As millions of Muslims complete Hajj this week, we revisit a question scholars have debated for centuries: can a Muslim woman make a journey like that without a mahram?

This week on the show, host Sohaira Siddiqui recalls the first time she ran headfirst into that debate, when she decided to tell her parents she wanted to move to Jordan to study Arabic. And how that initial conversation at her parents' kitchen table led her to dive deep into centuries of scholarly debate on the topic, from the Mughal princess Gulbadan Begum's seven-year pilgrimage to Mecca, to the 2023 Saudi ruling that let women perform Hajj without a male guardian.

Years later, in post-Arab Spring Egypt, a young woman in the middle of a spiritual crisis feels the same pull to leave, and signs up for a women's retreat in Morocco, hoping a group of new Muslims might help her find her way back to a faith she's losing her grip on.

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Hosted by Sohaira Siddiqui.

Reported by Nadeen Shaker, with help from Tanita Rahmani.

Produced by Tanita Rahmani.

Editing by Salman Ahad Khan.

Fact-checking by Heba Elorbany.

Special thanks to Sadia Ramzan from The Muslim Women Travel Group, Parvez Siddiqui, and Suzanne Gaber.

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Suggested Reading:

• Begum, Gulbadan. The History of Humāyūn (Humāyūn-Nāma). Translated by Annette S. Beveridge. London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1902.
• Lal, Ruby. Vagabond Princess: The Great Adventures of Gulbadan. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024.

When reporter Yassmin Abdel-Magied's friend tells her she's been using ChatGPT as a therapist, Yassmin doesn't know what to think. The chatbot calls her friend "habibti." Gives her Islamic relationship advice. It's helping her reconnect with her faith in ways no human in her life has been able to. But it's also a product built by a tech company with no foundations in Islamic psychology.

This week on the show, Reporter Yassmin Abdel-Magied goes down a rabbit hole to try and understand Islam's relationship to mental health and whether AI can ever truly heal us. And she finds a Stanford professor asking herself the same questions.

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EPISODE CREDITS:

Reported by Yassmin Abdel-Magied.

Produced by Taqwa Sadiq.

Edited by Sarah Qari and Salman Ahad Khan.

Music by Alexander Overington and Salman Ahad Khan.

Sound Design and Engineering by Alexander Overington.

Fact-checking by Heba Elorbany.

Illustration by Lina Jaradat.

Special thanks to Muhammad Faruque, Sidrah Hassan, Merve Nursoy-Demir, Jacki Shoyeb, Ndaa Hassan, Tasneem, and Talia Augustidis.

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This season of More Muslim is powered by Al Mujadilah, a center and mosque for women in Qatar. If you liked our show, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. A transcript of this episode will be available on our website.

More about our show at moremuslim.org. Follow us on Instagram at 'moremuslimshow.'

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Further reading:

Awaad, Rania, and Merve Nursoy-Demir. Maristāns and Islāmic Psychology: A Historical Model for Modern Implementation.

Abdel-Magied, Yassmin. “Are You Using ChatGPT for Therapy?” Substack, 2025.

Growing up, Aina had heard about the transatlantic slave trade that enslaved Africans and took them to the Americas. But on one of her reporting trips, she was shocked to learn that, around the same time, Dutch colonizers were deporting and enslaving Muslims from Indonesia and shipping them thousands of miles... all the way to South Africa.

This week, reporter Aina J. Khan takes us to Cape Town and tells the story of the Cape Malay, South Africa's oldest Muslim community. How they used their faith to survive through 400 years of slavery, colonialism, and apartheid. And why, today, they might be facing their most existential threat yet: gentrification.

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EPISODE CREDITS:

Reported by Aina J. Khan.

Produced by Catherine Boulle and Salman Ahad Khan.

Original music and sound design by Salman Ahad Khan.

Fact checking by Heba Elorbany.

Engineering by Alexander Overington.

