Genetics counselor Lama Eldahdah spends most of her time thinking about reproductive probabilities, but when she sits down with Muslim patients who are battling infertility, the conversation rarely focuses on odds. “Religious people say it’s God’s will, non-religious people say it’s statistics,” said Eldahdah, who works for Chicago’s Reproductive Genetics…
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Dear Elizabeth: Should book reports be expected of elementary school children? Confused Dear Confused, It is my belief and experience that when children are in elementary school, book reports are neither important nor advisable. The goal in the early years is to nurture a love of reading in children–reading…
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Dear Elizabeth: My son is two years-old and all he does is play. Should I put him into an early-education program? Dear Concerned: Absolutely not! I wouldn’t put a two year-old into an early education class for several reasons. First, let me start by saying that a two year-old child…
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In 1982, I began fasting half-days during Ramadan for the first time, my hands painted with henna in celebration. I was in Mrs. Campbell’s third grade class; the only Muslim in a school of more than three hundred children. She growled my name “So-fee-AAH! We do not write on our…
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This article responds to Yusra Gomaa’s piece on altM, Placing Muslim orphans into real homes. In 1961, Frantz Fanon wrote his seminal work The Wretched of the Earth. In the section of the book entitled “On National Culture”, he indicts the colonial system of both his native Martinique as well…
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We brought my father home from the hospital two weeks ago, so he could die in peace. I’m told once the death rattle comes it’s a matter of hours and possibly even a few days.
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Bare, grey walls tinged with a hint of yellow inside this familiar Moroccan orphanage. Crib after crib lined up next to one another with no spaces in between. Toddlers, laying silently on their faded green polka-dot sheets, likely funded by a charitable relief program. One child, perhaps walking now, is…
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Do you know what this means?”, she said in a desperate tone. Her husband looked down with distraught eyes, as if to mourn. He knew the challenges that lay ahead. All his thoughts were now filled with dread. To bring up a girl child in this world, To protect her…
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This election cycle has been difficult to experience, even for adults. Civil conversations and respect for diversity have been sidelined, and the loudest voices in politics and on television now are frighteningly extreme. Unsurprisingly the hateful rhetoric has filtered into American schools. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has just…
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Mariam: The biggest challenge I face as a working mom is striking the right work-home balance. I’ve taken various career detours to make sure that I’m able to be home as much as possible when the kids are home. This included changing my area of legal specialization, going on flex-time schedules,…
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