Amid rising bigotry and hateful rhetoric in the West, some Muslims shine as role models, with success stories inspiring the religious minority, and enabling them to excel amidst the toughest circumstances.
As we look back at 2017, please find below some examples of such inspiration stories of some Muslim individuals who managed to beat the odds and sail through turbulent waves in the preceding year.
Dr. Emad Rahim survived destruction and abuse to find success as a renaissance man with a new religion after embracing Islam in the United States.
Nigerian news reporter Amina Yuguda won the third BBC World News Komla Dumor Award in recognition of her special reports on high-profile news stories, including the Boko Haram insurgency.
Arriving in the UK a few months earlier, Hamza Jouma’s GCSE results were a huge success, becoming one of the best achievers in his new British school.
Eden Girls’ School in Walthamstow, East London was praised as outstanding by the Office education inspectors for Standard in Education (Ofsted) after they made their first visit to the facility in June.
Miss Lateefat Abiola Oyeleye from Nigeria’s Osun state emerged as the overall best medical student of V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, Ukraine, becoming a role model for many young students to follow.
Sara Abou Rashed, a teenage Syrian immigrant, was offered 10 scholarships in Ohio and put on the wait-list of Harvard only four years after escaping war in her home country.
Amina Mabizari, an American Muslim girl from Houston, Texas, achieved a rare honor after being accepted by 7 out of 8 Ivy League schools, with only Harvard putting her on a waiting list. The chance to attend any of these schools is a dream for most students.
Yasha Asley is a genius young Muslim teen who became the youngest ever employee at the University of Leicester, shortly after graduating at only 15 years old from the prestigious educational facility.
Both Muslim girls’ and boys’ schools in Blackburn, Lancashire, run by the Tauheedul Education Trust, beat off competition from London grammars to top the annual school performance tables coming first and third in the Department for Education’s national league tables.
Ilhan Omar made history in January by getting sworn in to the Minnesota House of Representatives, becoming the first female Muslim and Somali-American legislator.