"Are We Ready to Defend This Before God?": How RAHIM Is Reframing Reproductive Justice in Islam

For pregnant women, every visit to the doctor can be a mixture of excitement, anxiety and suspended breath. While nothing may actually be wrong, every pause by the ultrasound tech or facial expression on an OB-GYN’s face can send an expectant mother down a rabbit hole of worst-case thoughts in milliseconds.

Nadiah Mohajir is the director of HEART Women & Girls, a nonprofit founded in 2010 to promote sexual health, reproductive justice and to prevent sexual violence in Muslim communities. In 2018, two Muslim women — both pregnant with their first babies — came to her with similar stories. Their unborn children had been diagnosed with severe genetic abnormalities, and they struggled to make medical decisions.

“They said similar things to us,” Mohajir recalls. “’This is my first baby. I really want this baby, but I just got some devastating genetic testing and don’t know what to do.'”

These are the inflection points that radically alter a person’s trajectory. Pivotal moments that carry the weight of a lifetime’s worth of changed outcomes and reimagined futures. It’s as if the turning wheels of life get nudged, irrevocably locking a new reality into place that is orders of magnitude different from what was once expected.

How long does it take to read a piece of paper with a handful of sentences about genetic results that sparks questions only answerable by what exists in a person’s core? When news is so cataclysmic that the mind is on fire and screaming or blanketed in thick, numb silence — what remains? What guides decisions of the soul? When modern medicine cannot provide certainty or illuminate the decision for us, some turn to ancient wisdom — to soul-knowing. To faith. To the Sacred.

In the case of these two women, Mohajir sprang into action. She found out what was legally allowed and connected them to physicians and Islamic scholars so they could make informed decisions to live morally, motherly, and faithfully.

One woman, who was early in her pregnancy, chose to terminate. “She was within the time limit by law and the Islamic time limit,” Mohajir said. The other woman decided to continue until she spontaneously miscarried.

“The moral of the story,” Mohajir reflected, “is that they came back to us and said, ‘What you did for us was nothing that our Muslim family or our faith communities did for us. You gathered all the information and gave us the agency to make the decision.'”

Why RAHIM? Why Now?

Mohajir has spent nearly 15 years helping Muslim women navigate and destigmatize sexual health, trauma, and gender-based violence. She’s witnessed how a faith-centered approach can empower Muslim women more effectively than a secular approach alone that doesn’t address religious and cultural beliefs.

A confluence of factors led the HEART team to create RAHIM — Reproductive Agency Helping Impacted Muslims. The name was intentional: Rahim is Arabic for merciful, one of God’s attributes in Islam. Launched with a pilot program in the fall of 2024, RAHIM works to destigmatize reproductive agency and support Muslim women seeking sexual and reproductive wellbeing aligned with their sacred values.

Beyond perceptions of rigid Islamic dogma around reproductive and women’s health lies a wealth of scriptural interpretations and options many Muslim women don’t know exist. The RAHIM project equips women with a body of medical and religious scholarly experts, funding and research. These Islamic educational resources and historical context help them make informed decisions within a spiritual framework free from shame.

Through the organization’s research and interviews with Muslim scholars, Mohajir said she has been struck by the nuance Islam offers around women’s health and reproduction.

“Our faith has thought of all the diverse experiences a person can have,” Mohajir said. “I’m grieving that we don’t have the nuance to hold the multiple ways to approach different issues.

That nuance is what RAHIM seeks to embody. Rather than functioning solely as a nonprofit delivering direct services, RAHIM powerfully aligns medical- and faith-based ethics for a more comprehensive approach to emotionally and spiritually complex situations. It recognizes that challenges involving reproductive rights are simultaneously medical, ethical and spiritual — and therefore require all three dimensions for greatest impact.

Muslim women facing complicated or heartbreaking reproductive decisions often ask not just medical questions, but spiritual ones: “What is the wisdom behind this hardship or decision? How does Islam teach us to respond? Is seeking medical intervention still trusting God? If my life is at risk, how is the value of my soul weighed against that of my fetus? Is there a fatwa or scholarly consensus on situations like mine? Can I find a faith-informed medical professional who understands the nuances I’m facing? Can I find spaces where my pain, faith, and uncertainty are all held with compassion?”

