We chat with Hoda Katebi, of Blue Tin Production Co-op, about how our clothes and our spirituality are connected, and steps we can take towards becoming more responsible consumers. We also share our first modest fit and whether or not we’d wear Nike’s new swimsuit.

Guest
Hoda Katebi is a Chicago-based Iranian-American creative and community organizer who promotes garment workers’ rights and ethical fashion production. She is the founder of JooJoo Azad, an anti-capitalist, intersectional feminist, and body-positive political fashion blog and the Blue Tin Production Co-op, a clothing manufacturing co-operative run by immigrant & refugee women which seeks to challenge the fashion industry’s heavy reliance on sweatshops and create opportunities for immigrant and refugee women to find well-paid, women-centered, highly skilled work. In doing so, Blue Tin Production hopes to act as an alternative to sweatshop-based fashion production within the United States, disrupting chains of violence within the industry.

We talk about food and community with Reem Assil of Reem’s bakery in Oakland.

On this episode, Aymann Ismail, host of Slate’s Man Up podcast joins the show to discuss what it means to be a man in today’s world, what positive masculinity can look like, and how men can achieve it. Plus Makkah brings on a special guest, Rizwaan Akhtar, to learn about the spaces some men are creating to unpack their own ideas about manhood.

To kick off season 7 we invited our producer Hibba Meraay on the show to talk our birth stories and how we got our names. Plus Ikhlas shares details about becoming a mom!

Ikhlas had a baby! So yah this episode is a little late. Hibba turns the tables as we celebrate some podcast milestones.

The Village Auntie herself, Angelica Lindsey-Ali, joins us to discuss the importance of owning your sexual health and finding spaces to explore issues around intimacy, pleasure and womanhood.

GUEST: Angelica Lindsey-Ali, @villageauntie, is a community scholar whose research interests include the West African roots of African American Islamic identity and the role of sacred sexuality within West and East African cultures. She is a certified sexual health educator has been working in the field of public health for the last 15 years and has been providing 1-on-1 support to women for 20+ years.

This week, we talk about what it feels like to be recognized in public and the special brand of online vitriol that is reserved just for women. Plus Dalia Mogahed chats with us about whether the costs of being a Muslim woman with a public profile outweigh the benefits and shares what motivates her to keep going, despite the backlash.

Guest: Dalia Mogahed, @DMogahed, is the Director of Research at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, where she leads the organization’s pioneering research and thought leadership programs on American Muslims. She is a frequent expert commentator in global media outlets and international forums. With John L. Esposito, Dalia co-authored the book Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think and was appointed to President Obama’s advisory council on faith-based and neighborhood partnerships in 2009. Dalia’s 2016 TED talk was named one of the top TED talks that year. She is also the CEO of Mogahed Consulting.

When you’re looking to get deeper in your faith there a lot of options out there from meditation to yoga to spiritual retreats, how do you navigate it all? Reoccurring guest Joshua Abdul Haqq (aka Ikhlas’ husband) comes on the show to talk about his forthcoming podcast, “Three Stations of the Deen,” and why he decided to take up the spiritual path (tariqa). Makkah’s nephew, Tariq, also comes back on the show to share tips on how to maintain your Qur’an study.

To mark the halfway point of Ramadan we check in on how we’re doing on those #RamadanGoals and chat with actor, comedian, and writer Ramy Youssef about how his Ramadan has been going in the wake of the release of his new Hulu show Ramy, what his hopes are for show, and the challenges and opportunities that we face when trying to tell our stories.

Ramadan Mubarak! To kick off this year’s series, we reflect on the last decade of summertime fasts and our girl Samira Abderahman joins us to talk about Black Iftar, why she created it and the importance of leaving room for Black joy in Ramadan.