A few months ago, while reviewing one of my friend’s profiles on Facebook, I was surprised to see the amount of discussion that Shari’ah rulings regarding marriage provoke in the West. My friend, an orthodox Sunni Muslim and avid follower of the Hanbali school, had commented in a picture from 2010 that depicted Malaysian women […]

If you ever wondered about “Islamization” and the so-called return to the Caliphate, recent debates arising from a number of Muslim countries regarding the “Islamization” and the status of Muslim women bring important questions to the table. First of all, it raises the question of what really is the “Islamic state” and what describes it. […]

In the past few weeks, Chechnya has been in international news after the president of the independent republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, made few remarks supporting and justifying honor killings.  After years of war in the region, including the First and Second Chechen wars, Chechnya has undergone a challenging road to reconstruction. Although it seems that Kadyrov’s […]

A couple of weeks ago Kecia Ali, Juliane Hammer, and Laury Silvers presented the e-book A Jihad for Justice: Honoring the Work and Life of Amina Wadud (the link takes you to a full PDF of the book). The e-book is meant to be a Festschrift, a German word for “a collection of academic essays […]

During the past week, inheritance according to the precepts of Shari’ah was a hot topic around the world, from Australia and Pakistan to Tunisia and Malaysia. An overview of the system is available in this article, although, as always, there is much diversity both in specific understandings of inheritance laws and in broader understandings of what “Shari’ah” is. A few days ago, Jamila Hussain wrote an opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald, discussing issues of equity vs. equality in inheritance laws, while attempting to explain the complex distribution system in Islam. She pointed out that it is easy to forget “that equality for women is quite a modern development.” While discussing Pakistani laws and recent amendments, Hafeezullah Ishaq provided us with an overview of women’s inheritance rights in Pakistan and the challenges they face.

The World Press Photo contest is a competition where the best professional photographers have a chance to showcase their work. The contest focuses on photojournalism and features photographers from all over the world. Last year the controversial photo of Bibi Aisha, taken by Jodi Bieber and featured in Time Magazine (which MMW covered here), won […]

As a convert to Islam, I have had other Muslims ask me, particularly in settings where I have discussed Islamic feminism and LGBTQ2/S rights, whether or not I converted to be one of the “cool” Muslims that are often times presented in the media. By “cool,” people often mean not-orthodox.  (I started preparing this post […]

In the past few days, the Spanish media has been reporting on the case of a Moroccan woman in Spain who was bitten by her husband for refusing to wear hijab. The case of the unnamed woman has surprisingly made it to the media, where the other 36% of the domestic violence cases involving immigrants […]

Media coverage of LGTBQ issues in Islam is largely influenced by the political contexts in which it is discussed. LGTBQ Muslims are often categorized and talked about in all sorts of weird ways (as this post demonstrates). In the media, this gets expressed in different ways. Sometimes, coverage focuses on the theological debates surrounding homosexuality. […]

I bought this book after reading a review in the New York Times. The review largely described Al-Muhaddithat as a women-focused yet Islamically-indigenous text that could lead to the rediscovery of women’s importance in Islam.   The book is written by Mohammad Akram Nadwi, a Muslim scholar who puts emphasis on what he sees as a […]