To those passing judgement or perpetuating the tension between faith, agency and stigma, RAHIM offers connection. It responds to questions of the body and soul through a Sacred Worldview — where spiritual solutions, when paired with material ones, address complex situations most completely. A worldview where the Sacred is centered, even its namesake — mercy, one of the truest expressions of love.

The Solution: Developing a Comprehensive Health Resources Network

Mohajir, Pirzada and their team began in 2022 by conducting in-depth interviews with medical professionals and Muslim scholars. Muslim women came to them with a wide range of questions: “What if I freeze an egg? What about surrogacy? What about IVF? Can you use a milk bank if your milk doesn’t come in? What are the [Islamically] ethical and legal parameters we should be following?”

As a team of directly-impacted Muslim women, HEART staff also brainstormed personal health situations they’d encountered. Scholar interviews revealed a wealth of diverse opinions based on Islamic schools of thought and scriptural interpretations. The team conducted a literature review on topics of sexual and reproductive health and spoke with physicians nationwide — including Dr. Mariam Naqvi, a California-based maternal-fetal medicine specialist — to better understand the educational and financial resources women need.

“Being on the medical side, [they asked me things like] what are the logistics women have to undergo in giving birth?” Naqvi said. “How does she get into family planning care? What are the different routes a birthing person may take to seek care?” She and other providers navigated these concerns and shared insights on other hard realities that factor into decision-making, such as cost of care.

“The thing about reproductive health [in the national narrative] is there’s such an emphasis on termination of pregnancy, but there’s a lot more. There’s a lot of complicated decisions that people must make. Faith can be a really big part of that, and Muslims don’t really have these kinds of resources.”

RAHIM is building a referral network of medical professionals and faith scholars, as well as onboarding new categories into their network. Chaplains and therapists are available for referral when someone reaches out through RAHIM. No names or personal information are listed publicly for privacy and safety, but once contact is made, RAHIM connects individuals to appropriate resources.

Courting Unwanted Controversy

The very words “reproductive rights” or “reproductive justice” evoke visceral reactions and deeply-held convictions.

The RAHIM project didn’t set out to court controversy — but its very existence is controversial. Its soft launch in fall 2024 included a marketing campaign featuring billboards around Chicago. The exposure drew concern from some who argued that the “language of ‘reproductive rights’ used by the pro-abortion movement frames the conversation on abortion as one that should be centered on personal freedom,” whereas “Islamic ethics takes a different approach.”

Conversations about Muslim women’s reproductive wellbeing and sexual health within a faith context can easily turn tense and emotional. Topics like the sanctity of life, the ability to make informed choices within a sacred framework, and a woman’s right to protect her physical and mental health are often divisive.

Mohajir defines four tenets of reproductive justice: the right to have children, the right not to have children, the right to bodily autonomy, and the right to safely parent one’s children across a woman’s lifespan. While she expected pushback, she was surprised by what she saw as oversimplified criticism that missed the vast scope of RAHIM’s work.

“Our work has always been a response to the Western (and secular) sex-positive movement, as we’ve never felt it was enough for God-conscious Muslims,” Mohajir explained. “That being said, we also are not satisfied by the current discourse from Islamic spaces that offer only one way of thinking, or one opinion out of the broad spectrums of opinion and diversity of thought in Islam.”

Rather than position itself in binary terms, Mohajir said the project’s goal is to inform those seeking help. For people who center faith in their lives, reproductive decisions should be informed by the full spectrum of medical and spiritual perspectives. RAHIM was created for them — to enable access to medical- and faith-based knowledge, financial resources, and support so decisions feel right in their bodies, minds, and souls.

“We really feel the deep responsibility of getting this right without falling into the trap of perfecting it,” Mohajir said. “The journey to perfection means you’re never going to get anything done.” Above all, she said that she, Pirzada, and the team must be able to defend their work to God. “Let’s understand everyone’s red line. What will make someone walk away from this organization because it’s in contradiction with their understanding of Islam?”

“We see this work as an Amanah (a responsibility to God),” Mohajir said. “But when you add a spiritual responsibility to this, that is the question I always ask myself: Are we going to be able to defend this in front of God? If we are, Alhamdulillah. If not, then we’re not ready.”

In its innovative, wisdom-informed goal to serve Muslim women holistically, HEART’s RAHIM project channels medical care and the Sacred promise of mercy. May we all be granted both.

By Dilshad Ali