Our Manifesto
Malikah is a global collective of women committed to building safety and power for ourselves and our communities. Over the past ten years, we have conducted healing spaces and provided self-defense training over 20,000 women in twenty cities across the globe in self-defense, economic empowerment, and organizing. Together, we are building a global grassroots movement to amplify every woman’s power.
Our History
One morning in 2010, our founder, Rana Abdelhamid, stood in front of a mirror wrapping thick fabric around her head, the way her mother and grandmother did before her. Each wrap carried history, femininity, tradition and weight. At only fifteen years old, she knew too well the stories of the women in her life; she had witnessed their resilience and strength despite enduring female genital mutilation, sexual abuse, assault, and domestic violence. As she walked through her heavily policed Queens neighborhood in hijab, she felt the weight of people’s gaze. Then, it happened: a tug at the back of her scarf. He grabbed her, trying to yank her hijab from off of her head. She spun around to a tall, broad-shouldered man with pure hatred in his eyes. She struggled for a bit, but managed to get away. She hid in the shelter she had been volunteering at, crying. She had just experienced a hate crime. She wished her body didn’t carry so much of her. Rana, like many women, felt insecure and unsafe. Her body felt powerless. She felt alone.
It was in this very moment of isolation that the vision of MALIKAH was born. But it was the history, the work, and the power of black, brown, revolutionary, and indigenous women that inspired our founder to believe in a world where all women can feel safe in their own skin. Six months after the incident, Rana began to train girls in her neighborhood in self-defense, and to form organic gatherings where young women in her life shared their stories and healed. It started with thirteen women in a dimly lit, freshly painted basement of a community center. Rana stumbled through the first few words, but then thought about what brought her to that moment and shared her story. Then everyone started to share their stories, and for the first time, they felt safer. Something powerful happened: amidst this sisterhood, they found their voices.
These women trained more women, who then created safe spaces in their own communities. Even in the face of rejection from their own families and community leaders, they pushed for this vision. For eight years, these women have trained thousands of other women, across seventeen cities around the world. And this is how the movement started: through organic grassroots community building.
What We Do
We come together from an array of backgrounds, carry different perspectives, and live varied experiences. We are united by our unwavering belief in the power of women. Locally and globally, the spaces where we gather have manifested for us beautifully profound examples of what the world could look like if we were all safe to express all parts of our identities. And together, we heal and train in self-defense, organizing, and economic empowerment.
What does Malikah mean?
The word Malikah captures women’s power in seven distinct global language traditions. Our logo is an image of an inverse crown, indicating our efforts to disrupt entrenched, stereotypical notions of who represents and has access to power. Malikah women believe that every single woman should have full power over her body, choices, socio-political and cultural institutions and economic agency.
Why we’re building
Racial and gender-based violence haunts our communities, displacing us in our own skins, homes, neighborhoods, and lands. Even in spaces that are meant for us, many of our sisters are violently excluded and silenced. We are violently excluded and silenced because of cultural biases and inequities associated with race, class, nationality, physical/mental disability, sexual orientation, and/or gender expression. Additionally, pervasive gender-based violence is normalized in its many forms as an unfortunate reality of society. As long as it remains the status quo, the world we live in strips us, as women, of our sense of security. The symptoms of this violence are many, varied, and complex.
This is why Malikah women know that we can only thrive when we set out together to seek justice, equity, and liberation for all women. Malikah exists as a movement because the everyday woman often lacks the support, training, and tools needed to address the structural violence that hinders fully actualized self-determination. Coming together allows us to realize that everything we need already exists within all of us. Together we bring out that power.
While the essence of our power comes from gathering and strengthening relationships, we also build together. First, we heal. We share stories over coffee and tea, the way our grandmothers did and their grandmothers did. We build empathy by collectively identifying the forms of oppression we face and discussing ways to overcome trauma. We hold each other when we laugh and when we cry. To love, strengthen, and heal our bodies, we train in self-defense. Other days, we explore economic justice, learn to build businesses, and assert control over our economic power and autonomy. For some of us, these skills are tactical; for some, they are healing; for some they are for fun, something new to learn. In the end, all are valid.
These spaces that hold us are never meant to confine our energy; our relationships and renewed strength impact our daily lives and the ways we interact with the world. Our chins lift, we feel lighter, and we love more the way our womanhood feels. At times we allow our chests to fill with anger or tenderness brought about by our sisters’ pain. Whatever we feel, we become more intentional because we have built deeper mindfulness and self-awareness. Most importantly, we forge deep into our hearts that our liberations are connected.
