Founder of the “Ask a Muslim” Campaign, Poet & Activist

Mona Haydar is a young Syrian-American Muslim who spent her 20’s as a performance poet. In 2015 she gained national and international press for her and her husband’s “Ask A Muslim” project- a booth that invited dialogue and questions in the wake of the Paris and San Bernardino terrorist attacks. The Boston Globe, NPR, People Magazine, The New York Times and others all covered the project and the collaborations that followed. In 2017 she broke into the hip hop music scene with Hijabi (Wrap My Hijab) whose video- featuring Haydar seven months pregnant with her second son- went viral. Billboard Magazine named Haydar’s track one of the top feminist anthems of all time (alongside hits by icons Beyoncé, Christina Aguilera, and M.I.A).

Mona’s first EP, BARBARICAN, dropped in 2018 and took aim at global patriarchy, orientalism, immigration policy, white supremacy, and suicide. That same year, she earned her Masters Degree in Theology, focusing on Christian Ethics, from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. AMERICAN, her most recent track, helps re-define the debate about who is an American, and calls out ICE and our current president.

For the last four years, Mona has been performing her poetry and music, leading writing and activism workshops, and speaking at universities and colleges about art, Islam, feminism, hip hop, theology, and inter-faith dialogue. She has performed internationally, spoken at churches, synagogues and conferences, and has been invited to speak at such institutions as Smith College, MIT, Princeton, UC Berkeley and the Parliament of World Religions.