Hadia Mubarak has been driven for years to make a difference by building understanding between Americans and the Muslim world and by working toward greater rights for Muslim women.
In January 2006, Mubarak joined Akbar Ahmed, a professor and scholar at AU, and AU students Frankie Martin, who graduated last year from the School of International Service and Hailey Woldt, a sophomore who was in SIS but transferred to Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, as the chief research assistant for a trip to the Middle East and South Asia.
"From high school I was motivated and compelled to make a difference," said Mubarak, a scholar of women's issues and Middle Eastern studies and activist at the state, national and international levels. "I felt morally obligated to not accept the given conditions if they're bad. I realized that there is a lot of injustice, and by knowing about injustice, you have to do something about it."
She is now working as a research assistant with the Gallup Poll at Georgetown University, helping with an upcoming book on Islam. She graduated from Georgetown in May 2005.
"She was an immense asset to the whole thing," Martin said. "Hadia coordinated everything and was a translator in the Arab world. She was the support that held everything together."
Ahmed described Mubarak as a very energetic, committed and passionate person, "a good American and a good Muslim," and said her presence on the trip was incredibly important.
"She was a great asset because she knows both American society and Muslim society," Ahmed said. "The goal was to build bridges between the U.S. and the Muslim world."
On the trip, the group collected surveys from Muslims from all regions and walks of life about how they see the world, the United States, society and globalization. This information and stories from the trip will go into a forthcoming book on how the Islamic world is responding to globalization.
"It's important because there are a lot of misunderstandings about Islam, and we don't get to hear the voices of ordinary Muslims," Mubarak said. "I hope the message is heard correctly."
Beginning her undergraduate career at Florida State University, Mubarak was busy as president of the Muslim Student Association, press secretary for the Student Government Association and assistant news editor of the school newspaper, FSView.
But her activism extended beyond her college campus. Mubarak led the state lobbying campaign against a bill in the Florida House of Representatives that would make it illegal to give any state funding to students that come from "terrorist" nations, all of which were Muslim or Arab nations.
"We lobbied people and formed an alliance of student, community and legal groups to lobby against the bill ... I found it really absurd that the state congress said that if you're born in this country, you are more likely to be a terrorist," she said. "I couldn't sit by and let them exploit the climate of fear and appeal to people's emotions."
As part of the campaign, she testified before the Florida House Education and Judiciary Committees and debated Republican state representative Dick Kravitz. The bill did not pass.
After graduating in August 2003, she became a full-time intern at the Saban Center for Middle Eastern Policy at the Brookings Institution while pursuing her master's at Georgetown University. As part of her internship, Mubarak helped organize the January 2005 U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Qatar, in which 150 leaders from the United States and 38 Muslim countries met to discuss the growing tension and divide between the Muslim world and the United States.
A few months later in June, she became the first woman and the first U.S.-born president of the MSA National.
Mubarak is a self-described Arab feminist that has worked toward getting women equal rights, particularly within the Muslim world.
"Islam is an inherently feminist religion, a progressive religion," Mubarak said. "We have to challenge the status quo and the injustice perpetuated in the name of religion. We don't need to use the secular framework to fight for women's rights."
She said that under the principles of Islam, women are granted rights that Western women did not earn until the 19th and 20th centuries.
Mubarak said her Muslim faith has shaped her life and who she has become.
"The Muslim belief system shapes my point of view and is a driving force in shaping my identity," she said. "We are created with a purpose and will be questioned on how we led our life, how moral we were. That reality keeps me in check, living for God, not for myself"
