, you know, I started to kind of volunteer from Singapore when I got back.

Okay.

to California in 2015, that's when I kind of hit the ground running to join as like a volunteer trainer and then eventually staff and the rest is history.

Oh, that's awesome, I love that. Oh wow, see how social media brings people together sometimes. because you wouldn't have known each other otherwise. That's interesting because I think both of you guys grew up in sort of big cities and more like urban-ish areas. Like I grew up in North Carolina, was not the case where.

Sahar Pirzada (11:6.224)

Yeah.

I always talk about sex that wasn't happening and then I wasn't allowed to be involved in the discussion anyway. So, Haru, were your parents from Pakistan or your grandparents just came from Pakistan?

Both my parents were born in Pakistan, but my mom moved when she was like 10 to Southern California. So she actually grew up in the area that I live now. And like, you know, did a lot of her schooling in like in Southern California. So I consider myself like a, like basically second gen based on how I was raised.

Okay.

Oh, okay.

Sure, sure, that makes sense. And then how did the heart actually evolve into like help? Because I mean, obviously, gender based violence, you know,

common in so many different cultures and arenas across the world. Was there, and I think we spoke about this at one point, but was there an incident that you said, okay, I have to do this on a nonprofit level, or was it just multiple people coming to you and saying, I need help in this relationship or trying to get out of this relationship, or what kind of services do you think you could help me with?

It was.

I feel like that's all you the origin story.

Yeah, I mean, I think it was, I'd have to say it was a bunch. you know, part of the work that we had started here in Chicago, you know, it was, I was actually a consultant at the Office of Women's Health at the Department of Health and Human Services. And we had started that work through them because they wanted me to lead programming that was reaching Muslim women and girls.

Dr Sameena Rahman (13:0.272)

Mm-hmm.

Nadiah Mohajir (13:0.630)

And what we learned from that very quickly was the more spaces that we created for women and girls to come together and talk about their bodies, talk about puberty, talk about relationships with safety, of course, in mind, first and foremost, the more disclosures we started getting, right? Like the more, and I'm not just saying disclosures in your traditional sense of like, I was assaulted, but also disclosures around I'm having painful sex.

or I had unprotected sex and I don't know where to go to get STI testing or I'm in an unhealthy relationship and my boyfriend is pressuring me to have sex but if I leave this relationship, they're gonna expose me to my family and I don't know what to do at this point, maybe I should just marry him, right? Like so.

for them.

But like we were getting disclosures of all different sorts of really common and complex, you know, reproductive health and violence experiences. And we found ourselves playing the role of health educator and advocate with each of them on an individual level. And then I think where our visibility rose was in 2014, there was

a case that was sort of went public in Chicago of sexual abuse that was perpetrated by a very prominent and well-known imam in the community. And that sort of elevated the conversation to a national level because of the scope of the abuse that was discovered. And so that's how I think, you know, from

Mm-hmm.

As Sahara mentioned, we're 15 years old. like 2010 to 2015, we were doing all of this work on a grassroots level, on a one-on-one, let me reach out to you kind of level and just doing the best that we could. And then this case, because we supported the victims of this case and the case became very public, it was in the New York Times, the Imam got arrested, all of the things.

You know, it raised our visibility to national level. And then we started getting, um, requests to do trainings and workshops across the country. By then Sahar had moved to LA. So she was doing similar work locally in LA where she was on campuses in particular, where she was also navigating different disclosures, you know, things that would happen in student organizations or things that might happen between students and faculty and things like that. And so it just kind of.

ended up being something that we could show patterns around and tell stories around to actually apply for funding to build these programs out.

Dr Sameena Rahman (16:3.056)

That's wonderful. Sahar, tell me a little bit about how you think the communities have responded to HART. you know, just your existence, our existence as an organization, since I'm on the How has the community, like in L.A., I mean, what do you think in terms of response by both Muslim community and community at large?

