Susan notes: this beautiful piece by Cory Eldridge found me in a roundabout way. Someone had posted a link to another story by Eldridge on a blog that I follow.

Lesley Hazleton sat down one day to read the Koran. And what she found -- as a non-Muslim, a self-identified "tourist" in the Islamic holy book -- wasn't what she expected.

With serious scholarship and warm humor, Hazleton shares the grace, flexibility and mystery she found, in this myth-debunking talk from TEDxRainier.

By Nesima Aberra journalism student.

When I pondered wearing the hijab the summer before my freshman year of college, I thought a lot about what it meant for me to be an American Muslim.

I felt I would be almost betraying everyone I knew with this new addition to my persona, and I didn’t know how people would react.

It's almost three years since I made my second of two business visits to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (I was living in Dubai, United Arab Emirates at the time).

Apparently things haven't changed much since 2009. In the lead up to the Olympic Summer Games, the Kingdom has officially said (according to Human Rights Watch), that it does not sanction the participation of women in sport.

Muna AbuSulayman, (born 1973) is Secretary General and Executive Director of the Alwaleed Bin Talal Foundation, the philanthropic arm of HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal's Kingdom Holding Company and formerly co-host of one of MBC TV’s most popular social programs, Kalam Nawaem (“Softly Speaking”).

In 2005, she became the first woman from Saudi Arabia to be appointed by the United Nations Development Program as a Goodwill Ambassador.