Haley Arata is a rising senior at the College of William and Mary, where she is majoring in International Relations and minoring in Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies. As a Monroe Scholar at the College, she conducted undergraduate research on divorce rights for Muslim women in India, and will conduct upperclassman research on gender and sexuality in Muslim communities in the U.S.
Haley started learning Arabic at college, and last semester she studied abroad in Amman, Jordan with a program that focused on language and culture. Haley’s travels and studies have contributed to her interest in the relationship between international aid and religion, gender, and sexuality. As an intern with KARAMAH, Haley looks forward to learning more about the intersection between Islamic jurisprudence, women’s rights, and civil rights in the lives of Muslim women living in the U.S. and around the world.
Aisha Farooq is a rising senior at the University of Richmond. She is currently pursuing a major in PPEL (Politics, Philosophy, Economics, and Law) with a concentration in Political Science and a minor in Healthcare Studies and Anthropology. She is the President of United 2 Heal, a nonprofit student run organization that ships medical supplies to developing countries through interfaith work. She is also the President of the Debate Club at her university. Aisha recently pursued a research internship at the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court in Arlington, VA through a Civic Fellowship where she gained insight into legal issues surrounding domestic violence and human trafficking.
Aisha chose to intern at KARAMAH this summer to combine her personal interest in better understanding her faith and her identity as a Pakistani American Muslim, and learning about how KARAMAH’s research dismantles patriarchal and cultural interpretations of religious texts to justify domestic violence. Aisha hopes to use the knowledge she will gain at KARAMAH at the Chaplaincy Summer Fellowship from the University of Richmond to conduct further research on Islam and Law.
Bora Lee is a rising second year law student at George Washington University Law School in Washington, DC. Her passion for human rights, specifically women’s human rights, began during her junior year in college, when she interned with a local court watch program that monitors judicial hearings of cases involving violence against women. There she realized how little protection victims of domestic abuse receive from the institutions designed to protect them.
Bora hopes to use her legal education to help uplift the voice and needs of marginalized victims of domestic abuse. She believes KARAMAH’s mission aligns with her goals, and is excited to witness and learn how the organization successfully reconciles its religious principles with American family law.
Elizabeth Drake is a rising senior at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster Pennsylvania, where she is majoring in Political Science and minoring in Arabic Area Studies. She has studied Arabic throughout her college career, and last summer she traveled to Amman, Jordan for an Intensive Arabic Language Program. After traveling to Jordan, Elizabeth became interested in women’s rights and Islam, which is how she found KARAMAH.
As a summer intern at KARAMAH, Elizabeth hopes to build off of her experiences in Jordan and learn more about Islamic law and women’s rights. In the future, Elizabeth hopes to work on improving gaps in gender equality around the world.
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