Sahar Pirzada had one thing to say when she found out the Singaporean government was using religion, especially Islam, as an excuse to drag their feet on sexual education and women’s rights: “Hell, no!” Pirzada was in Singapore promoting gender equality, and needless to say, she was not enthused by the idea of her religion being used for unjust purposes.
Her visit to Singapore sparked her to reach out to other activists once she returned to California. Pirzada is co-chair and community organizer at Vigilant Love, an organization that specializes in bringing together and building up communities against Islamophobia and discrimination by creating safe spaces, and is the program and outreach manager of HEART Women & Girls, an organization that promotes sex positivity and reproductive health in Muslim communities.
Pirzada’s organizations create “healing spaces” for both victims of injustice and for women. Pirzada became a volunteer educator for HEART in 2014. The organization, like Pirzada, firmly believes that despite the existing cultural taboo surrounding sex in the Islamic community, Islam is a sex-positive religion. HEART attempts to promote that message by providing comprehensive sex education to Muslim youth and by promoting women’s health.
“With HEART, I think it intersects so beautifully with the work I do at Vigilant Love,” Pirzada said. “Most targets when it comes to Muslim attacks are Muslim women because we’re seen as vulnerable and we’re visible.”
Indeed, much of Pirzada’s work challenging gendered Islamophobia intersects with several other social justice issues. “We are really talking a stand in solidarity when it comes to all forms of oppression,” she said.
After the San Bernardino shooting in 2015, Pirzada became one of the founding team members of Vigilant Love, which brought together activists from both the Muslim American and Japanese American community. “You can really appreciate healing spaces when something like this happens because you realize the need for that,” she said. “People wanted to channel that momentum into action as well, so we started to meet regularly for coalition meetings.”
According to Pirzada, Vigilant Love’s main focus is to create spaces where victims can come together in community, talk about their experience and be informed on programs, policies and institutional and structural changes that may affect them. “It’s really amazing how if you just create the space, people will come,” Pirzada said. “People come because this stuff keeps happening. There’s a trust we’ve established with the community to be able to play that role of support.”
Together with Vigilant Love and other organizations, Pirzada helped put together direct actions such as a sit-in at LAX last year, during which hundreds gathered to show solidarity with the Muslim American community and combat discriminatory travel policies such as the Countering Violent Extremism bill.
When it comes to effecting change through creating safe spaces, Pirzada believes that there is no better place than Los Angeles.
“I need to be where my community is, and that’s here,” she said about the city. “This is the place where I’ve found people who align with those values the most. We’re dedicated to honoring the work of people before us who struggled, and Los Angeles really creates a space where we can all honor that shared struggle and shared history.”
Indeed, it is her own personal history that fuels Pirzada’s passion. Her faith is a main motivator for her work. “What you do on this earth you are accountable for,” she said. “I want to make sure that I am doing stuff that I won’t have to question whether it is just or not.”
This article is a part of a series of portraits and stories, in celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, on API women who use their perspectives and voices to speak up and impact their communities. Read more here.
