Kahf was born in Damascus, Syria. In March 1971, at the age of three and a half, she moved to the United States. She grew up in a devout Muslim household.[4] Both of her parents came to the United States as students at the University of Utah. Kahf and her family moved to Indiana after her parents received their university degrees. When she was in the tenth grade, she and her family moved to New Jersey.[5] In 1984, Kahf lived in Iraq for a brief time. During college, she did one semester as a visiting student at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.[5]
Kahf’s maternal grandfather was a member of the Syrian parliament in the 1950s, but was exiled from Syria because of his opposition to the Baathist regime.[6] Her father was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization that was banned in Syria, and was exiled from Syria as a result.[4]
Kahf graduated from Douglass College in 1988[7] and later received her Ph.D. in comparative literature from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey in 1994. In 1995 she became a professor at the University of Arkansas[8] where she serves in the Program for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies,[9] and is a faculty member in the King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
During her work at Rutgers, Kahf taught theories of feminism, Palestinian resistance women, and Black Power movement women.[5] After her move to Arkansas, Kahf served for a time on the board of the Ozark Poets and Writers Collective, participated in local poetry slams and, after winning a spot on "Team Ozarks" with Brenda Moossy, Lisa Martinovic, and Pat Jackson, represented the region with the all-women team at the 1999 National Poetry Slam in Chicago,[10]
Kahf was a founding member of RAWI,[11] the Radius of Arab American Writers, established in 1993[12] Kahf is currently a member of the Syrian Nonviolence Movement.[6] In 2011, Kahf and her daughter visited the Turkish border to Syria in order to work with Syrian escapees. Kahf wrote about the experience in the essay "The Daughter's Road to Syria."[13]
Kahf has attended marches protesting the United States' War on Iraq.[6]
