Year-end roundups often include top news stories of that year or top “things that happened.” If you did a rundown of 2020 (Anyone remember that President Donald Trump was actually impeached in January of 2020 before being acquitted by the Senate? Yeah, that happened.), you’d have to wonder if there was even a smidgen good in this dumpster fire of a year.

Turns out, there were many smidgens of good.

And, maybe it feels flippant or disrespectful to focus on the good amid more than 300,000 dead in the United States due to COVID-19 and a country that has been torn apart by divisiveness, the politicization of mask wearing, so much illness and mental fatigue, continuing injustices against our Black brothers and sisters and so much more. But, I firmly believe we can acknowledge what brings us joy and good feelings amid grief and struggles.

I learned this from my prior years as the editor of Altmuslim, where I helped produce a “good Muslim news” round up at the end of each year. And so, let us reflect on the good for a moment and allow ourselves to smile. Here at Haute Hijab it was the year of babies – three of our team members delivered some real cuties, and the constant onslaught of baby pictures in our Slack messages has been a real pick-me-up!

Some of the following 10 stories I’m going to share with you made headlines, others did not. But often it’s those small, intimate moments of good shared between friends that are the ones we end up savoring. So, I hope you enjoy the following roundup! Please comment with your own good stories from 2020 if you feel like sharing!

Hijab bans in sports are unfortunately nothing new. From basketball player Bilqis Abdul-Qadeer having to give up international play due to her hijab being banned to high school cross country runner Noor Alexandria Abukaram’s personal record-setting race time being disqualified in a meet last year due to her hijab not being pre-approved, Muslim hijab-wearing athletes have experienced discrimination, bans and the burden of needing waivers just to be able to compete. Najah Aqeel, a 14-year-old volleyball player in Tennessee, had to sit out the second game of her season when the referee cited the lack of a waiver for her hijab. Najah and her mother Alia fought back. The Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association (TSSAA), which oversees high school and middle school sports activity in the state, amended its rules to allow athletes with hijabs and religious headwear to play without needing a waiver. The amendment to the bylaws were approved unanimously and have immediately gone into effect – great news on behalf of all Muslim women athletes who want to play sports!

As a coronavirus-ravaged 2020 is limping towards the end, a new vaccine – one of three being used around the world – is bringing the hope of an eventual endgame to this global pandemic. Dr. Ugur Sahin and his wife Dr. Ozlem Tureci’s company, BioNTech, teamed up with Pfizer to create a vaccine that uses messenger RNA technology (mRNA) in it’s vaccine, which thus far was 90 percent effective in preventing the disease among trial volunteers. Healthcare and frontline workers in the U.S. began receiving the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine this month (including my own husband, who is a pulmonary/sleep/critical care specialist), with plans to roll it out in waves to other at-risk populations in the coming weeks. BioNTech began work on developing a vaccine after Dr. Sahin read an article in The Lancelet about the coronavirus that convinced him it would become a pandemic. “There are not too many companies on the planet which have the capacity and the competence to do it so fast as we can do it. So it felt not like an opportunity, but a duty to do it,” Dr. Sahin told The New York Times. And how did Dr. Sahin and Dr. Tureci celebrate when they learned about the efficacy data in their vaccine trial? With Turkish tea!

November 3, 2020 proved to be a tense and exciting day in politics for Americans around the country, and while it took several days for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to be called the president-elect by numerous media outlets, several Muslim women around the country enjoyed their own victories in numerous local and state elections. Muslims and Muslim women especially entered politics at all sorts of levels and in a variety of ways in the past several years, from running for office to voter registration drives, community organizing, lobbying work, fundraising and so much more. Political organizing and political work is so important, and we are so proud of our fellow Muslim sisters (and brothers) in all facets of their hard work to become elected officials and also work behind the scenes to affect change and challenge systemic social injustice issues. Here are some of the fantastic women who won big on November 3. And, click here to read about many other women who ran for elected office in the past four years! They may not have all won, but each push is a tremendous step forward.

How can the violence, deaths, systemic racism and never ending injustices experienced by our Black sisters and brothers be part of a good news roundup? The ongoing reckoning our country is in with its violent racially-divided history exploded in June of 2020 after the violent death of George Floyd under the knee of a Minnesota police officer. This, after the deaths of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and so many others. Black Lives Matters protestors took to the streets amass throughout June and the rest of the summer. A movement to defund the police (which doesn’t actually mean defund the entire police force) emerged as well as more police training in several areas of the country, the repealing of a New York City law that kept police misconduct reports secret and Breonna’s law was introduced in Kentucky and the Botham Jean Act in Texas. Many historical monuments and statues that honored Confederate Army leaders also came down or are in the process of it. Most of all, so many of us who had lived so quietly in the past in regards to the suffering of Black communities were pushed to read, learn, listen, get involved and have difficult conversations.

