Ayesha K. Mustafaa has been editor of the Muslim Journal weekly newspapeR since January, 1989. She is the third woman editor of the 47-plus-year-old newspaper and its longest tenured editor.

 

Ayesha, a Muslim convert, comes from a Mississippi family of Civil Rights activists of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. era. She joined the community of Muslims affiliated with Imam W. Deen Mohammed, the son of Elijah Muhammad and mentor to Malcolm X, in late 1974, through the Atlanta, Ga., Muslim Community. She moved to Chicago in mid 1975 and worked throughout the Muslim community offices prior to becoming Muslim Journal editor.

Most significant among those years was her work with the Prison Dawah or Islamic teachings to the incarcerated populations, prison services being part of her concentration as an undergraduate. She was lead instructress for Muslim sisters at Muhammad Mosque No. 2 and instrumental in compiling “Imams’ Kits” from Lectures of Imam WD Mohammed, which he used to educate Nation of Islam
leaders in becoming “Imams.”

Ayesha also has traveled as part of delegations led by Imam W. Deen Mohammed, several times going to Saudi Arabia to Riyadh, Jeddah and Mecca,to Jerusalem and the West Bank, where the Imam met with Palestinian
Authority President Yasser Arafat.

 

She made Hajj to Mecca in 1977 with the first and then largest Muslim American group led on Hajj by Imam W. Deen Mohammed. She has made Umrah several
times. The U.S. Council of Muslim Organization (USCMO) awarded Ayesha among its 2022 National Muslim Woman Achievement Awardees. A Street in New Medinah Miss., was named in her honor at its 25 th Annual Retreat of 2011. She was named Muslim Woman of the Year 1994 by the Community of Imam W. Deen Mohammed. Ayesha was host of one of seven daily one-hour talk radio shows – every Friday from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. – for Radio Islam (continuously live streamed at www.radioislam.com), produced by Sound Vision Foundation, on WCEV 1450 AM
in the Chicago area until she moved to Jackson, Mississippi, in 2011. In Mississippi and for nearly 10 years, she has taught in the MASS COMM Department at
Tougaloo College. She holds a BA Degree, Double Major in Psychology and Political Science from Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Penn., and a Master’s Degree in Journalism from Columbia College-Chicago, Ill.