The Brooklyn founder who’s a role model to Muslim women got honest at #ForbesUnder30

Amani Al-Khatahtbeh wasn’t always proud of who she was. Or, she felt like she couldn’t be.

The 24-year-old founder of MuslimGirl, a media site for Muslim millennials run out of Williamsburg that we profiled last spring, shared her coming-of-age journey at the Forbes Under 30 Summit in Boston yesterday.
Struggling with her identity and a post-9/11 climate, Al-Khatahtbeh felt alienated as a young Muslim girl, saying how she once lied about her religion in the fourth grade because she felt vulnerable and scared due to the different headlines by media organizations with problematic portrayals of Muslim women and Muslims in general.
She later felt ashamed about lying about her religious identity – an experience she feels many millennial Muslims can relate to.
Later, as her website gained in popularity, she thought of intricate ways to brand herself.
Recognizing that she didn’t have an average American name and realizing that her name may be difficult for people to pronounce, she revealed that in the past, she would go by different variations of her last name which included Khatahtbeh and Al-khat.

I met my role model today then she served face with me. Thanks for being our representation and my inspiration. @xoamani @muslimgirl pic.twitter.com/ia9UOdMWxJ

— batameez starfish (@chaiiwalii) October 16, 2016

Al-Khatahtbeh’s business has roots in her youth, when she felt like an outcast and “turned online to seek out other likeminded individuals.”
As a teen, seeking a community of young Muslim woman who she could relate to and confide in, Al-Khatahtbeh created a group on Livejournal that gained more than 1,000 members in its first five days. After recognizing the high interest among her community as well as non-Muslims, she realized that the online journal was great for talking to one another and confronting stereotypes about Islam that Muslims deal with every day.
This lead to an early version of MuslimGirl called “Girls Just Being Girls,” where Al-Khatahtbeh and a core group of friends from her mosque would reflect on their lives as young American Muslims.
Once in college, MuslimGirl grew with them and reflected the feminism they learned in school. After graduating from Rutgers in 2013, Al-Khatahtbeh and her friends worked together on MuslimGirl and began receiving re-publishing requests after their story on Michelle Obama’s visit to the Saudi Arabia. After this article and the way they asserted themselves in U.S. media, Al-Khatahtbeh said several opportunities arose.
“We didn’t try to cater to mainstream media or fit in anywhere,” she said. “We built a movement.”
Al-Khatahtbeh was also proud to announce that her new book, Muslim Girl: Coming of Age, which chronicles her experience growing up in an uncomfortable Islamophobic climate, is now available for purchase.

I held my baby in my arms for the first time today. #muslimgirlbook https://t.co/POya3lrD60 💕🙏🏽💕 pic.twitter.com/OsvU7ZmZgq

— AMANI (@xoamani) September 26, 2016