Recognizing that our liberation also requires structural and cultural shifts, we are committed to organizing and expanding our love beyond ourselves, transforming it into a love expressed through action for change. We, as Malikah women, are always ready to support each other when the time comes. To spread our learnings and love beyond ourselves, we listen to, train, and organize with women from communities far from our own. Each of us has a different story, different levels of privilege, and different intersectional identities. We know that some of us sometimes have to carry the burdens of others. Some of us sometimes have to hold the education of others, even when we don’t want to. Sometimes there are arguments, fears, and frustrations. But because we see the strength and power in our differences, we genuinely reflect, listen, unlearn, and pick up to continue to build for a greater vision. And we always highlight the importance of centering the most marginalized voices. Sisters who exist at the intersections of various marginalized identities are the North Star of this movement.
With this intentionality, our energy spreads like a ripple to impact thousands of women–in masjid basements in Spain, maternal health clinics in Mexico, and conferences in Nigeria. From back porches in Brooklyn to the Women’s Building in San Francisco, we gather as women in magical ways. Our labor of love allows us to carve out spaces where we learn each other’s stories, laugh and cry together, break bread, and build our power by forging meaningful relationships.
Our Organizing Philosophy
Our theory for change is rooted in grassroots organizing traditions globally. Leadership is a practice, not a position, and local leaders hone this practice through both our core programming and our needs-based, community-specific programming.
We believe that power lies within our people. Every community possesses skills, knowledge, and resources, and each must ask itself what those are. Even those of us who feel they have nothing have something, whether as simple as our own two feet, our voices, our cooking, or our songs. Our personal power cannot be given to us by outsiders, imported as a “one size fits all.” Since the power lies in all of us storytelling, empathy, and deep listening form the foundation of all that we do. We all begin work in our own communities by listening to women around us. By doing so anyone can envision and establish a Malikah space in her community.
Our Community Values
In the process of gathering to share and listen, we always remember to center all voices. Holistic empowerment starts by ourselves to see what we could become through the process of being seen. We meet people in our own communities where they’re at to pray, break bread together, and do business together with trust, and respect. We co-create community committed to a clear vision of full power that allows for personal and collective transformation. Transformation is an actively engaged process of struggle and growth. The following are the main guiding values for any Malikah space to ensure that we’re always striving to make all of us safe:
Inclusion
We as Malikahs aspire to be inclusive, making sure everyone feels fully seen, heard, uplifted, and embraced. We recognize this aspiration as a responsibility, not a burden. We are learning and will stumble along the way. When we do, we hold each other accountable for our impact and intent. We are constantly asking “Who is currently not in this space?” and “How can we make sure that we open space for them?” To resolve this, we must consider how to subvert power dynamics and center those voices who are traditionally marginalized by our dominant culture, systems, and spaces. Though some of us may exist at the margins, we must remain conscious that all of us are capable of marginalizing others. Malikah spaces strive to be sanctuaries of healing and Malikah communities should strive to be warm, affirming, and inclusive to all those who choose to step inside them. Malikah is about community, safety, empathy, and belonging.
Practicing Collective Care
Malikah spaces provide opportunities for honest self-reflection, transparent self-exploration, and platforms for collective growth. All those in Malikah spaces should aim to practice compassion with one another and with themselves, even when it is difficult. Each of us should strive to be both humble as we share and generous as we listen. Each should take seriously our responsibility for co-creating Malikah learning spaces by honoring the unique collective wisdom that each group holds because of each individual sitting in the room.
We must take care of one another in the space, and strive to be revolutionary in the way we show love to one another. Through this we will grow because of one another, with one another.
Purposefully Embrace Humanity
We live in cultures that often make us feel isolated from one another. We live in a society that profits off of us feeling unsure of who we are. Malikah is about connecting ourselves to one another as whole people and connecting ourselves to our own humanity. As CTZNWELL’s Mark Gonzales says, we strive to move away from storytelling (monologue) and towards story sharing (dialogue). We strive to enable everyone to unapologetically see and embrace their full selves and be fearless in their commitment to their own healing and to one another’s.
Imagine, Act, Transform
Malikah is committed to creating action-oriented communities. When we heal, when we resist, when we breathe, when we laugh, when we fight back, when we grow, when we imagine something new, we see success. We must keep ourselves moving, hopeful, and swinging in the fight for collective liberation and social transformation. We know we need each other to do this.
Remember We Are All on Different Journeys
In practicing all of the values above, we must emphasize humility. MALIKAH women come from an extremely wide variety of backgrounds, and we must honor each story. We must not only acknowledge our place in any space, but the perspectives and experiences of each person there. Some of us may be further along in our organizing and in our learning. Be patient with each other and hold space for each other’s learning. That is the only way collective growth will happen. Make sure the burden of education does not fall on those most marginalized in your group.
