I lived through a revolution. I saw my 21-year-old brother holding a gun. I slept with a knife under my pillow. I have a close friend who was shot and is now blind in one eye. I was lucky. I didn’t have thugs break into my house. I wasn’t tear-gassed. I wasn’t shot at. But I […]

There’s a new government-sponsored comedy channel in Egypt, Nile Comedy TV, which has created a humorous series of “non-commercial breaks.” One memorable example that made me laugh went like this: Buy the Chinese sheep! It weighs 12 kg when alive, and 55 kg after being slaughtered. It’s fed on a diet of chips, so you […]

Sexy Girls. Arab Beauty that’ll rock your world. Sea, sex and sun. Let the funky Arabs turn you on! The new “Funky Arabs” single by Jad Choueiri, the Lebanese singer known for crooning love ballads, has had over 150,000 views on YouTube in one month. Choueiri spends four and a half minutes singing about how […]

“Sexual Abuse in Islamic Society” is the title of a recently published BBC article.* Right away, I knew it wasn’t going to be a good story (and by “good”, I mean objective, balanced, etc.). “Islamic society,” says the title, not an Islamic society, whatever that is. There is so much wrong with this BBC story […]

For those who don’t know, CityStars mall in Cairo was the biggest mall in the Middle East until it was surpassed by Dubai Mall in November 2008. Nevertheless, it’s still a huge mall, with (according to their website) over 550 stores, 6,000 parking spaces, three hotels, two indoor theme parks, and a 21-screen cinema complex. Over […]

The internet is abuzz with talk of Khamisa Sawadi, a 75-year-old Syrian widow living in Saudi Arabia who was sentenced to 40 lashes and 4 months in jail for the crime of khalwa, being alone with a man who is not her relative. The verdict, issued on March 3rd, also demands that Sawadi be deported after […]

There’s a new Moroccan movie out that, on the surface, seems to tackle the issue of pre-marital sex in the country. They’re a dime a dozen these days, but this one is stirring up controversy like crazy. Why? I’ll give you a hint: The name of the movie is Amours Voilées,  Hijab al-hob, which translates […]

Okay, I’ll admit it. When I first heard the title, my immediate reaction was to roll my eyes. “Not again!” I thought. “Not another book with sad kohl-rimmed eyes peeping out from under a black niqab on the cover and which talks about a poor/ downtrodden/ oppressed (add your own adjectives) Muslim woman who is beaten/ […]

Muslimah Media Watch thanks Shaista for the tip! A couple of days ago, a new TV show about Muslim women in Sweden, Halal-TV, aired its first episode on Sveriges Television (SVT), a Swedish television channel. As expected, the show, which features three young Muslim women as hosts, was stirring up debate before it even began. […]

“Mohannad is a hottie” is the answer I got when I asked my tween cousins why they watch the 175 episode Turkish soap opera Gümüş (‘silver’) that was renamed Noor (‘light’), dubbed in Syrian colloquial Arabic, and consequently spread like wildfire in the Arab world. It’s true that the Turkish ex-basketball player who won the […]