User:Nadiasheikh

Nadia Sheikh is a young activist and writer working for the betterment of Muslim-Americans and to give a voice to those in the Middle East.

Background

She was born on January 17th, 1987 in New Jersey to a Kenyan-Pakistani father and a Kashmiri-Punjabi mother. She is the eldest of three daughters and currently lives in Weehawken, New Jersey on the Hudson River.

She attended high school at Al-Ghazaly Jr./Sr. High School in Teaneck, New Jersey, a twenty-year-old system that incorporated high academics with religious studies. While in high school she attended New York University towards photography aspirations and found herself being affected by the Middle East. Through photojournalism, she began an interest in politics.

As a freshman at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey, Nadia was struck by her father's death. There she studied communications and International Relations and found herself looking for a better specialization in the Middle East region. She left Seton Hall and joined Rutgers University in New Brunswick towards a bachelor's degree in Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science.

She is fluent in Urdu, Punjabi and English. She continues her six-year study of Arabic and hopes soon to learn French and Hebrew.

She is now completing her novel entitled "Crimson Mirror," a science-fiction historical novel about the spirit of a holocaust victim who was buried in the Sanai Peninsula and befriends a Palestinian refugee during the second Intifida or "uprising" in Palestine.

She was a former intern and media spokeswoman for Children of Abraham, an international interfaith group and currently works as a secretary at U.S. Federation for Middle East Peace and heads various projects pertaining to peace and dialogue in the region. One project she is currently working to achieve is a documentary film about Egyptian youth and their reach for "democracy."