Illustration by Lina Jaradat.

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This season of More Muslim is powered by Al Mujadilah, a center and mosque for women in Qatar. If you liked our show, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. A transcript of this episode will be available on our website.

More about our show at moremuslim.org.

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Further reading:

Baderoon, Gabeba. Regarding Muslims: From Slavery to Post-Apartheid. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2014.

Jessa, Sirhan, and Jayne M. Rogerson. "Tourism Gentrification in Cape Town's Bo-Kaap: Socio-economic Transformations and Displacement." Bulletin of Geography: Socio-economic Series 69 (2025): 129–143.

Williams, Karen. "The Indonesian Anti-Colonial Roots of Islam in South Africa." Media Diversified, August 25, 2016.

Dangor, Suleman E. "Shaykh Yusuf of Macassar: Scholar, Sufi, National Hero — Towards Constructing Local Identity and History at the Cape." Kawalu: Journal of Local Culture 1, no. 2 (2014).

When war broke out in Sudan in April 2023, Dr. Fairouz El Hijzi had to flee her home with her family. Two months later, as a hastily-appointed interim dean of architecture, she faced an impossible choice: give up on her students' futures or attempt to resume classes in the middle of the worst humanitarian crisis in modern history. This is the story of what happened when she and her students decided to keep hope alive and build a new future for Sudan in the midst of the destruction all around them.

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EPISODE CREDITS:

Reported by Yassmin Abdel-Magied.

Produced by Taqwa Sadiq.

Edited by Sarah Qari.

Original music, sound design, and engineering by Alexander Overington.

Fact checking by Heba Elorbany.

English translations voiced by Wa’ad Abu Obeida, Lina Altayib, and Hazim Ali.

Special thanks to Ahmed Adm, Prof. Eisa Bashier Mohamad, Muhammad Fathallah, Hafsa Omar, Rawia Farog Khater Muhammad, Lubna Ahmed Hussein, and all the students and teachers who shared their stories.

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This season of More Muslim is powered by Al Mujadilah, a center and mosque for women in Qatar. If you liked our show, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. A transcript of this episode will be available shortly on our website.

More about our show at moremuslim.org.

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Further reading:

Amidst war & displacement in Sudan, my aunt won't stop educating | Yassmin Abdel-Magied, The New Arab

Learn more about the ongoing crisis in Sudan at Keep Eyes On Sudan.

For most of her life, Maryam believed women couldn’t recite the Qur’an aloud. That a woman’s voice, especially while reciting the Qur’an, is awrah. Something to be hidden. Then, one day in high school, she heard a girl recite in public. Reporter Nadeen Shaker shares the story of Maryam Amir, one woman’s journey to revive her relationship with Islam through the Qur’an. And how it sparked a recitation revolution.

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CREDITS:

Reported and produced by Nadeen Shaker.

Editing by Anisa Khalifa and Salman Ahad Khan.

Additional editing by Sarah Qari.

Original music, sound design, and engineering by Alexander Overington.

Additional music by Salman Ahad Khan.

Fact checking by Heba Elorbany.

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This season of More Muslim is powered by Al Mujadilah, a center and mosque for women in Qatar. If you liked our show, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. A transcript of this episode will be available shortly on our website.

More about our show at moremuslim.org.

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Guests:

Maryam Amir, founder of Qariah: The Women Qur'an Reciters App and PhD candidate at International Islamic University Malaysia

Dr. Zainab Talha, scholar and Qur'an reciter regarded as the first female to record the entirety of the Qur'an in audio.

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Further reading:

Egypt's Forgotten Women Qur'an Reciters | Nadeen Shaker, New Lines Magazine

The Quran recitation app bringing women’s voices to the fore | Aysha Khan, Analyst News

In last week’s episode, The Secret Translators, we told the story of the three white American reverts behind the Saheeh International translation of the Qur’an, and the unique challenges they faced in translating the holy text. But that was only part of the story.

