Join Sarah Nasir for the episode of her journey of wearing hijab. It is not one of easy, peasy, lemon squeezy - but one of persistence. The result being one of confidence, epiphanies and further reliance on Allah. And to top it off, discover Sarah's favorite juicy hamburger recipe.

"Islam is basically decolonization on crack."

That's how this conversation opens — and what follows is the history

lesson most of us never got.

Palestinian life and purpose coach Meha Siyam sits down with Dr. Sarah

Nasir for Part 2 of a conversation that moves from the Crusades to your

kitchen counter. Meha grew up in a village northeast of Al Quds. She

spent years as a human rights attorney in Palestine before becoming a

coach for Muslim women. She knows this story from the inside.

She walks us through the chapters that get skipped: that Palestinians

were a predominantly CHRISTIAN population when 'Umar bin al-Khattab took

Jerusalem without spilling a drop of blood. That they still hadn't

converted when the Crusaders arrived and killed them anyway — same faith,

wrong ethnicity. That mass conversion only came generations later, after

Salahuddin. And why she calls what's happening now "phase three."

Then Sarah pulls on a thread from her own linguistics background: there

are three Semitic languages — Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic. Three sister

languages. So who exactly are the Semitic people? And what happens to the

word "antisemitism" when we look at it honestly?

Two Muslim women. One history that connects the Aryan myth, the

Holocaust, colorism in South Asian homes, Shakespeare's Shylock, and the

headlines you scrolled past this morning. Not a political problem, Sarah

argues. A man-versus-Shaytan problem.

And then, because this is Masala Muslima — a salad.

Meha teaches us Fattoush: cucumbers, tomatoes, stale pita fried in olive

oil, and a dash of sumac. Which comes with its own story. An Indigenous

researcher found that sumac processes differently in colonizer bodies

than in Indigenous ones. It grows on Turtle Island too. It just isn't

popular here — because, as Meha puts it, what we eat in America is

colonizer flavors.

The land always shows itself.

Meha's parting reminder — even if the world is falling apart, if you have

a seedling, plant it anyway.

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🥗 FATTOUSH SALAD — Meha's Recipe

Salad:

- Cucumbers, cut into small cubes

- Tomatoes, cut into small cubes

- Onions, sliced very thin (cubes or wedges both work)

- Stale pita bread, broken into squares and fried in olive oil

Dressing:

- Salt

- Black pepper

- Fresh lemon juice

- Olive oil

- A dash of sumac

Method: Fry the pita squares in olive oil and set them aside. Mix the

dressing in a cup with a spoon. Pour over the vegetables, toss in the

fried bread LAST, and eat quickly — that's how you keep the crunch.

Sumac note: it grows on a tree in little balls, gets ground into a deep

purple powder, and tastes zesty and lemon-tangy. It makes the whole dish

prettier.

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CONNECT WITH MEHA SIYAM

Life & Purpose Coach for Muslim Women | Former Human Rights Attorney

She offers free consultations as her way of giving back.

💼 LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/mehasiyam

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🔔 Subscribe so you never miss an episode

🌐 transcendantyou.com/masala-muslima

Masala Muslima: Faith Flavored Living — conversations with Muslim women

about how they flavor their lives, their work, and everything they love

with faith. New episodes with real stories and real recipes.

#Islam #MuslimWomen #Palestine #Muslima #MasalaMuslima #IslamicLiving

#Fattoush #Sumac #Decolonization #AlQuds #Salahuddin #Spirituality

#PalestinianFood #MuslimLifestyle #SarahNasir

"What happened to indigenous people in the dark — is happening

to me in the light."

Palestinian American attorney-turned-life coach Meha Siyam joined

host Sarah Nasir on Masala Muslima and did not hold back. She broke

down why international human rights bodies are designed to fail, drew

a chilling parallel between Palestinian erasure and the genocide of

indigenous people on Turtle Island — and then she made Maqluba.

In Episode 03 Part 1, Sarah and Meha move from courtrooms to olive

groves, from settler colonial roots to the Arabic word nifas —

cooking with a piece of your soul. Rights. Roots. Maqluba.

This is Faith Flavored Living at its most raw, most honest,

and most nourishing.

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🫙 RECIPE: Palestinian Maqluba (Upside Down Rice)

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Bone-in chicken or lamb · whole spices · fried vegetables

(potato, carrot, cauliflower, eggplant) · jasmine rice cooked

in spiced broth · flip & serve with cucumber-tomato salad

+ plain yogurt

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🌿 CONNECT WITH MEHA SIYAM

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🌐 Website: https://www.mehasiyam.com

💼 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mehasiyam

📞 Free consultation: DM Meha on LinkedIn or Register on her website

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📌 IN THIS EPISODE

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→ Why Meha left human rights law ("It's designed to fail")

→ Working for Scandinavian governments in occupied Palestine

→ Palestine erased from Muslim memory — and why that's intentional

→ The terrifying parallel: Turtle Island & Palestinian genocide

→ "The criminal justice system isn't broken — it's working perfectly"

→ Islam as decolonization

→ Maqluba recipe + the olive grove tradition

→ Nifas: the untranslatable word for cooking with your soul

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🌐 transcendantyou.com/masala-muslima

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