Sahar Pirzada, the director of movement building at HEART, an organization working to advance reproductive justice through sexual health and education in Muslim American communities, joins host Rafa Kidvai to discuss reproductive justice and liberation. They explore the impact of state violence, the importance of cultural change work, and how global perspectives shape the fight for reproductive justice.
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Rafa Kidvai: This is No Body Criminalized How the state controls our bodies, families, and communities. I'm Rafa Kidvai, director of the Repro Legal Defense Fund at If/When/How. On our podcast, we talk with experts, activists, and advocates whose daily work intersects with reproductive justice and the state's targeting of marginalized communities. The founding mothers of reproductive justice in the United States define the term as the human rights to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities. You will hear us restate the shared commitment throughout our interviews, because regardless of the issues guests focus on, that is ultimately the world we all intend to create. Our guest today is Sahar Pirzada. Sahar is the director of Movement Building at HEART, a reproductive justice organization focused on sexual health and education in Muslim American communities. We started our conversation talking about Sahar's personal journey and what led her to the important work she's doing with HEART.
Sahar Pirzada: I grew up in a Muslim community where it wasn't necessarily bad to talk about sex or sexual health. It just never really came up naturally, and so my only exposure was whatever I was exposed to in the media and at school. We had your traditional sex ed, which was pretty pathetic, but once I started to become sexually active, I experienced sexual dysfunction and I couldn't figure out what was going on with my body. I experienced a lot of gendered Islamophobia within the care that I was seeking from at least three different gynecologists had said stuff around like, oh, maybe it's just because of your culture or you just need to relax more. It was like there has to be more support for navigating these systems.
I ended up getting a job where I had to develop a sex ed curriculum for students, and so I was like, "Oh, through my job, let me learn all the things that I was never taught and put it into a curriculum to teach other people." And then found a community of just amazing Muslim folks who were doing similar things, but also adding the spiritual and religious element to those conversations. And so I found HEART through both my personal journey of wanting to find community and resources and then professional journey of now building sex ed stuff for other people.
Rafa Kidvai: Thank you for sharing that. I have so many questions for you. Primarily I want to know now that you've been doing this work for a little while, what does reproductive justice mean to you?
Sahar Pirzada: I cannot have a conversation without just thinking about Palestine and without thinking about a global context for reproductive justice. I think when I first got introduced to reproductive justice, it was really through the lens of like, "Oh, we can't stop at what our rights are." And you could have laws that protect your access to reproductive health and choice, but we need to have access, therefore you need to have systems and in order to have systems, you have to address oppression. And thinking about that today for me, reproductive justice means literally ending all forms of oppression and systemic oppression, which means ending white supremacy, which means ending settler colonialism, which means freeing Palestine, and we're coming off of months and months of bearing witness to the most horrific atrocities with regards to not just injustice, but reproductive genocide. And so yeah, I don't think I can think about anything else when you ask that question.
Rafa Kidvai: That makes a lot of sense. How can you talk about access to abortion care without thinking about the total obliteration of medical infrastructure in Palestine, how can you talk about reproductive violence without thinking about parents having to birth without medication for their C-sections, without thinking about newborns dying and being left to die. I'm sorry.
Sahar Pirzada: Don't be. I think if that doesn't bring up a natural emotion, what is going to reach people's hearts? I'm at a loss if at this point people aren't just raging and grieving openly and loudly with each other and on the streets and in private. I don't know what else is going to reach people. Palestinians not having equal access to the healthcare that they need, being discriminated against in terms of what they're able to get approval for, to cross through a checkpoint, to get to a hospital, to get the care that they need. You think about the pillars of reproductive justice, right? They have not had a single one of those pillars be met, and if anything, they've been targeted in all those ways. And so I feel like it's just a very, at least for folks who have that analysis of the day-to-day experiences or the exposure to the day-to-day experiences of Palestinians who are living under occupation, whether it's in the West Bank or in Gaza or as second-class citizens within other cities, it's really across the board. There is no reproductive justice for Palestinians, which means that there's no reproductive justice in general then if you're not having a discussion of Palestinians.
Rafa Kidvai: Absolutely. It really sort of calls into question people's values, because if we don't really care about each other in this moment, even if it's not your own community, right, it's hard to feel like, yes. You said that HEART has been doing this work for a long time and has always made sure that their framework included a conversation about the liberation of Palestinian people. And I guess I would love to hear a little bit more about the movement building and cultural change work HEART is doing in the repro space.
Sahar Pirzada: Yeah. We had started actually this 50 page report before anything public about naming Palestine as a reproductive justice issue, and we were working with a few grassroots Palestinian orgs, including the Palestinian Feminist Collective and Palestinian Youth Movement and a few other partners in [inaudible 00:06:34] was another one on drafting this report. And we wanted it to actually be released so that we could move the larger RJ movement to make a very public commitment to Palestinian liberation and include a global analysis where you have to have to talk about reproductive justice and include Palestine as part of that.
