Anne Azza Aly was born on Azza Mahmoud Fawzi Hosseini Ali el Serougi, 1967 and is an Australian politician who has been a Labor member of the House of Representatives since the 2016 election, representing the electorate of Cowan in Western Australia.
24 Facts About Anne Aly
2.
Anne Aly is the first female federal parliamentarian of Islamic faith and one of Australia's first two government ministers to be Muslim.
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Anne Aly was a professor, lecturer and academic specialising in counter-terrorism, and she is considered a global authority on understanding how and why young people are drawn into violent extremism.
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Anne Aly founded People Against Violent Extremism to address extremism in Australia.
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Anne Aly was born in Alexandria, Egypt on 29 March 1967.
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Anne Aly's mother was a nurse and her father an engineer.
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Anne Aly returned to Egypt for university, then returned to Australia with her first husband to raise their children in Perth close to her retired parents.
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Anne Aly graduated from the American University in Cairo in 1990 with a Bachelor of Arts degree with high honours in English Literature, with a minor in Acting; and in 1994, received a Graduate Diploma of Arts from Edith Cowan University; followed by a Master of Education degree in 1996, and PhD in 2008, both from Edith Cowan University.
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In 2001 Anne Aly became a policy officer for the Government of Western Australia, where she worked in education and multicultural affairs policy from 2000 to 2007, including as a senior policy officer in the Office of Multicultural Interests from 2003.
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From 2007 to 2008, Anne Aly worked for the Equal Opportunity Commission WA.
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Anne Aly lectured in counter-terrorism and security at Edith Cowan University from 2009 to 2011, and then at Curtin University from 2011.
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Anne Aly was appointed associate professor at Curtin in 2014, and Professor at Edith Cowan in 2015.
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Anne Aly is an active member of Curtin University's The Centre for Culture and Technology, leading its Countering Online Violent Extremism research program.
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Anne Aly has written published academic papers, books and newspaper articles on terrorist recruitment and counter-messaging and the involvement of former white supremacists in speaking out against violent extremism.
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In 2008, Anne Aly received the Dean's Award for Best New Researcher from Edith Cowan University.
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Anne Aly's research has been funded by the Australian Research Council's Safeguarding Australia Initiative.
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In 2013, Anne Aly founded a youth-led not-for-profit organisation, People Against Violent Extremism, to address extremism in Australia.
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In 2015, Anne Aly was the only Australian invited to address Barack Obama's Countering Violent Extremism summit at the White House.
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In 2016, Anne Aly was nominated for Australian of the Year.
20.
In 2016, after speaking against comments from Immigration Minister Peter Dutton regarding Lebanese Muslim immigration, Anne Aly was subject to a series of online attacks and death threats directed at her family.
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In 2017, Anne Aly was the victim of a fake-news attack claiming that she refused to lay a wreath at an ANZAC Day service in Perth.
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Anne Aly asserted that she was "insulted by the allegation she refused to lay a wreath".
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Anne Aly has stated she believes in marriage equality, is economically conservative and "more left" on social policies, believes in a strict separation of church and state, defends the rights of women to wear a hijab if they choose though she does not wear one herself, and that she demonstrated against the Iraq war.
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Anne Aly's current husband is a former police officer and Canadian ice hockey player David Allen.