I am not going to lie, I started reading Without Shame with some skepticism – and I have to confess that skepticism stemmed at least in part from the author’s background and previous writing. Katherine Russell is a non-Muslim, white Western writer with a background in poetry and love stories. In 2006 she published a […]

I write this post as an expression of solidarity, because as someone who lives in Turtle Island (Canada) and has close ties to Latin American immigrant and refugee communities, I find myself needing to speak out. I come from a country where the situation of violence and poverty since the mid-90s (and before) has driven […]

I spent much of my childhood and teenage years obsessed with anime and comics. Growing up in Mexico, I was part of a generation that saw the introduction of strong female characters in mainstream media, including anime, comics and TV shows. No more Candy Candy with her eternal emotional conflicts over boys, and no more […]

What does it mean to ‘break’ a stereotype? Does it mean acting contrary to what society expects? Does it mean to be the first to do something? Does it mean to do something actually ground-breaking? Or does it mean to abide by what some else thinks is news worthy? A few weeks ago Al-Jazeera’s The […]

This post was originally published on the writer’s blog.  I left the mosque many years ago. I think the last straw for me was seeing female teachers and preachers telling us that women should not be in positions of leadership; that they should stay home and care for their children; or that a woman’s nature […]

For the longest time I have been pondering what, if anything, makes me Muslim. Is it the shahadah? Is it pure belief in the divine? Is it community acknowledgement? Is it the fasting and tarawih prayers during Ramadan? Or is it the fact that I have somehow forced myself in other Muslims’ lives by writing […]

This post was previously published at the author’s blog.  Dear Saad: Some days I wonder if you can hear me… see me… smell me. For the longest time I felt your presence in my every move. I would wake up and start my morning rituals by imagining that you were sitting at my kitchen table […]

Dear Mona, Some of my fellow Muslimah Media Watch writers put together a roundtable about their thoughts on your book, and as I read it, I decided to explore some of their ideas and thoughts further. This review in the form of a letter stems from the need to address not only the book itself, […]

I started reading “Recovering the Female Voice in Islamic Scripture” by Georgina L. Jardim a few weeks ago. As I approached the end of the book, I was traveling and got to read the conclusion by the beaches of the Caribbean Sea. I write this as a way of placing myself into the reading of […]

Before I go right into this post, I think I should make some things clear. This is not a post about the “moral” or religious side of sex work. In fact, very much the opposite. It is rather an analysis of how sex work is depicted in intersection with Muslim identity and traditionally Muslim garments […]