Mona Haydar

In 2020, Haydar took part in the online Call to Unite program which was put on by Tim Shriver amidst the Corona Virus Pandemic which aimed to help those most vulnerable. She performed a song live during the

NPR called her debut video for “Hijabi (Wrap My Hijab)" “reminiscent of Lemonade”, and that the visuals “channel Beyonce”. The video was included by the De Young Museum in San Francisco in an exhibit on Muslim women's fashions in 2018.

In 2018, Haydar spoke alongside Katie Couric at the media festival SXSW. She also appeared in Couric's National Geographic show America Inside Out. On March 28, 2018, she was featured on the CBS Evening News for her "resistance music".

The Emmy-nominated series The Secret Life of Muslims by Josh Seftel featured her and Sebastian. Their episode remains the most viewed episode of the series. In July 2018, Haydar appeared on Marcus Samuelsson's PBS show No Passport Required, where she showed him around the studio where she recorded her first two songs. In November 2018, Haydar released her song "Lifted". "Lifted" encourages community building and healing from imperial and colonial wounds through the strategies she learned from James H. Cone and others while getting her master's.

Her debut 2018 EP Barbarican was met with positive reviews.

Haydar's debut song, "Hjabi (Wrap My Hijab)", went viral. Billboard named this 2017 single one of “The 20 Best Protest Songs of 2017” as well as one of the “Top 25 Feminist Anthems." The song builds bridges of hope and understanding while dispelling myths, correcting stereotypes, and educating the world about who she is and what she stands for. The song launched her career as well as creating positive reception.

In 2016, at 6 months pregnant with her second child, Haydar was at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, taking a stand with the indigenous peoples of the U.S in opposition to the Key Stone Pipeline. Her song "American", from her EP Barbarican, speaks to some of her experiences there.

Haydar appeared in the 2016 Microsoft holiday campaign “#SpreadHarmony”, shot by Jake Scott.

In 2015, Haydar and her husband, Sebastian, set up a stand in Cambridge, Massachusetts, inviting people to “Talk to a Muslim,” offering them coffee, donuts, and flowers as a means to “replace trauma with love.” Haydar gained an audience after her social media post about their project went viral, and it helped her reach an international audience. Her music is a continuation of that work.

In 2012, Haydar lost a close friend to suicide and this caused her to question her own reasons for living and changed her life. She uprooted from her life in Flint where she had been working as a substitute teacher and moved off grid to an inter-spiritual community and retreat center called the Lama Foundation. There she met her partner. They married and had their first child there.

In 2011, after graduating from the University of Michigan - Flint, Haydar left the US and studied at Jami' Abu-Noor in Damascus, Syria. When the Syrian conflict erupted, Haydar's studies in Islamic spirituality were cut short and she moved back to Flint.

Mona Haydar (born 18 May 1988) is an American rapper, poet, activist, and chaplain. Her EP is Barbarican (2018), and she is best known for her viral song "Hijabi (Wrap My Hijab)," a protest song.

Haydar was raised, along with her seven siblings, in Flint, Michigan. Her parents immigrated to the United States from Damascus, Syria, in 1971.