Naheed & Yusra Murad: Mother-Daughter Duo Advocating for Unsheltered Communities

“I don't think ZACAH wants to stay as an organization that is just continually trying to keep up with the system, keep paying rent. We want to do something to change this system.”

A powerful duo co-leading a grassroots organization and a local movement, Naheed and Yusra Murad may not look like your typical mother and daughter at first glance. Their days together are spent collaborating on a dynamic program to support Minnesota’s multiracial working class.

But Naheed and Yusra remember the same growing pains that so many parents and children navigate together. 

As she reached teenage years, Yusra had begun to better understand her lived experiences as a young Muslim woman of color, and she wanted to participate in direct action for pro-Black, pro-Palestine, and other causes. Naheed, having grown up in Pakistan where protest was less mainstream and often more harshly punished, objected to Yusra’s growing involvement.

“My parents would say, ‘that doesn't sound safe,’” recalls Yusra, “because their idea was of a very different kind of protest that happens abroad where you might worry about your 16-year-old daughter who can't drive and doesn't have anything but a cell phone.”

Still, Yusra remembers, it didn’t take long for her parents to come around. Naheed had noticed rising Islamophobic sentiment since the September 11 terrorist attacks and experienced microaggressions from colleagues, neighbors, and strangers alike.

“When you feel like you have to defend yourself and your religion, it takes an emotional toll,” she says. Soon enough, she and her husband decided to join Yusra and their other children on the streets of Minneapolis.

“I think our whole family realized that it is our civic imperative to participate,” says Yusra. “We realized that we have to be in community with other marginalized, underserved, and racialized Minnesotans.” For the Murad family, civic participation is the first step on the way toward shared liberation.

In addition to becoming regular participants in protests, rallies, and marches, the Murad family considered how else they could contribute their time and their resources to social change efforts. For the first time, they gave their zakat (charitable giving required of Muslims who meet certain wealth criteria) and sadaqah (other voluntary charity) to local causes and organizations.

“As first-generation immigrants, we have a lot of ties to our home countries,” says Naheed. “And so most of us tend to send our zakat funds overseas to the people that we've grown up with.”

With their family’s increasing awareness of social issues in their state, city, and local community, Naheed became determined to challenge zakat and sadaqah giving trends. She explains, “It’s perfectly good to help others around the world, but we need to work on our own community here, too. Our neighbors here are our first responsibility.”

“And so that's how ZACAH came into creation,” says Naheed.

ZACAH stands for Zakat, Aid and Charity Assisting Humanity. Founded in 2014, the goal of the organization is to collect and redistribute wealth within our communities, including zakat and sadaqah, to overcome unjust disparities.

From the beginning, ZACAH has been committed to supporting community members with urgent needs that have been left unaddressed by government agencies or other nonprofits.

One of the organization’s first projects was to organize donors and fundraise for a young family who had lost their father after his battle with a severe health disorder. For Naheed and the other founding members of ZACAH, the family’s situation was critical in understanding the need for wealth redistribution across the U.S. and within Minnesota.

“Seventy percent of Americans have less than $800 to bear an unexpected expense before they lose their job or utilities, or face unsheltered homelessness,” reads ZACAH’s website.

As the years went on, it became increasingly obvious that unsheltered homelessness was one of the most common and serious situations for working-class Minnesotans. In 2017, ZACAH opened a transitional home for those in need of safe space to live. Then in 2020, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many more individuals and families were left without secure housing. Meanwhile, shelters designed to house as many people as possible had to restrict their capacity in order to curb the spread of the virus.

At the start of Ramadan in April 2020, Yusra traveled home from Washington, D.C., where she had been working as a journalist and then a director of healthcare programs. Her plan was to make the 20-hour drive back to D.C. after Eid, but everything changed with the murder of George Floyd on May 25.

“We all just hit a complete pause for a moment, and then the Uprising happened,” says Yusra. “And in the days following, there was what I call the ‘supply drive chapter,’ when every single corner in Minneapolis was a food shelf or medic tent or clothing drive.” In the midst of collective grief and outrage, as well as mutual aid and care, Yusra felt that she couldn’t leave Minnesota.

With Yusra volunteering for supply drives and Naheed volunteering for ZACAH, both mother and daughter noticed the compounding crisis of homelessness in Minnesota, particularly in the Minneapolis metro area. The deployment of the national guard and the curfew orders exacerbated an already dangerous situation for those without secure housing. “As people who are housed, those orders make sense. Well, what if you don't have a place to live?” says Yusra. “You're outside because you have nowhere to go, and now you're going to get fined, and you already have no money.”

In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, housing activists and organizers began negotiations with the owner of the Sheraton Hotel on Chicago and Lake Streets in Minneapolis. They secured a block of rooms and, for a few weeks, turned the hotel into a sanctuary for those experiencing homelessness.

When residents were suddenly forced to evacuate, many moved to Powderhorn Park, where an encampment was developing.

Yusra was one of the early volunteers in Powderhorn organizing supplies, collecting donations, and trying to turn the park into a temporarily sustainable living situation. But she knew that living outdoors was dangerous and potentially fatal for many: “I saw people at Powderhorn who were very medically fragile, with colostomy bags and C-PAP machines and advanced lung cancer.” So she called her mom, who is a medical doctor and hematopathologist by profession. 

Yusra asked Naheed if ZACAH could use some of its funds to purchase hotel rooms for the most at-risk Powderhorn residents. Naheed didn’t hesitate.

ZACAH was one of few organizations able and willing to provide immediate, unconditional housing to people who needed it. Yusra and Naheed received referrals from government employees, social workers, teachers, and more—and all they asked for was a name and a date of birth.

The pace of ZACAH’s work intensified as those living at the Powderhorn encampment were evicted and the cold winter months loomed closer. “At one point we were dealing with seven or eight different hotels, mostly in Bloomington, with a few in downtown Minneapolis,” says Naheed. Yusra adds, “We ended up housing more than 1,000 people,” most of whom found permanent housing after their transitional stay in the hotels.

Looking ahead, Yusra and Naheed foresee another wave of homelessness as eviction moratoriums expire in mid-to-late June. ZACAH is prepared to provide rental assistance and possibly hotel stays to those who need it. At the same time, Naheed says, “I don't think ZACAH wants to stay as an organization that is just continually trying to keep up with the system, keep paying rent. We want to do something to change this system.” Yusra agreeds wholeheartedly: “We need public housing—supportive public housing.”

While they are certainly aware of the challenges ahead, both Naheed and Yusra are also in awe of the progress made by the Minneapolis sanctuary movement, the many housing advocates, as well as ZACAH itself.

Yusra says, “I started to wonder, how did my mom handle this level of work and put this together without any guidance from anyone on how to do it?” Turning to Naheed, she adds, “It was your intuition and your religion that built this organization.”

“I think what's been really amazing to me is to come to this realization that all of the exciting ideas that people talk about—mutual aid and redistribution of wealth and community—all of those concepts are what my parents have just been practicing their entire lives,” says Yusra.

For Naheed, her faith has been a guiding force in her work: “From an Islamic point of view, we have rights and responsibilities to humanity. I can pray as much as I want, but if I do not take care of my neighbors, I am going to be totally accountable for that.”

She also draws inspiration from Yusra. “I will tell you the best thing about working with Yusra is that you see your child grow and mature into the person that she is, and we couldn't be more proud of her,” Naheed says, hugging her daughter.

As our Sheroes, Yusra and Naheed both bring us endless pride and inspiration. They are each a changemaker and a community leader in their own right. But together, they are a mother-and-daughter powerhouse, showing us what it looks like to put family and community, care and love, at the center of everything.