Shabana Shakir-Ahmed: Living and Sharing Her Faith
The Islamic Center of Greater Cincinnati campus sits in a suburban neighborhood about 25 minutes from where I grew up and now live – something I didn’t know until Shabana Shakir-Ahmed suggested we meet there. During the time we spent talking and touring the center, I learned there was a lot Shabana and I shared, and even more that I did not know about the Muslim religion and the center.
Like me, Shabana is a mother of three, spent time at the University of Chicago, and is active in the Cincinnati non-profit scene. But unlike me, she battles harsh and unfair misconceptions about who she is – a Muslim woman. Shabana opened up about how she’s working to combat Islamophobia by living authentically and sharing her faith.
Interview by Michaela Rawsthorn. Photography by Jennave Traore.
Can you give us your elevator pitch?
I am a mother of three adult children. I have an MBA from Xavier University and am the Business Director for my husband’s medical practice. I grew up in a suburb of Chicago but came here in 1994 when I married my lovely husband who was doing his residency here in internal medicine. I was doing my MBA at the University of Chicago, but transferred over to Xavier. Today, I am on the President’s Advisory Board for Xavier University. I worked in the corporate world for a little bit but now I am steeped in the non-profit and volunteer world.
Tell us more about your volunteer work.
Years ago I was the development director at the El-Sewedy International Academy, which is on this campus. I did that for five years – helping the school build itself up, increasing its students, and making the campus better.
I thought I was done with that and ready to go back to the corporate world, but then I got pulled into the other side of the campus which is the Islamic Center. They needed help with their tours and talks. I started with that because of the aftermath of 9/11. The Islamic Center needed help educating the community.
Now, I am the Tours & Talks Program leader and I'm on the board of trustees. The goal of the Tours & Talks Program is to combat Islamophobia by offering tours of the facility as well as outbound speaking engagements – which is probably why I'm still there doing it. I feel it's really important.
Tours & Talks does this by trying to dispel some of the fears that are out there and address the stereotypes that are out there. Because, unfortunately, what the media puts out is all pretty much incorrect. It's misinformation. Our goal is to correct that and let Cincinnati know who we are, what we're doing here, and what this place is for – so, through Tours & Talks, you can get a tour of the facility, a little lecture about Islam and Muslims, and then a Q&A to ask whatever you want to ask.
Our outbound speaking engagements cater to schools, universities, other faith institutions, and anybody else that wants us to come in. The outbound speaking engagements are the ones that I really enjoy doing. I like going to places of business or corporations, law firms, and hospitals and kind of having a cultural competency workshop where we teach about the tenets of the faith, what it is to be a Muslim American, what hospitals need to know about Muslim patients, and so on; anything that they're looking for, we cater our talks to that.
We've been very busy. The Islamic Center opened its doors in November of 1995 and since then we've had over 100,000 visitors come to our center. We're hoping to keep increasing those numbers.
Do you feel like any of the misinformation has tapered off?
After 9/11 it was really bad for Muslim Americans. Or I thought it was really bad then. But actually, it got worse after the 2016 elections.
It was almost like two steps forward and then ten steps back. We had a person in the highest position of power stating that there needs to be a Muslim ban and then implementing a Muslim ban. Calling all Muslims terrorists.
This was the part that was hurtful toward Muslim Americans. There was a huge increase in hate crimes against Muslim Americans. It's getting a little better. I'm hopeful. I didn't think I'd still be doing this. This has been a long journey. I'm sticking through it only because I feel like it's so needed.
And even though there are 1.9 billion Muslims in the world today, I still feel like people don't understand Muslim Americans. They don't realize that we're not a monolith. We come from almost 57 countries from all over the world. We are from different cultures, speak different languages, and practice different levels of observance.
I always tell groups that come in that there's not a cookie-cutter version of a Muslim, just like there's not a cookie-cutter version of a Christian or a Jew or a Hindu. So to expect that when you meet one Muslim that all Muslims are going to be exactly like that Muslim is unfair – especially when there are 1.9 billion of us, second only in numbers to Christians.
We're still trying to get out there because we're fighting with the media all the time. After all, the media puts out something and then we have to keep correcting it.
Can you share more specifics about your work?
The other part of my work, which I'm proud of, is Cincinnati Muslim Women. It is a non-profit donor group that makes a financial contribution every single month to local charities, here in Cincinnati, chosen by our members.
We started in 2008 with maybe 15 to 17 members. Today we have 90-plus members. We just celebrated our 15th anniversary, having given over $211,000 to over 100 charities in Cincinnati.
We’re super proud of that because the reason we started this is we, my two co-founders and I, decided that when we give a donation, it's kind of like a drop in the bucket, right? At $20 or $50 here and there, we didn't feel that we were making an impact, but when we do it collectively, that $20 or more multiplied by our 90 members, we make a greater impact.
And why we emphasize not just Cincinnati women, but Muslim women, is again, that Muslim women are so misunderstood. We wanted Cincinnati to know that we are strong educated professionals who just want to give back to the places where we live and work.
We’ve given to charities like the National Underground Railroad, the Women's Fund, and Matthew 25 Ministries. And just when we think we've covered a lot of charities, I get introduced to new ones. So for example – I'm excited about this one – we just started working with the Live Like Maya Foundation. It's run by this amazing woman, along with her husband, who lost their beautiful daughter, Maya, to cancer. They started this foundation and we found out that she was looking for donations to help this other organization that she was supporting called So Many Angels – which photographs children battling cancer and turns them into what they want to be when they grow up, like superheroes, doctors, and celebrities. It's just a beautiful thing to see the kids get their picture taken and then see themselves as Superman or a celebrity that they like, and, of course, that costs money. So, we decided to help.