That's been very interesting because I think in maybe our earlier days, we were kind of building the plane while we were flying it and like responding to things as they came in. Um, but as we kind of settled into our org and started to think about, well, who is it that we're actually trying to center in our work, right? Who is the most impacted when it comes to gendered violence in our communities or

reproductive justice, right? And it became clear that we need to be explicit about the fact that queer, trans, non-binary Muslims, folks who are systems impacted by like racial injustice and surveillance, folks who are also in, you know, dealing with multiple systems of oppression against them.

are also the most vulnerable and less supported when it comes to issues of gendered violence and when it comes to issues of reproductive justice, right? So as we became clear about who we were serving, it was really interesting because I think less folks in the Muslim community who are maybe more privileged, more resourced,

have more access to, how do I put this? Maybe Muslim community, they have more access to Muslim community. They felt less comfortable with our presence. They felt less comfortable with our existence because we actually challenged the privilege that they had in a lot of ways, right? We were asking them to make space for more, to center somebody different, to include things that are not seen quote unquote as Islamic always.

Dr Sameena Rahman (18:0.045)

you

Dr Sameena Rahman (18:9.156)

Right.

part of their conversations in the masjid setting. so, so it kind of, mean, it, over time, I think we got less and less invited to the MSA and to the masjids and to the youth groups, but we started to grow alternative community in those same places, right? So like the third spaces instead of the masjid or the like, you know, instead of it being invited to an MSA, would be like,

Right.

Yeah.

a gender club that had Muslims in their leadership, right? So, and so that became really interesting and really exciting for us knowing that folks want this and it's actually folks who, being Muslim is a really important part of their identity and they want to connect with that side of their identity, but they're actually not finding the opportunities to do so in traditional Muslim spaces. And so,

building community with folks who are already marginalized in a lot of ways became part of our branding and became part of the work is like centering, making spaces that center survivors, right? Became part of our work in and of itself. And so we've had haters, we've had people literally attack us through their, you know, whatever blogs they have or YouTube channels that they have.

Mm-hmm.

Sure.

Folks who have canceled contracts with us after learning that we're like LGBTQ affirming, folks who have like taken meetings with us and then on the meeting said, actually, we can't support you because we just realized like you support abortion access. Like, it's also just stuff where it's like, okay, we're not

compromise necessarily on our values. We've been very clear and very transparent about who we are, what we do, who we serve. And it also feels like a huge disservice to who else we could be reaching because of gatekeepers in the Muslim community who are uncomfortable with that truth.

Right.

I think that's what makes Heart unique from what I've seen. In this field of sexual medicine, I see a lot of different organizations that are trying to be a little more sex positive or sex educating, but at the same time, don't consider sexuality in the equation. And so we'll still, I guess, exclude that population or still talk about it in the form of, even when it comes to healthcare rights and abortion,

access will still exclude that conversation. And so I think that's what makes Hart very unique in that capacity that it is really trying to be all inclusive in terms of however you identify yourself, your main center is Islam and that's what you are sort of.

believing and fighting for that I think that makes it very unique. And so I applaud you guys because I know that how many haters probably come to watch it. But let's talk actually about some of the program and some of the program that's done that you've done, the book that you guys have put out and then the newest program that you're launching.

you

So tell us about some of the stuff that you've done, some of the sort of platforms or like what exists already. And also, want to say a bit about the book that you wrote two years ago, maybe two years ago, yeah.

Nadia, I'll let you go.

Let me go first. one of the things that you'll learn about us is we love acronyms at heart. So even heart itself is an acronym and it is an acronym for our four programming arms. So health education, advocacy, research and training. So it's exactly what you think it is. Health education is our, you know, in-person virtual...

Dr Sameena Rahman (22:1.102)

Yeah.

workshops, very interactive workshops for people to learn about their bodies, to learn about violence, to learn about consent, and apply it to their own lives. And part of our health education arm is also developing written materials. So we have a very large resource library that people can go to and they can find fact sheets, they can find toolkits, they can find videos. And one of our...

most recent offerings that we're very proud of is our book that we published called The Sex Talk, A Muslim's Guide to Healthy Sex and Relationships. It's available on Amazon. Thank you, Sahir. And it's also available through Barnes & Noble as an ebook. And so that book is our labor of love. It's part textbook, part workbook, and part journal.

