Background
Al-Marayati was born in 1962 and was raised in Los Angeles. Her father, the late Dr. Sabri El Farra, was originally from the Gaza Strip and her mother is from Missouri.
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Laila Al-Marayati
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She earned her medical degree from UC-Irvine, and received specialty training in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Los Angeles County USC Women's Hospital. After, she opened her own practice focusing on gynecology, which she ran for 11 years. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Southern California, Keck School of Medicine.
She also serves as the Director of Women's Health at the Eisner Pediatric and Family Medical Center in downtown Los Angeles. From 1999 to 2001, she served as a presidential appointee to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). She is the author of numerous articles and position papers on a range of issues that include topics such as sexuality in Islam and violence against women.
Al-Marayati led a fact-finding delegation to Croatia during the Balkan War to help spread awareness about rape survivors from Bosnia. She continues to be an outspoken critic against female genital cutting (also known as female circumcision or female genital mutilation) and other practices that are harmful to women. She is currently the chairperson of KinderUSA www.kinderusa.org, which is a non-profit American organization providing humanitarian assistance to Palestinian children and their families in the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon.
However, the organization continues to provide assistance to Palestinian children.
Membership
In the 1990s, Al-Marayati served as a member of the US State Department's Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad, and was a member of the official US Delegation to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, alongside former-First Lady Hillary Rodham-Clinton, in 1995.
