New York Metropolis’s controversial first woman, Rama Duwaji, is co-hosting a pro-Palestinian all-female religious retreat the place they may honor Jesus’ mom Mary, described as a “Palestinian girl giving delivery underneath occupation.”
Duwaji, 29, will journey to the sold-out “religious” retreat in Corsica this week, the place individuals — most of them Muslim girls — will pray at a Fifteenth-century monastery for “our sisters in Palestine,” in response to a report.
The occasion, beginning July 9, is being organized by The Ladies Sanctuary, a Muslim-and-women-focused journey group run by Parisian designer Rym Nur.
In Corsica, attendees will “honor the legacy of Mary, probably the most honored girl within the Quran,” in response to an outline on the group’s web site. The retreat, priced from $3,100 to $5,260 for a personal “casita” with a front room, backyard views and a personal toilet, options lectures, each day prayers and farm-to-table eating.
“At each prayer, lecture and meal, there was point out of our sisters in Palestine,” mentioned a 2025 Vogue Arabia article about final 12 months’s Corsican retreat, which was additionally held in celebration of the Virgin Mary, who’s honored in each Christianity and Islam.
“On the coronary heart of this retreat is the luminous legacy of Mary, probably the most honored girl within the Qur’an, chosen, purified, and elevated above all girls of the worlds,” says the Ladies Sanctuary web site.
“She is the one girl talked about by identify within the Qur’an — talked about 34 instances. Her story isn’t solely one in all divine motherhood, however of unwavering religion, sacred retreat, and complete devotion to Allah.
“One visitor… had simply returned from Gaza’s Nasser Hospital, the place she volunteered for a month to assist ship infants underneath bombardment. She spoke of moms laboring by terror and of tender life arriving within the shadow of loss of life,” wrote one attendee within the article for Vogue Arabia.
“It isn’t misplaced on us that Mary, too, was a Palestinian girl giving delivery underneath occupation. Within the Qur’an, she cries out in anguish, ‘I want I had died earlier than this and had been lengthy forgotten,’” she added.
Students are cautious of the politicization of the divine reminiscence of Mary and inserting her in a contemporary context.
“It’s traditionally difficult,” mentioned Rachel Fulton Brown, a historical past professor on the College of Chicago and the writer of “Mary and the Artwork of Prayer: The Hours of the Virgin in Medieval Christian Life and Thought.”
“Making an attempt to faux that now could be 2,000 years in the past isn’t useful to anybody,” she continued. “It’s not going to assist us take care of the scenario in Gaza.”
Final 12 months, Nur gave every participant a hand-crafted keffiyeh, created by New York-based Palestinian designer Sarah Musa, who sends 100% of the earnings from the sale of choose types of keffiyehs to the Palestine Pink Crescent Society and the Palestine Kids’s Reduction Fund, in response to her web site.
The Palestine Pink Crescent Society has been criticized by the Israeli navy for alleged ties to Hamas in Gaza. The California-based Palestine Kids’s Reduction Fund has additionally been accused of hyperlinks to the terrorist group, in response to NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based analysis group that research nonprofits that do work within the area.
The PCRF mentioned it “complies with US legal guidelines checking all people and companies in opposition to terrorist group lists revealed by the US Treasury Division,” to stop donations reaching Hamas. Palestine Pink Crescent Society says it’s an unbiased physique which complies with worldwide protocol and has denied it has any hyperlinks to Hamas.
“Nur gifted every visitor a keffiyeh from Palestinian designer Sarah Musa, which we donned whereas praying on the grass, laughing on the dinner desk and on journeys for espresso to the close by village,” mentioned the Vogue Arabia article in regards to the 2025 retreat.
The retreat is going down on an island that, not like most of France, has not wavered in its help for Israel, particularly after the October 7, 2023 Hamas assault that left 1,200 Israelis lifeless, the chief of the island’s nationalist motion instructed The Submit Monday.
“Corsica is the one French division in the course of the [Nazi] occupation in the course of the Second World Warfare that didn’t deport any Jews, which is why it was named ‘the island of the simply,’” mentioned Nicolas Battini, the direcor of Mossa Palatina, a conservative political motion he based in 2024.
Battini, whose celebration is now allied to France’s right-wing Nationwide Motion, added that islanders are very pro-Israel and have a “conflicted” relationship with Islam. Previously, Duwaji has “favored” posts celebrating Hamas and created an illustration for an anti-Israel article.
Regardless of Duwaji’s anti-Israel views, “she is free to take part within the occasions that she pleases” on the island, Battini instructed The Submit. “Her presence in Corsica raises neither approbation nor enthusiasm.
Along with Corsica, which is in its second 12 months within the Ladies’s Sanctuary program, the group organizes retreats in Tanzania, Portugal and Spain, in response to its web site.
Final weekend, Syrian-American artist and illustrator Duwaji ditched America’s 250th anniversary celebrations to jet off to the Ladies Sanctuary’s earlier retreat on the Spanish island of Mallorca, the place she was the “artist-in-residence” at a sold-out “Vegetation Of The Quran” workshop.
The retreat revolves round sacred flora talked about in Islamic texts by artwork, botanical workshops, and religious reflection, in response to the group’s web site.
