Mamdanis wife Rama Duwaji co-hosting pricey pro-Palestine retreat in Corsica after skipping July 4 celebrations
New York City’s controversial first fady, Rama Duwaji, is co-hosting a pro-Palestinian all-female spiritual retreat where they will honor Jesus’ mother Mary, described as a “Palestinian woman giving birth under occupation.”Duwaji, 29, will travel to the sold-out “spiritual” retreat in Corsica this week, where participants — most of them Muslim women — will pray at a 15th-century monastery for “our sisters in Palestine,” according to a report.The event, starting July 9, is being organized by The Women Sanctuary, a Muslim-and-women-focused travel group run by Parisian designer Rym Nur.In Corsica, attendees will “honor the legacy of Mary, the most honored woman in the Quran,” according to a description on the group’s website.The retreat, priced from $3,100 to $5,260 for a private “casita” with a living room, garden views and a private bathroom, features lectures, daily prayers and farm-to-table dining.“At every prayer, lecture and meal, there was mention of our sisters in Palestine,” said a 2025 Vogue Arabia article about last year’s Corsican retreat, which was also held in celebration of the Virgin Mary, who is honored in both Christianity and Islam.“At the heart of this retreat is the luminous legacy of Mary, the most honored woman in the Qur’an, chosen, purified, and elevated above all women of the worlds,” says the Women Sanctuary website.“She is the only woman mentioned by name in the Qur’an — mentioned 34 times.
Her story is not only one of divine motherhood, but of unwavering faith, sacred retreat, and total devotion to Allah.“One guest… had just returned from Gaza’s Nasser Hospital, where she volunteered for a month to help deliver babies under bombardment.She spoke of mothers laboring through terror and of tender life arriving in the shadow of death,” wrote one attendee in the article for Vogue Arabia.
“It is not lost on us that Mary, too, was a Palestinian woman giving birth under occupation.I...