For Women & Girls Ages 14+: Join our esteemed panel of speakers for a night of prayer, remembrance, and reminders starting after the Taraweeh prayer ends.
We will be joined by Shaykha Jannah Sultan, Ustadha Shamira Chothia Ahmed, Ustadha Dr. Rania Awaad, Ustadha Halima Afi, and Qariya Husna.
11:30 p.m. to 5 a.m. | Friday, March 8 – Saturday, March 9 | Prayer Hall & Conference Room | Free; girls and women ages 14+ | Suhoor provided at about 4 a.m. | Register for in-person at mcceastbay.org/womens-qiyam-1 | To join online, register at tinyurl.com/FridayRahmahHalaqa2
Cosponsored with The Rahmah Foundation. For female teens and women only.
- – More The Rahmah Foundation at the MCC: https://mcceastbay.org/rahmah-foundation
- – More sessions for Muslim women: https://mcceastbay.org/women
Qiyam Ul-Layl literally translates to “standing during the night”. And in the Islamic Tradition, the Prophet Muhammad PBUH said, “The best prayer after the obligatory prayers is the night prayer.” (Sahih Muslim)
About the Speakers:
Shaykha Jannah Sultan
Hailing from California, Shaykha Jannah Sultan holds a bachelor’s in biology and nutrition. Her dedication to holistic healing parallels her deep commitment to Islamic studies. Her Islamic academic journey began at the acclaimed Jamia Binoria, followed by an intense decade of Islamic Studies with distinguished mentors, notably Shaykh AbdulNasir Jangda. As a resident scholar and director of sisters’ guidance at Al-Misabaah, Shaykha Jannah’s influence reverberates throughout the Sacramento area and across North America.
Ustadha Shamira Chothia Ahmed
Born and raised in California’s Central Valley, Shamira Chothia Ahmed is passionate about educating and empowering Muslim women to reach their highest spiritual potential through acquiring sacred knowledge.
Having graduated as valedictorian from a large public high school, her studies led her — following a brief soul-searching stint at Georgetown University — to seek sacred knowledge from scholars on three continents — Africa, Europe, and Asia.
Ustadha Shamira began her journey in seeking sacred knowledge at the women’s Dar-ul-Uloom Mu’eenal Islam seminary in South Africa and completed the five-year intensive ‘Alima programs at Ja’mia Al-Imam Muhammad Zakariyya, one of Britain’s first and most renowned Islamic universities for women. Thereafter, she continued her Arabic and Qur’anic studies in Damascus, Syria, where she obtained an ijāzah in Tajwīd of the Ḥafṣ recitation from the late eminent Syrian scholar Shaykh Ḥasan al-Kurdī.
In 2005, Ustadha Shamira taught Hanafi fiqh for women at the Zaytuna Institute in California and, since then, has taught various Islamic sciences in venues across North America. In 2008, she earned a Master’s Degree in Demographics and Social Analysis from the University of California at Irvine, focusing on the identity formation of the Muslim-American population.
In 2013, Ustadha Shamira specialized in the detailed rulings of menstruation, lochia, and abnormal discharge under the direction of Mufti Abdur Rahman Ibn Yusuf Mangera and assisted in compiling Imam Abu Hanifa’s Al-Fiqh al-Akbar Explained.
Shamira is a wife and mother of five children. She is passionate about empowering women in their childbearing years to gain closeness to their Lord through her spiritual birth consultations and virtual doula services.
Ustadha Shamira is a co-founder of the Rahmah Foundation and currently teaches for Nur al-Iman, a full-time girls’ shariah program with Ustadha Mona Elzankaly based in the Bay Area.
Ustadha Dr. Rania Awaad
Raised in the U.S., Ustadha Rania Awaad began her formal study of the traditional Islamic sciences when her parents permitted her to travel to Damascus, Syria, at 14. Her desire to continue studying the Deen resulted in multiple trips back to Damascus, interspersed between her high school, college, and medical studies. She was honored to receive Ijazah (authorization to teach) several branches of the Shari’ah sciences at the hands of many renowned scholars, including many female scholars. She has received Ijazah to teach Tajwid in the Hafs and Warsh recitations from the late eminent Syrian scholar Shaykh Abu Hassan al-Kurdi. In addition to completing several advanced texts of the Shafi’i madhhab, she is licensed to teach texts of Maliki fiqh, Adab, and Ihsan. Currently, Ustadha Rania teaches online and local classes for The Rahmah Foundation, Rabata. She is on the faculty of Zaytuna College, where she teaches courses in Shafi’i fiqh and women’s issues in fiqh and has helped develop and co-direct the Tajweed and Hifz program.
Ustadha Rania is also a medical doctor specializing in psychiatry. She completed her Psychiatric residency and fellowship training at Stanford University, where she is currently on the faculty as a Clinical Instructor in the Stanford Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences department. Her medical interests include addressing mental health care concerns in the Muslim community- particularly that of Muslim women and girls. She has been awarded grants from the NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) to research this topic and has presented her findings at several medical conferences. Other ongoing endeavors include compiling manuscripts addressing female-related mental health and medical issues from a fiqh-oriented perspective. She currently serves as the Director of the Rahmah Foundation, a non-profit organization that teaches traditional Islamic knowledge to Muslim women and girls. In this capacity, she also heads the Murbbiyah Mentoring Program, which trains young women to teach and mentor Muslim girls and teens. Ustadha Rania is both a wife and a mother; she has been counseling and teaching women classes on Tajwid, Shafi’i Fiqh, Ihsan, marriage, and raising children since 1999.
– More from Dr. Rania: http://mcceastbay.org/rania
– More Dr. Rania’s Friday Evening Halaqas: http://www.mcceastbay.org/womens-halaqa
About Halima Afi
Halima Afi bint Rasheed Ujima is from Los Angeles, Ca, the oldest of eight children. From the age of six, she learned to recite and memorize the Quran from her step-father, a graduate of Umm Al-Qurah University. She enrolled in the Rahmah Foundation Hifdh Program in 2011 with the intention to complete the whole Quran, inshaAllah. She is committed to the advancement of women in Quran reading-fluency so one can love the Quran and devote time to reading with regularity. She is certified to teach Tajweed by receiving her Ijazah in Hafs recitation from Shaykha Hanan Mohammd Metwaly Hashem of Cairo, Egypt. She has lived in the Bay Area for 16 years, working as a home school educator. She is happily married and lives with her family in Hayward, California.