Yes.

Thank

And so it gives folks a foundation of what they need to know when it comes to biology, contraception, STIs, how things work in your body. But then it moves beyond that. And it talks also about, now that you know all this information that you learn in sex ed every fifth grade, 10th grade, whatever, how do you actually apply it? What are the mechanics of sex?

What happens when it doesn't go the way that you planned? What happens if there's pain? What happens if there's no consent? What does it look like to not have consent, right? And so the book goes into a deeper conversation around the mechanics of sex, the logistics of sex, what is consent and what is not. And then it also goes into keeping up with your sexual health. So like, what do you need to know?

when you're going for your first pap smear, when you're going for fertility treatments, when you're pregnant, right? And then also goes into a whole, the longest chapter is the last chapter, which is on healthy relationships. And the healthy relationships chapter is grounded in Islamic values for what we, we've done a lot of research on what we believe makes a fulfilling and thriving

sexual or otherwise relationship in Islam. And we've basically created an acronym that is called the RIDA framework. RIDA is the Arabic word for fullness of choice. And it basically acknowledges that we need people in order for somebody to, you know, feel fulfilled in their relationship, they need to be in fullness of choice.

And fullness of choice when they're deciding to have sex, fullness of choice when they're deciding not to have sex, fullness of choice when they're deciding to get married, when they're deciding to start dating, not date, et cetera. And so the RIDA framework is grounded in different Islamic values. So R is essentially Rahmah, which is compassion. I is Ilm, which is knowledge and emphasizing.

what it means to be informed and what it means to have healthy communication with your partner. The D is Adala, which is inviting people to think about what is a safe and equitable, or I'm sorry, a fair and equitable relationship. H is housed in safety and security, which is also Horma. And what does it mean to be safe in your relationship, physically, emotionally, spiritually? And then A is affirmed in commitment, which is Ucht.

in Arabic. And so what does it mean to be in a relationship that is commitment? However you define commitment, we recognize that committed relationships in Muslim communities also looks, you know, very diverse. So thinking about what does it mean to define commitment? And what does it mean to define fidelity? Right? And, and then we bring up some of the

more complicated things, nuances in our faith around marriage and divorce law and polygamy and like some of these other issues that in our faith that we did not want to ignore, but also wanted to sort of uplift the conversation around just because you can doesn't mean you should and really think about

What are the implications? Like you can probably find a loophole for whatever it is that you wanna do. And what are the implications? Is it ethical? Who is it harming? Who is it not harming? And so that's really the crux of our book. And yeah, a lot of folks are sharing that they found it really useful in, of all ages really. Like young people have shared that, but even women who've been married for 25 years.

said that they improve their own relationships with their partners and things like that. And it's really challenging. The last thing I'll say about the book is that it's really challenging Western feminism and Western sex positivity to say like, you know, it's my body, I can do what I want whenever I want, whoever I want, nobody says anything. And it's challenging that to say that's not working for us.

But it's also challenging the phenomenon that Sahir shared about, you know, what happens in Muslim communities and mosques where they focus the conversation only from an abstinence lens and only on hygiene, right? And they don't talk about all of the other things. And we're saying that's not working for us either. So we're going to do something different and we're going to pull from our faith values, but also pull from, you know, best practices in public health education and say,

This is what you really deserve as a community when it comes to conversations around sex. So that's the book.

Yeah, it's a wonderful book. Like she said, it's available on Amazon as well as in Barnes & Noble. And then maybe Sahara can tell us a little bit about what we're launching in what, two weeks? Two weeks, one week.

