Two important updates on stories that we have covered over the past couple months! First, Sara Yasin wrote recently about a blog called “A Gay Girl in Damascus,” where Syrian-American blogger Amina Abdullah Arraf has been writing about the revolution in Syria.  Amina Abdullah Arraf was allegedly abducted on June 6, and has not been heard from.  Many news […]

Deaf Sisterhood is a short documentary about Aran Slade, a 27-year-old white woman living in Birmingham, U.K., who is thinking of becoming Muslim (you can see the trailer below. For those in the U.K., it’s airing this week, on stations listed here.).  Although her family is not religious, Aran became Christian ten years ago, and […]

After our review of Boy vs. Girl, a couple readers asked for MMW’s thoughts on The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf.  Having really enjoyed the book when I read it last summer, I was happy to oblige! Beware: minor spoiler alerts! Written by Mohja Kahf, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf tells the story of Khadra […]

The headline of a recent series about Muslim women of the community in the Utica Observer-Dispatch reads, “Behind the veil: Stereotypes can be frustrating for Muslim women.”  Major groan.  You know what else can be frustrating for Muslim women?  Headlines like “Behind the veil.” But for the most part, this article, and its related stories […]

In case you haven’t heard enough about Bill 94 from my two posts this week, I wanted to let you know that today, December 3, is a day of action against the bill.  Below are some suggested actions from the Non/No Bill 94 Coalition: Speak up! Write, email, phone, fax Quebec Premier Jean Charest, along […]

(See Part 1 here.) I didn’t make it to the Friday panels because of schoolwork, but I was able to catch the talks on Saturday (November 20).  The first panel was called “The Theoretical and Analytical Challenges of Identity Politics,” with speakers Monique Deveaux, Cécile Laborde, and Beverley Baines; the second panel was entitled “’Managing’ […]

Quebec’s Bill 94, which would deny access to public services to women who wear niqab, is back in parliamentary hearings and, by all accounts, likely to pass.  This past weekend, an international conference entitled “Revealing Democracy: Bill 94 and the challenges of religious pluralism and ethnocultural diversity in Quebec” was held at Concordia University in […]

Just in time for Halloween, the Toronto Star‘s ethics columnist, Ken Gallinger (whose columns I enjoy), received a question from a parent: We are a Christian family. Our daughter, 7, goes to a school where there are many Muslim kids. Some of their moms walk them to school in burqas. My daughter is fascinated by these […]

Named from an Afghan saying that “However tall the mountain, there’s always a road,” However Tall the Mountain: A Dream, Eight Girls, & A Journey Home is the true story of a project conceived by the book’s author, Awista Ayub, to bring teenaged girls from Afghanistan to the United States for soccer training.  The story […]

I’ve been working on a curriculum project involving novels and memoirs about Muslim women, so the next few posts from me will probably be focusing on some of the books I’ve come across, even if none of them were published especially recently.  So, for those of you who like following our posts about literature (some […]