This week, we’re sharing an episode from The Digital Sisterhood that digs deeper into the life of one of the translators, Amatullah "AJ" Bentley. There was so much more to than AJ's story than we were able to cover on the episode, and on this episode, Cadar follows up with a different set of questions inspired by a curiosity she noticed on AJ's LinkedIn page.

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CREDITS:

Reported by Cadar Mohamud.

Produced by Muna Scekomar, with help from assistant producers Nima Harun and Khweya Bezeid.

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A new episode of More Muslim will be out next Wednesday. In the meantime, check out The Digital Sisterhood's latest season, which premiered last week with a story featuring our host, Sohaira Siddiqui: https://pod.link/1562999893/episode/NTYwNzgwMmEtMGUxNS0xMWYxLWE0NDctZDcxZjQ3MjNiYmJj

The ‘Saheeh International’ translation is one of the most widely read English versions of the Qur’an. But unlike other famous translations like those by Yusuf Ali and Mohammed Abdel Saleem, the authors of the translation are rarely ever mentioned by name. Until one day, The Digital Sisterhood’s Cadar Mohamud hears a rumor about who actually wrote the mysterious translation: three white revert American women living in Saudi Arabia.

CREDITS:

Reported by Cadar Mohamud.

Produced by Taqwa Sadiq.

Edited, sound designed, and composed by Salman Ahad Khan.

Fact-checked by Heba Elorbany.

Engineering by Alexander Overington.

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This season of More Muslim is powered by Al Mujadilah, a center and mosque for women in Qatar. If you liked our show, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

More about our show at moremuslim.org.

Reporter Tanita Rahmani realizes a small detail—blue ink instead of black on a marriage contract—means her marriage was never legally registered. That revelation sends her on a personal and investigative journey into the legal gray zone where many Muslim marriages exist: recognized by faith, but invisible to the law. From overlooked paperwork in New York to courtroom battles in the UK, this episode unpacks what happens when a nikkah isn’t enough, and asks: who decides if a marriage is a marriage?

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Episode Credits:

Reported and produced by Tanita Rahmani.

Produced by Najib Aminy and Salman Ahad Khan.

Editing by Salman Ahad Khan, with additional editing from Sarah Qari.

Fact check by Heba Elorbany.

Original Music and sound design by Salman Ahad Khan and Alexander Overington.

Engineering by Alexander Overington.

Hosted by Sohaira Siddiqui.

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This season is powered by Al-Mujadilah Center and Mosque for Women in Qatar.

For more about our show, visit moremuslim.org or follow us on Instagram.

There’s a sentence many Muslim women grow up hearing. “It’s better for women to pray at home.” But what does it mean when the presence of half our community in the most central and sacred space of Muslim life is up for debate? Reporter Taqwa Sadiq traces the evolution of Muslim women's relationship with the mosque, from the prophetic era when women prayed alongside men without barriers, to today's reality where many mosques relegate women to basement closets, behind opaque partitions, or turn them away entirely.

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Episode Credits:

Reported and Produced by Taqwa Sadiq.

Editing by Salman Ahad Khan.

Additional editing by Sarah Qari.

Fact check by Heba Elorbany.

Original music by Salman Ahad Khan and Alexander Overington.

Sound design and engineering by Alexander Overington.

Hosted by Sohaira Siddiqui.

Production support from Rabia Bushra, Sania Ruhi, and Sarah Thiab. Special thanks to Maha Saud Al-Khalifa, Talia Augustidis, Yassmin Abdel-Mageid, and all the women who shared their voices on this episode and shared their stories on the Side Entrance blog.

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This season is powered by Al-Mujadilah Center and Mosque for Women in Qatar.

For more about our show, visit moremuslim.org or follow us on Instagram at 'moremuslimshow'.

More Muslim is a narrative audio documentary series that explores the Muslim experience, with all its messiness.

Season one, starts February 1st.