A lot of restaurants suffered as a result of shutdowns across the country due to the coronavirus pandemic. Truly, the past ten months and counting have been extremely difficult for small businesses. Many created outdoor seating and switched to contactless takeout and delivery to stay afloat. Still more partnered up with local organizations to feed first responders and others suffering from food insecurity. Out in Detroit, award-winning halal restaurant Saffon de Twah, which debuted in 2019 and was Eater Detroit’s Restaurant of the Year, faced challenges due to the pandemic and had to close last March. Chef Omar Anani then shifted to serve frontline workers as hospitalizations due to COVID surged in Michigan. When that slowed down in June, Chef Omar and the Saffron De Twah team shifted again to takeout only service throughout the summer. And now, the restaurant is ending its takeout menu and transitioning to a community kitchen by collaborating with Brilliant Detroit, “an organization that works with children and families in Detroit neighborhoods to promote education, security and health.” Other Detroit-area restaurants have also joined Brilliant Detroit with Saffron de Twah to tackle food insecurity.

Chef Omar told Eater Detroit, “In hospitality, we give people the shirts off of our back, right? That’s what we’re innately written to do in our DNA, and this is just such a humbling opportunity. You feed people and they’re just like, ‘Oh my god, you don’t know what this means to me right now,’” Anani says. “It’s completely changed my perception of hospitality altogether to be able to do these things for people.”

When the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic set in and communities and hospital systems around the country realized the alarming shortage of PPE and face masks, it presented an opportunity for regular people looking for a way to help – by sewing masks. In my own community, friends started sewing circles, dropping elastics, cloth and other supplies at each other’s homes to facilitate the sewing. DIY face mask tutorials abounded on social media and YouTube. And, in Sacramento, California, a group of students who had come together in a sewing club prior to COVID sprang into action.

Math teacher Estelle Gray at Rancho Cordova had started the after-school sewing club two years ago, never imagining her students would have their skills put to the test in sewing masks for healthcare workers fighting a pandemic. Students in the club picked up sewing machines and supplies from their school after it shut down and went to work. Eleven-year-old Alzahara Ibrahim sewed her first mask within hours of picking up her sewing machine. In reading this story I thought, the kids are alright.

We didn’t need to look far to find the heroes among us this year. From this teacher in Texas who read to her students from her hospital bed after surgery to UPS drivers who delivered a million packages to our doors to grocery workers who kept showing up to work and restocking the shelves (while their “hero” pay was abysmal) to families who struggled to keep it all together amid school and workplace closures to (of course) the countless doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, janitorial workers and healthcare workers dedicating themselves (at risk of their own lives) to the care of their patients – there was no lack of individuals who went beyond themselves to give back and help others during a time when often it felt like a struggle just to get through the day.

Over in Boston, the Celtics named financial planner Melissa Marrama a “hero among us” for creating a food program that served meals to homeless shelters and veterans homes while also donating more than 30,000 protective masks to New Englant residents. According to this article, she “secured donations from businesses for local efforts, delivered flowers and candy to nurses, sewed homemade protective cloth masks and more.” She also worked with the Islamic Center of Andover, founded by her husband, on other charitable efforts.

Eid car parades in Michigan. Baking Eid cookies and other goodies to hand out to firefighters and first responders. Zoom Eid meet ups with family and friends. Drive-by Eid meet and greets from the safety of one’s car. Dropping off iftar and/or Eid goodies on the doorsteps of family, neighbors and friends. These were just some of the innovative ways we celebrated Eid ul Fitr and Eid ul Adha in a year like no other. When Ramadan began near the end of April, we had to figure out how to fast and worship without our communal gatherings at our mosques for iftar and tarawih prayers. We had to learn how to pray Salat al-Jumu’ah and tarawih at home. And, we learned how to nurture community and that deeper connection with Allah (S) without the blessing of gathering and worshipping together in person.

Celebrating Eid was much of the same. In Texas, Lail Hossein baked Eid ul Adha-themed cookies (shaped like a mosque, lamb and camel) to share with frontline workers and firefighters in her community. She, like so many others, decorated her home with Eid garlands, lights and festive motifs. We learned a lot about ourselves and our communities, especially about those of us who had been left out of Ramadan and Eid activities knowingly and unknowingly for years. We also learned that as important as our masajid are to our spiritual life, Allah (S) resides in our homes as well.

That’s it. What else is there to say? Good riddance. He lost, and the electoral college formally voted him out. Regardless of whatever shenanigans and temper tantrums he and his administration continue to exhibit, he is a one-term president. May we all, and this country, learn from the travesty that was this presidency and remember what we have seen and experienced so that we may not ever go down this path again. May we face hard truths about ourselves. It’s never going to be as easy as that, but that’s my hope, prayer and charge upon myself and us all.

Three of my team members had babies in 2020, as I mentioned above. It has made for chaotic and cute zoom meetings, as myself and two other team members also have children who have been virtual learning since last spring. None of this has been easy by any means, and this pandemic has laid bare the inequities in our places of work and our school systems. But I am grateful to still be working, to still like my kids (and I think they still like me too) and for the second cat my kids convinced us to get when this all went down. I am grateful because when our schools closed, including my 20-year-old autistic son’s school, I was literally frozen with the fear of how will this work? I cannot do this. The past ten months have been fraught with more challenges and difficulties then I care to enumerate, but Alhamdullilah. I can honestly and meaningfully say that.