Cincinnati Muslim Women is dear to my heart. We've kept ourselves under the radar here in Cincinnati because our faith tells us that when you're doing this type of work, charity work, it's a quiet act between yourself and your creator. So you don't need a plaque given to you or a street named after you or anything like that. It's just a quiet act that you do. But now we're realizing that what's important is getting that message out there that Cincinnati Muslim Women are doing amazing things right here in your backyard.
Tell us a little bit more about the faith.
There are five tenets of the faith. One is the declaration of the faith, which is basically stating that you believe in one God, the same God of Abraham, the same God of Jews and Christians, and you believe that the Prophet Muhammad is the last messenger of God. So accepting all the prophets that are in the Torah and the Bible, that's the first tenet.
And then you have to pray five times a day. Muslims take time out throughout the day to stop and thank their Creator. They can do their prayers anywhere. They don't have to come to their place of worship. They can do their prayers in schools or libraries. I usually don't recommend airports because it does scare a lot of people when they see a Muslim doing this act of worship, thinking something terrible is going to happen. It's a series of prostrations that happens in these prayers. Most Muslims do their prayers at home. That's the second tenet.
The third is fasting during the month of Ramadan, which Muslims do from dawn to sunset. No eating and no drinking during daylight hours. It's really an act that Muslims do to understand what it feels like not to have. When they are struggling at 4:30 in the afternoon from not eating and not drinking for, let's say, about 10 or 11 hours, it helps Muslims to understand what it feels like for someone that doesn't even get a meal at the end of the day. And we know at the end of the day we will get a meal. We're blessed to have that.
But it encourages us to give back more. That's a big part of the faith. The fourth is charity. Muslims are required to give 2.5% of their extra wealth, their savings, to any charity that they want.
The last tenet is the pilgrimage to Mecca. Once in your lifetime, if you're physically and financially able, Muslims take a pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Not Mecca in Indiana, because there is a Mecca there, and I've done a couple of tours of people thinking, I'm going to go to Indiana – no, this is the one in Saudi Arabia.
Once in your lifetime, Muslims partake in this pilgrimage, this religious journey, to emulate not only what the Prophet Muhammad did, but really what the Prophet Abraham did.
What Should Cincinnatians Know?
I would tell Cincinnati not to be afraid of us. We have an open-door policy on top of the Tours and Talks that I do. We also have a program that I completely love, called Know Your Neighbor. It’s on the first Saturday of every month at one o 'clock. We literally open our doors and ask the community to come in.
We do an abbreviated tour and we have conversations. Helping neighbors or anyone who is coming in to ask those questions they've always wanted to ask – and what better way to get an answer than to ask the person right in front of you instead of Googling it?
I don't know how many times someone has told me, “I was so afraid to come here. I didn't know what to expect.” A lot of people I've noticed here in Cincinnati have never left the little circumference around their home, and they never really take a step outside. So every time I talk to somebody and they tell me that, I'm always like, “Well, how do you feel right now?” and they're like, “You're just like us.” Of course, we are. We're all humans. I think [that comes from] what's out in the media, and it's sad to see that they felt that fear. Our job is to make sure that that goes away and hopefully stays away too.
Any other misconceptions we should correct?
It's funny when I tell people I'm from India, because most people, when I do these tours or talks, just assume that I am from the Middle East. That I am Arab. This is the biggest stereotype that people have about Muslims. All Muslims are Arab and all Arabs are Muslims. Not all Arabs are Muslims. You have Jews and Christians living in the Middle East.
I came from India, which actually has the third highest population of Muslims, and it's not even considered a Muslim country. People often are like, “I thought only Hindus live in India.” No, there are Muslims too. There's actually a huge population of Muslims.
Do you know the country that has the highest population of Muslims? Hint: it's nowhere in the Middle East. It's Indonesia. Indonesia has the highest population of Muslims. Only 18% of the 1.9 billion Muslims around the world come from the Middle East. Only 18%. So people always ask, “Where are the other 82%?” Well, all the way from Nicaragua to China. Muslims speak different languages, eat different foods, and live in different cultures.
I was born in Chennai, India. My father came to this country to finish his medical studies and then brought my mom, my siblings, and me. We came over here in the early 1970s. My children consider themselves, and I do too, Muslim Americans with Indian heritage.
Who is an influential woman in your life and why?
There’s my mom, my mother-in-law, and all the women in my family, but beyond them, I want to share one reason we founded Cincinnati Muslim Women. We just wanted to recognize women in general.
I like to recognize that every time we choose a charity through Cincinnati Muslim Women. I look at the people that pick up the phone, you know do the day-in and day-out, mostly thankless, jobs there. I think people don't realize how important [that work] is. Those are the people that I admire because they are doing amazing work. It's not a fascinating title, like CEO or Vice President, but they're still doing the work. They're quietly doing it. I really admire the women that wear many hats in their house, that struggle through so many things but still manage to do something that makes an impact, whether it's big or small.
It's not a bad thing to focus on CEOs or whatever, but I think we forget about that person in the middle. The people, for example, who deliver stuff to senior citizens, make sure the shelves are stocked at food pantries, or whatever else. Those are the people I feel like we tend to forget. Those are the women I admire.
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