In our lives there are women who are resistant, active, creative… a countless number of whom have contributed to science, art and culture and to the formation of our Arab societies. Perhaps we all know Hoda Shaarawy, Safia Zaghloul, and Nabawiyya Moussa. We have certainly read about Mai Ziadeh, Rosaly Youssef, and Djamila Bouhired, but not these. And other celebrities are all our honorable Arab role models. There are dozens, even hundreds, of others, and we are not exaggerating if we say that thousands of our women deserve to be highlighted, and on the occasion of International Women’s Rights Day, we have chosen 5 Arab women – who many may not know – to put them in the spotlight. The spotlight due to the positive influences and efforts they made in serving their countries and raising the nation’s standing.
Rawya Attia hits a stone with a pick during her visit to a prison
Beirut with a rebellious heart
The year is 1927. On a Sunday like any other for the American University of Beirut, Anbara Salam was invited to give a lecture entitled “An Oriental in London.” Suddenly, in front of the audience who had come to listen to her, the young woman decided to take off her hijab. Anbara Salam became the first Lebanese woman to reveal herself publicly, a few years after the Egyptian Hoda Shaarawi.
“Anbara” was born on August 4, 1897, and grew up in a Sunni Beirut family from Msaytbeh, consisting of ten children (seven boys) and three girls. Among them is Prime Minister Saeb Salam. In 1929, she married Ahmed Sameh Al-Khalidi, director of the Arab College in Jerusalem and the primary official responsible for Arab education in Palestine. She moved to live with him in Jerusalem until 1948, when the Nakba occurred. During this period, she participated in the political and feminist movement in Palestine. She also cooperated with her husband in serving the Palestinian cause, through meetings with British and international official committees and many foreign journalists and writers, who used to frequent their home in Jerusalem.
Anbara completed translations of a group of masterpieces of Western literature, such as “The Iliad” by Homer. The introduction to her translation was written by Dr. Taha Hussein also translated “The Odyssey,” and in 1979 she published her book “A Tour of Memories between Lebanon and Palestine,” which is the first book of memoirs written by a woman from the Levant.
Hello Anbara
Mother of fighters and martyrs
Rawya Attia (1926-1997) is an Egyptian politician and the first Arab woman to become a member of her country’s parliament. She was also the first woman to work as an officer in the Egyptian army, and reached the rank of captain. She assumed the position of President of the Martyrs’ Families Association in 1973, where she was called the Mother of Fighters and Martyrs. She was also credited with training 4,000 Egyptian women in first aid and nursing.
Cairo of generals
Lalla Fatima N’Soumer, an Algerian mujahid, was born in 1830 in Ain Hammam in the Kabylie region (eastern Algeria). She dedicated herself to resisting French colonialism since she was twenty years old. In 1854, the first battle she led was against the French, in the Sibao Valley, where she joined the resistance of the Algerian hero, Sharif Boubaghla, in defense of the Djurjura region, and many arach leaders and sheikhs of corners and villages joined her. Fatima defeated the French in the Battle of July, so the colonizer withdrew, leaving more than 800 dead, including 25 officers.
The French referred to her at the time as Joan of Arc Jurjara, “relative to the Jurjara Mountains,” an analogy that Lalla Fatima rejected, preferring to bear the title Khawla Jurjara, named after the companion Khawla bint al-Azwar.
Mother of Arabs
Alia Wajdi Hassan, who is viewed by many as the “mother” of the Arab community in Dearborn-Detroit, was born in South Dakota on April 30, 1910, the daughter of immigrant parents from Lebanon. In the early 1950s, I moved to New York City. There I obtained a private investigator license. Where she served in a number of security positions, she also held the position of Director of Civil Defense in the 82nd District in Brooklyn.
During her years in New York, Alia was actively involved in a number of Islamic organizations that worked for social change in both the United States and the Arab world. This included organizing the Egyptian Arab American Seafarers Association. She also served as a liaison between the Federation of Islamic Societies of the United States and Canada and the movement of black Muslims in the United States known as the Nation of Islam, and during this period she formed a lasting friendship with Malcolm X. Her friendship and correspondence with Malcolm X arose from her work to unite Muslim organizations and spread the message of egalitarian Islam.
In 1972, Alia returned to Detroit and helped develop the newly formed Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS). It organized English lessons and helped provide food, housing, and translation for hundreds of new immigrants of Arab origin. She served as director of ACCESS for nine years, helping to transform the organization into a full-fledged social services agency providing medical, legal, educational and other services to thousands of Arab families.
The life of Suleiman Sindi
Biotechnology pioneer
Hayat Suleiman Sindi is the first Arab and Saudi woman to obtain a doctorate in biotechnology from the University of Cambridge. She was born in Mecca in 1967 AD. She was the only girl to her parents alongside seven male children, and the father was her constant encourager. The reason behind developing her abilities.
The Saudi researcher and scientist is considered one of the first Arab women to reach a high scientific position thanks to the valuable scientific inventions she presented. She called for the use of science to solve the problems of Africa and the entire world, and indeed she created successful projects from her ideas. As a diagnostic project for all; Which helped simplify the medical diagnosis process in poor and remote areas. Which do not have laboratories.
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