Boraei: 1st Latin Muslim woman military pilot

A military pilot in Ecuador said she is the first and only Muslim woman working for a Latin American air force. “I am working for the Ecuadorian Air Force but there has never been a Muslim woman pilot working for the [air force] in a Latin American country,” Maybeline Thoraya Boraei Alvarez, 25, told Anadolu […]

A military pilot in Ecuador said she is the first and only Muslim woman working for a Latin American air force.

“I am working for the Ecuadorian Air Force but there has never been a Muslim woman pilot working for the [air force] in a Latin American country,” Maybeline Thoraya Boraei Alvarez, 25, told Anadolu Agency.

Boraei Alvarez, whose father Muhammed Boraei was Egyptian-born, has been in the Ecuadorian Air Force for several years.

She says she had some challenges at work in the beginning, for instance on some days she could only drink water because the food was not halal.

“But I had to be patient with this because I believed as a Muslim woman I had to succeed,” she said.

 

The 25-year-old pilot decried how certain media and extremist groups foster a negative impression of Islam all over the world: “We should unite as siblings and defend our religion.” (Anadolu Agency)