Yeah, I mean, so for all of you in Chicago, you'll get a treat in the sense that October 14, all of the billboards for this latest campaign are going to pop up in multiple locations in Chicago. So it's for our latest campaign, which is called Rahm, and it's another acronym. It stands for Reproductive Agency Honoring Impacted Muslims. And it's our...

It's been my baby for the past three years, and it is something that we're so excited to share with the community at large, but it's really about an offering to the Muslim community, uplifting that reproductive justice is inherently part of our faith. And we've developed a beautiful microsite where we have a reproductive justice framework that we've been building out for four years where we were

in conversation with Muslim scholars and doctors and doulas and impacted community members. we had all these interviews and we said, wow, there's so much that we can look to in our faith that guides us around decision-making for sexual and reproductive wellness. And yet we're not talking about that.

right? And so how do we uplift that so that Muslims in the United States, especially, can recognize that there's almost like a legacy of Muslims taking care of their bodies and of our faith, affirming our right to take care of our bodies, and also of resistance to oppression when those rights are not offered to us. And so

The microsite itself, has a timeline people can engage with around that legacy and that history. It has the framework. It has a set of values that we've developed and it has a bunch of resources as well. So a lot of the conversations we had with even like Dr. Rahman, you, we developed one pagers and resources for our community.

around sexual and reproductive wellness for Muslims. And so we're really excited for folks to access those resources.

Dr Sameena Rahman (31:0.088)

Yeah, it's gonna be great. I think, you know, these resources, education is so critical, you know, for all of your, you know, all that you're doing, the sexual health stuff is, you know, that's one of the biggest things. I mean, we, as a group, we've done research and we can talk about that briefly as well in terms of, you know, the experiences of Muslims in North America. And, you know, I think education is always one of the things that, you know, we think could prevent some of the sexual dysfunction

or sexual gendered violence, just knowing what resources are available, what's normal and abnormal when it comes to your own sexual health. And so everything that you guys are doing is just wonderful. So I'm so excited that this new campaign is finally getting launched. I didn't realize it was been three years in the making though. I guess that makes sense. Thank you.

Yeah, we started, I mean, you know, so like for context, this was also a project that emerged because we were launching our reproductive justice fund and we knew that Roe v. was going to be overturned and we wanted to have a resource for Muslims to access so that they can have support if they're denied care, right? And so, but then we were thinking and we started talking to all these doctors and scholars

And when we were building out the Reproductive Justice Fund, we also realized there's a gap in knowledge of people being able to access the fund before they feel like they can access that fund or want to access the fund. Them realizing that actually taking care of my health in general, taking care of my body in general, is very much part of me being Muslim, right? Like God has entrusted me, so we say, God has entrusted us with these bodies and it's actually like,

part of our responsibility as Muslims to take care of these bodies and making decisions about our sexual reproductive wellness is part of that equation. You can't do that though if you don't have access to the information, the systems, and the resources that you need, right? So you could have the law, you could have the hospital, but if you don't have also the kind of spiritual guidance, for example,

that's gonna tell you like, oh, actually me going and like getting the HPV vaccine is supported by my faith, right? Like then are we really also breaking down all the barriers and ensuring that Muslims have what they need to make those decisions in empowered ways? So that's kind of the gap that we're trying to address with some of this work is the faith equation being front and center.

Yes.

I think the only thing I would add to that, if that's okay, is another sort of theme that this Raham campaign is exploring and inviting communities to think about is what does it mean to put the agency of decision-making back in the hands of the directly impacted person rather than, of course, the state, right? But also,

the kinds of policing and judgment that happen in our communities and in our families. So if, to Sahara's example of the HPV vaccine, if I'm thinking about getting my children, my daughters vaccinated with the HPV vaccine, and then there's an auntie in the Masjid saying, oh, now your kid is gonna like go create, like go become promiscuous and have sex, right? You're giving them a permission slip. Like that is judgment and policing.

Go.

that actually that has been like the agency has been taken away from me by this judgment being passed. And if I actually cave to that and say, well, maybe my children shouldn't have that or maybe I shouldn't have this for myself or I'm doing something wrong or haram, right? By doing this, not all of a sudden the agency has been taken out of my hands. And so it's...

