This week, Salma sits down with Pakistani trans woman, celebrity makeup artist and content creator Ayman to talk about the extraordinary journey that led her to becoming the woman she always knew she was.

As a child, Ayman had a recurring dream about a mysterious girl she could never quite see…until years later, after transitioning, she realized the woman she had been chasing was herself.

Ayman opens up about growing up between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the U.S.; experimenting with femininity and makeup from childhood; being put on testosterone as a teenager in an attempt to make her more masculine; coming out to her family; losing their financial support and experiencing homelessness; surviving abuse and sexual assault; and eventually building a career and online community for queer and trans South Asians who had never seen themselves represented.

At the heart of the conversation is also the grief of growing up without the unconditional love you needed from a parent. Ayman shares the devastating moment that changed her relationship with her mother forever, and she and Salma talk about what it means to grow up, grieve the mother you needed, and eventually learn to care for the child inside you yourself.

They also talk about Islam, Hajj, family rejection and reconciliation, the hypersexualization of trans women, and why, at 36, Ayman still considers herself a virgin. For Ayman, sex isn't about marriage or purity. It's about finally loving the body she fought to make her own, feeling completely safe with another person, and knowing that sometimes, love simply isn't enough.

HELP KEEP THE POD ALIVE FOR 2026, DONATE TO OUR GOFUNDME: https://gofund.me/f646f3082

CREDITS:

Host & Creator: Salma Hindy
Special Guest: Ayman Syed
Executive Producer: Salma Hindy
Videographer & Sound Engineer: Patrick Samaha
Written By: Salma Hindy
Edited By: Salma Hindy
Studio: 30 Irving Studios
Makeup: Ayman Syed
Artwork: Rana Omar
Social Media Intern: Noor Jehan Ansari
Grants & Sponsorship Intern: Christina Saoud

© The Secret Sex Lives of Muslim Women, 2026

Instagram: @thesecretsexlivesofmuslimwomen

YouTube: @thesecretsexlivesofmuslimwomen

HOST'S INSTAGRAM: @salma.hindy

HOST'S TIKTOK: @salma.hindy

What really happens in the Muslim Students Association? Was the MSA a place of belonging, or a place where everyone learned how to hide?

In the podcast’s first-ever panel episode, Salma Hindy is joined by Rania Hannan and Noor Jehan Ansari to unpack the halal, the haram, and the VERY haram of MSA culture, featuring YOUR submitted stories.

Each woman had a very different experience inside Muslim student communities: from finding friendship, belonging, and leadership opportunities to experiencing judgment, exclusion, and religious policing.

This episode explores:

gender segregation

haram police

marriage and flirting culture

secret relationships

sexual repression

queer inclusion

the wildly different standards placed on Muslim men and women.

Rania felt judged and excluded from her high school MSA, lost her virginity to the MSA president, who gave her STDs while publicly preaching about how everyone else should NOT be having sex. Meanwhile, he was hooking up with multiple women and knew exactly how to sneak them into his house without the stairs creaking. This experience pushed her further away from the Muslim community,

The most recent graduate, Noor Jehan helped rebuild her MSA after COVID. She navigated debates around gender and inclusion, and fought to create a Muslim community that actually felt welcoming, especially to queer Muslims, while facing reluctance from her university to provide Muslim students with resources.

Salma grew up in a Muslim bubble, where your entire social world is Muslim and interacting with anyone outside of it is foreign. As an MSA leader, she went from trying to convert people on campus to watching everyone around her get married in their early 20s and wondering why she couldn’t do the same. Ten years later, she’s heard from some of those women whose lives she once idolized, and learned some of them regret the paths they took. Salma also unpacks what it’s like growing up in a Muslim bubble, when your entire social world is Muslim and interacting with anyone outside of it can feel completely foreign.

HELP KEEP THE POD ALIVE FOR 2026, DONATE TO OUR GOFUNDME: https://gofund.me/f646f3082

CREDITS:

Host & Creator: Salma Hindy

Executive Producer: Salma Hindy

Associate Producer: Noor Jehan Ansari

Videographer & Sound Engineer: Patrick Samaha

Written By: Salma Hindy

Edited By: Salma Hindy

Studio: 30 Irving Studios

Artwork: Rana Omar

Social Media Intern: Noor Jehan Ansari

Grants & Sponsorship Intern: Christina Saoud

© The Secret Sex Lives of Muslim Women, 2026

Instagram: @thesecretsexlivesofmuslimwomen

YouTube: @thesecretsexlivesofmuslimwomen

HOST'S INSTAGRAM: @salma.hindy

HOST'S TIKTOK: @salma.hindy

We are spilling the tea, honey! On the surface, this is the story of the guy Salma lost her virginity to. But it's really the story of what happened after she lost her family.

A few months after taking off her hijab and moving to New York completely alone, Salma found herself in Dahab, Egypt, where she met a 24-year-old hotel owner who would unknowingly become the person she would lose her virginity to.

In this episode, she shares the full story: the spontaneous one-night stand that became her first sexual relationship at 30, returning to Egypt at 31 on a mission to lose her virginity, and the emotional spiral that followed. But beneath the romance is something much deeper. Losing her family, followed by losing her virginity, cracked open a level of grief she didn't know she was carrying. Sex didn't just change her relationship to intimacy. It became the portal through which years of abandonment, religious shame, loneliness, and unresolved trauma came rushing to the surface.

Looking back, she unpacks everything she couldn't see at the time: how complex PTSD, never having dated before, and growing up in a high-control religious environment caused her to confuse chemistry with safety, fantasy with reality, and attention with love. She also explores anxious attachment, "preemptive exclusivity," finally having penetrative sex after years of vaginismus, and the painful difference between what actually happened... and the story she was telling herself.

This is one of the most vulnerable episodes of The Secret Sex Lives of Muslim Women yet because it introduces a version of Salma that only her closest friends have ever known: the insecure, obsessive, terrified romantic underneath the confident comedian.

If you've ever fallen for someone's potential, mistaken chemistry for love, or realized the imprint of your father was shaping the partners you chose, this episode is for you.

HELP KEEP THE POD ALIVE FOR 2026, DONATE TO OUR GOFUNDME: https://gofund.me/f646f3082

CREDITS:

Host & Creator: Salma Hindy
Executive Producer: Salma Hindy
Videographer & Sound Engineer: Patrick Samaha
Written By: Salma Hindy
Edited By: Salma Hindy
Studio: 30 Irving Studios
Artwork: Rana Omar
Social Media Intern: Noor Jehan Ansari
Grants & Sponsorship Intern: Christina Saoud

© The Secret Sex Lives of Muslim Women, 2026

Instagram: @thesecretsexlivesofmuslimwomen

YouTube: @thesecretsexlivesofmuslimwomen

HOST'S INSTAGRAM: @salma.hindy

HOST'S TIKTOK: @salma.hindy