We never got to actually publish that report, but when the attacks on October 7th happened and people started to mobilize for Palestinians and then we started to really see this calculated attack on Palestinians, where Palestinian Feminist collective labeled it as reproductive genocide. HEART came in to really uplift analysis, provide education on understanding how what we're witnessing is aligned with that understanding of it being reproductive genocide, and I feel like have consistently been the ones to keep bringing the conversation back to Palestine in any business as usual meetings.
Rafa Kidvai: My mother is visiting right now and my parents of course obsessively like all Pakistanis watch the news. So there's a constant news cycle on, and unfortunately the United States news cycle is horrifyingly, terrible in terms of the analysis, but it's really funny to see her rage at the police in a way that is absolutely consistent with how I grew up. I grew up in Pakistan and there was no sort of mincing words around how the police were there to enact violence, that they were corrupt, that they were sort of beholden to the power. We know this, we know this in our bones, and I'm thinking about this culture of state violence that we're seeing right now, this culture of extreme repression. How do you think this is going to impact the fight going forward? We're going into an election cycle. How is this going to impact people who are going to be fighting for bodily autonomy, fighting against abortion bans, fighting against bans on gender affirming care, fighting against all laws that criminalize people who are fighting for access?
Sahar Pirzada: I'm hopeful that it's actually going to make that fight easier in ways in terms of building solidarity across movement spaces, because again, the same folks that are enacting abortion bans or criminalizing pregnancy outcomes are the ones who are also deeply Islamophobic and white supremacists and racists and are trying to shut down dissent in a lot of different ways. And so it's almost like, oh, we have a bigger coalition of movement leaders and spaces that can now fight against the same folks. And hopefully I feel like through this, there's also been an opening for folks to recognize that shared liberation is not also going to come from elections. Shared liberation and true liberation is not going to come from our legal system. It's not going to come from laws that we pass. It's like a surreal moment in history that we're witnessing, and that I think is powerful and it's going to help us for any current and future movement ask, any current and future attack on our bodies. We've built that power now and now it will continue to be used in many, many contexts. Inshallah, God willing,
Rafa Kidvai: I love that framing. I really appreciate that hope I think in this moment because I think we are organizing towards something, and it's always beautiful even when it falls short in terms of our goals and our wishes to know that that movement is happening, it's motivating. I think a lot about how the conversations in the United States about abortion and religion are rooted in this specifically Christian religious opposition to abortion, and then religion is also used as a weapon against pathways to healthy sexual relationships. And I want to know a little bit more about how Islam shapes your relationship to abortion and healthy sexual relationships.
Sahar Pirzada: Yeah, I mean, why Christian supremacy and why Christian nationalism have really impacted how I think Muslims in the United States view abortion, again, if all their exposure is through US media, but what I'll say is that I've been very privileged to have access to Islamic knowledge where when I had my abortion in 2018, the reason why I felt empowered to have that abortion and the reason why I felt supported and comfortable making that decision was because of Islam, was because I really was like, "Oh, this is very much supported by my faith and God has brought me to this moment in my life where I'm making this difficult decision, but I don't feel abandoned. I feel like Allah is hearing my struggle, is hearing my pain and my grief and is there to hold that with me through this decision."
And so I remember contacting several trusted imams and scholars to consult, and I got a variety of answers. And that's the beauty of Islam is that there is no one way of being Muslim. There is no one way of practicing your faith. You take the information that's in front of you, and God has given us moral agency. I have individually moral agency to make decisions based on what I believe is wrong or right, what I believe is wrong or right for me, and nobody should be stopping you from practicing that agency. That's what we try to uplift at HEART. When it comes to the intersection of Islam and reproductive justice, Islam and abortion, Islam and just reproductive life, right? That every individual has moral agency and it's nobody else's business to police people on the decisions they make about their bodies. That's between them and their lord. And I think that's beautiful, and God knows us. God knows our situations. God knows the decisions that we're making, the circumstances, the reasons.
We don't need to justify it to anybody. It's nobody else's business. And so why is it that society is making it their business? Why is it that people that hold any kind of positional power are making it their business? When even historically Islamically, it's never been anybody else's business. Abortion was never criminalized when you look at Islamic history and Islamic societies, and so why is it that some Muslims have jumped on the bandwagon now of criminalizing it and wanting to criminalize it? That's not aligned with our practice of Islam in my opinion.
I'll also say Islamically when we're thinking about these intersections. Another big one is this concept of hurma, and hurma is this concept of every single person is a sacred being and to violate anybody's body is a violation of that sacredness, right? So it's sacred inviolability is what the translation is. And so I think that's also a big part of how we move as HEART and understanding reproductive justice and Islam is that if you are coercing anyone into doing something with their body, whether it is reproductive violence, forcing a termination, restricting abortion, forcing someone into taking medication that they don't want, at the core of it, that's coercion and that's violence, and that violates a person's hurma, we see it as that's sinful. You're going to be accountable to God that you were violating the sacredness of another person's body.
