Daisy Khan

Early life

Daisy Khan was born in the foothills of the Himalayas in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, India. Khan was raised in a Muslim household that was both traditional and forward-looking, where education was highly valued.

Khan attended a Christian missionary school, St. Patrick’s Presentation Convent School. In an environment with an amalgam of Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims – harmony, tolerance and unity of religious believers was the primary mantra of her Kashmiri childhood.

Khan’s grandfather, Ghulam Hassan Khan, was a powerful influence in her life. The chief engineer for the state of Kashmir, he studied civil engineering at Harvard in the 1920s and he encouraged his children and grandchildren to pursue the best education available regardless of locale.

Transition to America

At the age of 16 with the support of her parents, Khan left for the United States to pursue an education in art and design. She arrived on Long Island, and lived in Jericho with an aunt and uncle.

After high school, she earned a degree from the New York School of Interior Design. In her early 20s, she decamped to Manhattan and embraced the professional life, pulling 80-hour weeks as an architectural designer.

Through this period, Khan continued wrestling with Islam: she was forced to juxtapose the peaceful Islam of her childhood memories with the violent struggles portrayed by the media during the rise of the Iranian Revolution of 1979.

Career Beginnings

In what Khan recalls as an odd coincidence, her first large projects involved religious architecture. Khan’s first big project was helping design the Islamic Center of Long Island, now one of the New York area’s most prominent mosques and cofounded by her uncle. For her next project, Khan reached across religious lines and worked on designing a Hindu temple. Through her work with religious architecture and local devotees, Khan recognized how immigrants yearned to recreate their homelands in America.

Khan went on to work as project manager for what was then Shearson Lehman Brothers on the 106th floor of the World Trade Center. She remembers the lasting effect of the first foiled bombing in 1993. After Shearson she worked for the publishing company Primedia, where she oversaw the design of Seventeen magazine’s offices, and then later joined a telecommunications firm. She also volunteered with her husband, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, in community development.

Community Service

In order to promote their vision of a harmonious and forward thinking Islam, in 1997 the couple established the non-profit group that is now called the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA) where Khan served as an Executive Director for 17 years. At ASMA, Khan dedicated herself to strengthening an expression of Islam based on cultural and religious harmony through interfaith collaboration, cultivating the next generation of leaders, promoting women's rights and building bridges through culture and arts.

Flagship Programs Founded

In an effort to emphasize commonalities among the Abrahamic faith traditions, Khan created groundbreaking interfaith theatrical productions "Same Difference" and "Cordoba Bread Fest."

To prioritize the advancement of Muslim women and the empowerment of youth globally, Khan launched two cutting edge programs to create a platform which maximized the collective impact of these social change agents.

In 2004, Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow (MLT) was founded in order to cultivate and empower a global network of young Muslim leaders. It is the largest network of young Muslim leaders around the globe.

In 2006, Women's Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality (WISE) was founded to build a cohesive, global movement of Muslim women in order to promote women's rights and enable women to make dignified choices and fully participate in creating just and flourishing societies.

Khan grew increasingly disturbed by the mistreatment (stonings, honor killings, forced marriages) of Muslim women around the world. In 2008, WISE launched the first global Muslim women’s Shura Council to provide religiously-grounded opinions on controversial issues of particular relevance to Muslim women. Drawing upon its members' expertise in both Islamic jurisprudence and fields such as History, Political Science, Theology and Sociology, the Shura Council issued its first statement in 2009 "Jihad Against Violence," a condemnation of Violent Extremism.

The Global Muslim Women's Shura Council makes statements on domestic violence, violent extremism, female genital cutting, and adoption. The Council's statements were used to train Imams in Afghanistan to champion women's rights and combat Violent Extremism.

In 2009, Khan launched the first educational website dedicated to profiling the contributions of exemplary Muslim women as well as the challenges they face around the globe.

In 2015, Khan established WISE as an organization with the aim to bolster faith-based leadership of women and youth in order to foster a more peaceful and equitable Islam.

Activism for Religious Freedom and Pluralism

Amidst growing Islamophobia in the United States, Khan published an article in the Guardian, “Islamophobia is America’s Greatest Enemy.”

Khan also sat down for a Council on Foreign Relations Panel Discussion in June 2011 to discuss "Islam in America."

In March 2011, Daisy Khan spoke against Peter King’s hearings on the “radicalization” of American Muslims. Khan further organized a Rally against Peter King’s hearings titled “I am a Muslim, Too” on March 6, 2011 in Times Square, NYC.

In the realm of civil liberties, Daisy Khan addressed the question of, “Is the NYPD Really Against Muslims?” in the Huffington Post.

In 2011, Khan brought together 300 people of all religions for a night of remembrance. The event, entitled In Good Faith: Stories of Hope and Resilience, highlighted hundreds of bridgebuilding projects undertaken since September 11, while also paying tribute to the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim families of 9/11 victims.

In 2009, Khan and her husband proposed building a community center, the Cordoba House at Park51, two blocks from the World Trade Center, which precipitated a national dialogue in the US media about the right to worship and religious freedom.

Media

Khan regularly lectures in the United States and internationally. She has appeared on numerous media outlets, such as CNN, Al Jazeera, and BBC World's Doha Debates. She has served as an advisor and contributor to a variety of documentaries, including PBS's Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet, National Geographic's Inside Mecca, and the Hallmark Channel's Listening to Islam. Khan is a contributor to the Washington Post's "On Faith" blog and is frequently quoted in print publications, such as Time Magazine, Newsweek, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Saudi Gazette, and the Khaleej Times.

Awards and recognition