(ALF), which she established in 2009. With over 15 years of dedicated service, ALF has
been instrumental in helping Afghan students stay in school to prevent child labor and
early child marriage, even under the most challenging circumstances. The foundation’s
impactful work has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning. Adita holds an MA in
Islamic Studies and an MS in Educational Leadership, and she is deeply committed toeducation as a means of empowerment and liberation. Having arrived in the US as a
refugee from Afghanistan in 1981, she now resides in Irvine, CA.
Hashmat Nadirpor is a legal expert from Afghanistan. He is currently leading the Afghanistan Human Rights Project at University of California, Irvine School of Law to monitor and advocate for action to address Afghanistan’s deteriorating human rights situation.
Prior to this, he has worked for more than a decade with many national and international organizations on rule of law and capacity building projects in Afghanistan. Hashmat has received his LL.M from University of Washington, School of Law and his B.A. from Kabul University Faculty of Law & Political Science.
Muslema Purmul was born in Raleigh, North Carolina and raised in San Diego, California. She graduated from the University of California, San Diego with a double major in Religious Studies and Middle Eastern Studies. During these years she served a number of different roles at her local MSA at UCSD as well as MSA West. After graduating she left to study in Egypt where she spent the better part of the next 7 years. She completed the Bachelors program in Sharia from al-Azhar University in Cairo and also completed almost two years of graduate work at the American University in Cairo in Islamic Studies. She also attended the International Union of Muslim Scholars “Future Scholars Program” while she was studying in Cairo.
Upon her return to America, she served the Southern California community in various capacities including religious instruction, directing youth and young adult programs, university chaplaincy, and offering community pastoral care at and with local masjids and organizations. She has taught classes and spoken nationally and internationally about issues related to Islamic law and ethics in an array of educational settings including conferences, retreats, universities, libraries, and mosques. Currently she serves as Assistant Religious Director at The Majlis, a community organization she and her husband co-founded together seeking to nurture safe community spaces where people can learn and live Islam, based on the traditional sources of understanding the faith, while acknowledging the particular challenges of the American context. She is a mother of two and resides with her family in Southern California.