Rafa Kidvai: Yeah, thank you. And I think what you made really clear was that if something is coercive and oppressive, then it's coercive and oppressive. And so what you're trying to say is that your decisions about your bodies or reproductive autonomy or bodily autonomy overall is really when that's being stripped away from you, it's a clear indication that it's about oppression, and I appreciate that connection very much. Looking ahead, I want to hear what are your hopes for advancing reproductive justice within Muslim communities?
Sahar Pirzada: You're going to have to cut me off with this one because I have so many dreams and so many hopes for reproductive justice in Muslim communities. My hopes are really that we continue to be relational with each other and support each other through the personal journeys that we're on with regards to our reproductive lives, and then the larger systemic advocacy that we're doing, that we continue to center people who have lived experiences around those issues and that in every step of the way as we're building towards this world where we're advancing reproductive justice, that we're doing it in ways that do not cause any more harm. However, slowly we have to move, we'll move, because I think it's more about the intention and the process too. Right? We could go about and try to stage some kind of action or push some kind of policy, but if we're not doing it with the intentionality of bringing people with us, moving in alignment with our partners, thinking through things and about their impacts, then what's the point?
So for me, it's like advancing reproductive justice is about building those relationships, being there for people, being relational, holding space, and doing things by embodying this concept of compassion or rahmah, doing it with a lot of care. Because I feel like with anything to do with our reproductive lives, it's about our bodies and we have to be really centering care in how we move because the traumas of those experiences, the joy of those experiences that all lives in our body, and so if we're not moving with intentionality and trauma informed ways and healing centered ways, you could end up doing a lot more harm.
Rafa Kidvai: I love how much you lead with love in your work and as a person, but I think a lot about how much HEART has done for your Muslim community. It's just a really beautiful thing to watch how you all connect with each other and with community. My last question, what does nobody criminalize mean to you?
Sahar Pirzada: This concept of nobody criminalized, for me, it comes back to hurma again. It's really that we are all sacred human beings, and if we were to treat each other as such, then how could you go about wanting to cause harm to any other person or criminalize them or force them to do something that goes against that sacredness, that strips them of that in a way where they feel hurt. I think about the people that I love in this world so, so, so, so much, and I'm like, if anybody were to try to hurt them or harm them, I would be devastated. I would be literally at my core, devastated if harm was brought to them. And I feel like if we were to bring that kind of relationality back to how we're moving in the world, all of these policies, all of these ways of moving where we're constantly trying to just have power and control over people and their bodies and what they do with those bodies and how they move with those bodies, there's no room for care. There's no room for love. There's no room for also just seeing how these, each individual is sacred and that we should be protecting that instead of trying to violate that.
So I don't know. It's also just from a religious perspective. We cannot be in the business of creating any kind of system that has superiority over each other and has the ability to criminalize each other. Accountability is something. I think that we should be accountable to ourselves and to each other, but to criminalize is taking it a step where again, you're lacking agency, you're lacking transformation, you're lacking the essence of what's actually going to change what has happened. What does criminalizing do to them? You criminalize them, put them away or do something. Does that change the situation for why they harm? So I'm also just like as an abolitionist, I'm kind of like, it's not clearly not working. It's causing more harm. We need to have a new iteration. We need to have a new way of being. If you bring back the idea that each individual is sacred and that by harming somebody else, violating that sacredness, accountability for that, for me, it sounds a lot more powerful.
Rafa Kidvai: I appreciate you so, so much, Sahar. Thank you so much for talking to me.
Sahar Pirzada: Thank you for giving me the opportunity.
Rafa Kidvai: Here are some takeaways from our conversation. Sahar's journey into reproductive justice is deeply personal and driven by experiences with her own sexual health, highlighting the need for culturally competent care and community support. She emphasized the importance of understanding reproductive justice within a global context, particularly in relation to the ongoing genocide and occupation of Palestine and how these issues are intrinsically linked to the broader fight against systemic oppression and for bodily autonomy. Sahar also shared insights on how state violence both domestically and globally intersects with and exacerbates reproductive oppression and the critical need for solidarity across movements to address these interconnected issues.
Sahar Pirzada is the director of Movement Building at HEART. You can learn more about their work at hearttogrow.org. I'm Rafa Kidvai, the host of this podcast and director of the Repro Legal Defense Fund at If/When/How. The Repro Legal Defense Fund funds bail and strong defenses for people being punished for abortion, miscarriage, stillbirth, and other pregnancy outcomes. Learn more at reprolegaledefensefund.org. If you have questions about your legal rights, go to reprolegalhelpline.org or call 844-868-2812. Nobody Criminalized is produced by Phantom Center Media and Entertainment for the Repro Legal Defense Fund at If/When/How. Kojin Tashiro is lead producer and mixed this episode. And remember, keep your community safe and don't talk to cops.