Sahar Pirzada (35:2.820)

Oop, did it cut for you too, Dr. Rachman?

Dr Sameena Rahman (35:7.126)

It'll stream better. I think when it actually comes together, it's fine.

Okay.

So yeah, so it's just about like, you know, really thinking about what does it mean to build a community that is grounded in rahmah, in or compassion, in judgment free support, in community care, rather than, but really, do you really think you should do this? Really, right? Because women are, I mean, I don't wanna, I know that people of all genders make decisions, but.

We also live in a community where women are taught to doubt themselves already. And now we're in a community where you're getting all of these messages like, no, but this is haram. No, but you shouldn't do that. No, but what are they? Right? like instead we should trust directly impacted people to make their decisions about their body in consultation with, you know, their medical providers, their partners, et cetera, but really drowning out the other noise.

Yes.

that is just so common in our communities and as a result is a barrier to care.

Yeah.

I mean, I think we've all been in those scenarios. Like I can remember being at the must have so many times when, I've been told one thing or another, don't do this, don't do that. Oh, you're here showing too much, know, whatever the case may be. And, you know, it's like, because people who, you know, you feel so strongly about your religion and you want to practice it, but there's so many judgments being placed on you, then it can really inhibit like, you're right, your own autonomy, your own decision making about your own health, right?

at the end of the day, like, okay, what if I don't vaccinate my daughter? And then when she's 25 and has her, you know, whatever experience, she gets cervical cancer because I chose to listen to some auntie that said, you know, this is going to make her like, you know, even sexually promiscuous or, know, whatever the case they thought that she was going to do. And then in that way, I'm actually hurting my own family member by not doing it. So I think all of this is so true. And I think any of us that have lived in a community of any religious

basis. know, you'll probably see this where like, you know, I mean, we live our own, we know our own lived experience, but I hear it from my friends who are Catholic and Jewish and all the other religions when they come to these communities that the judgment is always there. And that's the one thing I love when I met you guys. was like, oh man, they're just not, you know, cause I was so used to growing up with judgmental moments. And I was like, wow, these guys are-

at all. This is awesome. You know, because I feel like that makes it so welcoming overall. And I think that's obviously one of the goals of Heart, which is wonderful.

Let's briefly just talk before we talk about how people can reach you guys and how to contribute to your efforts. The research that was done a few years ago that I was involved with. Do you guys want to talk about, because this was, think, from what I can see, the first national survey or actually throughout the North American continent that was done. So do you guys want to talk about the research that we've done presented?

Either way.

I mean Nadia.

Okay.

Sorry, I'm just, you don't have to record this. I'm just pulling up the stats so that I'm not, because I don't, okay, yeah. Okay, great. So we did research in 2020. We launched in partnership with the Center for Urban Research and Learning at Loyola University. you, Dr. Rahman, you were one of the principal investigators. We launched a,

Oh yeah, that's what I was trying to do earlier. I was like, let me look at this.

a national study to look at the prevalence of sexual violence, sexual dysfunction, and spiritual abuse among Muslims ages 18 to 45 in the United States and Canada. We got about 830 respondents. And by the end of the survey, about nearly 600 are people who were eligible and completed the survey.

The tool that we used was with the CDC's National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, NISVS. So we wanted to use a tool that was validated and that had been used in other communities. And we wanted to use a tool that when we found findings and data, we could see what the CDC found. And of course, I wanna name that CDC...

for the sexual dysfunction.

Yes, the FSFI for sexual dysfunction. you know, of course the sample sizes for all of these validated instruments are dramatically different than what we had, right? CDC had millions and millions of participants. The FSFI also has tested so many different survey participants. So it's not completely comparable, but it still gave us an idea of what we found. And what we found was pretty compelling.

statistics, you know, one of our findings was overall, we did find a pretty high percentage of respondents reporting having experienced sexual assault, some form of sexual violence, context sexual violence in their lifetime. And so we had, for example, 97 % of our respondents overall experienced some form of sexual violence. So that includes

sexual harassment, sexual assault, and sexual abuse. All of these were also defined so that folks knew what they were talking about. Of that, when we went a little bit more deeper, 93.9 % of respondents reported experiencing some form of sexual harassment, 53.6 % experienced stalking.

