Yassmin Abdel-Magied is a Sudanese–Australian media presenter and writer, who had an early career as a mechanical engineer. She was named Young Queenslander of the Year in 2010 and Queensland Australian of the Year in 2015 for her engagement in community work. Abdel-Magied has been based in the United Kingdom since 2017, after her comments about Sharia on TV and a social media post on Anzac Day led to her being widely attacked in Australian media, a petition calling for her sacking from ABC TV, and numerous death threats on social media.
Early life
Family
Yassmin Midhat Abdel-Magied was born in Khartoum, Sudan. As skilled migrants, her parents moved to Brisbane, Australia with her when she was aged 18 months in late 1992. This was after the 1989 Sudanese coup d'état in which the Islamist military toppled the democratically elected government and brought in harsh laws, such as the policing of women's clothing and mandating the speaking and teaching of Arabic in universities. Abdel-Magied holds dual Australian and Sudanese nationality.
Abdel-Magied's father, Midhat Abdel-Magied, completed a PhD in electrical engineering at Imperial College, London, and subsequently studied Information Technology in Australia. Yassmin's mother, Faiza El-Higzi, was a qualified architect in Sudan, and now holds postgraduate degrees across various disciplines. Yassmin has a younger brother.
In November 2019, Abdel-Magied announced her engagement with a photo of her diamond ring on Instagram. She has since married a British man.
Education
Abdel-Magied attended primary school at the Islamic College of Brisbane and the independent Christian high school John Paul College, at which there was no policy against wearing a hijab. She studied mechanical engineering at the University of Queensland, graduating with a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering with First-Class Honours in 2011.
Community work and early career (2007–2017) As high school students in 2007, Abdel-Magied and two others founded "Youth Without Borders" (YWB) in Australia, and she continued as chairperson until 2016. In 2007, she was named Young Australian Muslim of the Year. She also participated in other groups/committees and in 2010 was named Young Queenslander of the Year.
From 2012 until 2016, she worked for multinational engineering companies based in Australia. In 2013, Abdel-Magied wrote a journal article about working "On the rigs" in the Griffith Review.
In 2015, Abdel-Magied contributed as a member of the Federal ANZAC Centenary Commemoration Youth Working Group.
After Abdel-Magied was named Queensland Young Australian of the Year in 2015, Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop appointed her to the Council for Australian-Arab Relations (CAAR). In late 2016, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) sent Abdel-Magied, as a CAAR board member, to several Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, Egypt and Sudan, to promote Australia.
Media activities (2014–2017) In December 2014, Abdel-Magied presented a fourteen-minute TED talk at TEDxSouthBank in Brisbane, entitled What does my headscarf mean to you?, which was chosen as one of TED's top-ten ideas of 2015.
From August 2016 to 1 July 2017, Abdel-Magied presented ABC TV human-interest show Australia Wide until the show was cancelled due to ABC program restructuring.
Other activities on Australian media have included Triple J (radio), Radio National, F1 Racing (2016 podcast), SBS TV The Truth About Racism (2017) and ABC TV's Hard Chat (2016–2017).
Controversy (2017)
Sharia law comments
In June 2016 on the ABC TV program The Drum, Abdel-Magied said that Sharia law "allows for multiple interpretations... it's about mercy, it's about kindness".
In February 2017, Abdel-Magied was a panelist on the Q&A program where she was challenged about her views on Sharia law by politician Jacqui Lambie. Abdel-Magied said "Islam to me is the most feminist religion. We got equal rights well before the Europeans. We don't take our husbands' last names because we ain't their property." She said that Sharia law is as simple as "me praying five times day," and that it says that "you follow the law of the land on which you are on". A right-wing group called "AltCon News" started an online petition after the show, calling for Abdel-Magied to be sacked from hosting the ABC TV show Australia Wide for what they saw as her "pro-Sharia law comments". The petition received more than 15,000 signatures.