The sophisticated and flirtatious Begum Nawazish Ali has been on Pakistani airwaves for a few years now. With people tuning in to watch her grill, joke around, and shamelessly flirt with her guests who include celebrities and politicians, her talk shows have been huge hits. (This shameless flirting demonstrated as she asks Bollywood star John […]

The Associated Press recently released a news piece titled by my local paper “Love story bolsters Islam’s image.” From the title alone, you’d think that Islam has never had a love story. The story implies that the film it covers is the first to portray Islam positively. We here at MMW tend to cover negative […]

I was walking through the aisles in the grocery store the other day when a particular product made me do a double take. I had to backtrack so I could see if what I thought I saw was what I actually saw. And unfortunately it was. It was a box of Canadian label President’s Choice […]

MMW thanks Anne for the tip! The soap opera As the World Turns has recently introduced a Muslim character: Ameera Ali Aziz, an Iraqi woman. Played by the Iranian-American Tala Ashe, Ameera appears one day and becomes entangled in the other characters’ lives. Here’s the basic summary: Following the death of her mother, who was […]

On Saturday and Sunday, CNN ran a program called On Deadly Ground: The Women of Iraq. Hosted by Arwa Damon, the program briefly profiled several women who live in Iraq; at the beginning, she promises, “You will meet the women of Iraq.” The program opens on a street somewhere in Baghdad: unpaved, muddy, with trash […]

I recently came across what I thought of as a beautiful poem, entitled I Am Woman – Celebrate Me, written by Canadian Muslim feminist and activist, Raheel Raza. Addressing issues of sexism, racism, and misogyny among others, this poem was written by Raza and presented to WOMANVOICE, on Dec 6, 2004 to celebrate the International […]

Last month, Zeynab commented on the portrayal of Muslim women in the Vagina Monologues, noting that there are no portrayals of positive sexual experiences by Muslim women. I attended a performance of the Vagina Monologues for the first time last week and noticed her observations. Indeed Muslim women were lacking from the moaning sketch. In […]

A smattering of articles have appeared in newspapers lately, aiming to spread the word about how fashionable Muslim women are. These articles seem to refute the idea that Muslim women are against or unreceptive to fashion: “You can be religious and fashionable! Lots of them are! See?” Is this supposed to be a compliment? Generalizing […]

In the post from earlier today, I talked about Muslim women featured in fashion news under the “fetishization” category. So instead of fetishization, how about Muslim women as a big joke? For an International Women’s Day show in Norway, designers created some new styles of burqas, including one outfitted in holly-jolly-Santa gear. The picture included […]

Last week, Forbes.com featured a briefing from Oxford Analytica entitled, “Why So Many Female Bombers?” The article outlines several reasons that there seem to be so many “female bombers”, according to Forbes and the rest of the news networks: Maternal loss Nationalism Absolution from sins Exploitation I’ll get to these reasons in a minute. A […]