Fareena Alam

Alam is of Bangladeshi Chittagonian parentage and she grew up in Singapore. During this time she was elected as the vice-president and then president of the United Nations Students' Association, National University of Singapore, for which she organised a six-month awareness campaign called ‘The Children of Bangladesh.’ The campaign highlighted the plight of the street children and she then took the campaign a stage further by leading a student delegation of twenty to carry out relief work in Bangladesh for three weeks in 1998.

She was a co-founder of the Radical Middle Way Project which is a revolutionary grassroots initiative aimed at articulating a relevant mainstream understanding of Islam that is dynamic, proactive and relevant to young British Muslims. The project was funded by the British government under its Prevent scheme and in 2009 is said to have received approximately £1.2 million. In 2010, with the change in government to the Conservative party,

In 2005, Alam was named Media Professional of the Year by Islamic Relief. In 2006, she was named Media Professional of the Year at the Asian Women of Achievement Awards.

After graduating from university, from 2004 to 2007, she was editor of Q News. She is a freelance contributor to British and international newspapers. Her recent work includes the cover story for Newsweek International (worldwide except Asia).

She was raised as a Muslim and considers herself practising one. In June 2002, she married Abdul-Rehman, a Canadian teacher of Punjabi-Pakistani descent. They met in June 2001 whilst attending a conference organised by the Zaytuna Institute in San Francisco.

Fareena Alam (born 25 September 1978) is an English journalist and was editor of Q News.