When I entered the conference room on the top floor of UCLA’s Student Activities Center, the hard work had already started. There were two long tables set up across the room flanked by over thirty student volunteers lined up and preparing sandwiches. There was an uplifting and inviting sense of collaboration that these people exuded.…
“We die once, but we revive a thousand times” Turkish Proverb Photo by Ibrahim Kalın (Turkish President’s Spokesman and Chief Advisor(1)) Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian Washington Post journalist, disappeared after he entered the Saudi Arabian Consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018. After several days filled with conspiracy theories, on the 23th of October,…
Image Credit: Nida Choudary The beginnings of Islamic poetry lie with the beginnings of Islam itself. Poetry was already a huge oral tradition in Arab culture before Islam. Much of pre-Islamic poetry was concerned with tribal life and used to earn honor for one’s tribe. It was also romantic in nature and explored daily tribal…
Growing up, I noticed my skin was different from the people I was surrounded with. I didn’t understand the color of my skin or why it made me innately less than. I didn’t know why a boy told me my skin resembled feces or why that meant I should be treated like I was from…