58.4 % reported experiencing some form of attempted or completed sexual assault, and 28.4 % of respondents reported experiencing some form of intimate partner violence. And that's just the sexual violence data. We also looked at spiritual abuse and sexual dysfunction. And in sexual dysfunction, we found about, I think it was...

Thank you.

like 45 % of our population reporting that they had experienced some form of sexual pain on a regular basis with intercourse. And of that 45%, 66 % shared that they had not seen a healthcare provider for that pain. And when they were asked why, the reasons differed from, didn't know.

that I could, like I didn't know this was not normal to I was ashamed, I was embarrassed, I didn't have insurance, I didn't know where to go, right? And so both of these data sets, you know, whether we're talking about violence, or we're talking about sexual dysfunction are really indicative of the fact, you know, that one, it's these are common issues in our communities that we can no longer ignore. They're not specific.

Right. Right.

to Muslim communities. And we know this from other research that, you know, other communities, whether we're talking about faith communities or cultural communities are experiencing similar levels of sexual violence and sexual dysfunction. we're not unique in that sort of way, but it is a wake-up call for our communities to, you know, really face these issues openly and honestly and say, what...

interventions can we design to mitigate some of these numbers and bring them down?

I mean, it's pretty impressive, I think, and for people that want to assume that it's not happening here, it's not happening in the United States to us, these are all American or North American Muslims, so I think that that is pretty astounding to hear, but also a total wake-up call, like you said. And that's why HART is such an amazing organization, because just proving the reason that it needs to exist is right there, like right in the research there. So Sahar, why don't you close

by telling all the listeners what they can do. Like now you've inspired all these people to like want to help or maybe reach out because they don't even know like, oh my God, that's me. That's me they're talking about. Like where can they and this will be in the show notes too. But you know, tell our tell our listeners like where can we find heart? How can we get involved and how can we contribute? Even if it's you know, volunteer hours, it's monetary, whatever, you know, this is a nonprofit organization. So it's tax

deductible, tell our listeners what they need to hear.

Yes, thank you for that. Thank you for this opportunity. We'd love to invite your listeners to follow us on social media at Heart to Grow. We have a very active Instagram. Please do visit our website. We have the main heart website, which is heart to grow.org as well as the microsite specifically for this campaign, is Raham, R-A-H-I-M dot heart to grow.

and please donate generously to our reproductive justice funds. That is the fund that we are going to be piloting actually this coming January with four agencies that have networks of birth workers and doulas serving Muslim clients all over the United States. And so making sure that they have access to sexual and reproductive health care when they need it and as they need it.

If you are somebody who also is a healthcare or working professional, we'd love to get to know you and have you join our referral network. We have a sexual and reproductive health referral network. so, you know, please reach out to us. We'd love to connect with you and your agency so that, yeah, we could build with you. And then if you're also...

a student or you have any sort of community and you'd like for us to come and do a workshop or spread education about the work we do, we'd love to do that as well. So please reach out. We're also very responsive on social media and via email.

Dr Sameena Rahman (46:2.168)

Yes, generously donate because they are a nonprofit that depends on donations from everyone to make sure that they can continue to the work to help people all over the US here. So thank you guys. Thanks, Nadia. Thank you so hard for joining me today on Gyno Girl Presents Sex, Drugs, and Hormones. I'm so excited about this new campaign and really so proud of all the work that you've done for the community. It's amazing. Remember, I'm here to educate so you can advocate for yourself.

Thank for joining me on this podcast, Gynecologist presents sex, drugs and hormones and we'll see you next week.

Thank you.

Thanks.