Last week’s “Friday Links” linked to a story of a documentary about forced marriages of young Pakistani-British girls to men in Pakistan. I followed the link and decided to watch this new British documentary. I found the film, called Forced to Marry and which aired on BBC Two on December 1st: fascinating, frustrating, disturbing, chilling, […]

Iktimal Hage-Ali, 24 is a Lebanese-Australian woman whose life reads like an episode of E! True Hollywood Story. Hage-Ali, a former member of the government‘s Muslim Community Reference Group was arrested for conspiring to sell drugs on Nov. 22, 2006, eight days before she was named New South Wales’ Young Australian of the Year award. […]

I am a 21-year-old spinster. Yes, a spinster at 21. In my country, although many many Egyptian women are delaying getting married until they’re in their mid-to-late twenties, society still looks at them with a critical, disapproving gaze. “Men and women were made for one another. You are a sinister spinster.” “Better a man’s shadow […]

regardless of their difference in religion, Egyptian women share the same struggle when it comes to paving political careers.

MMW thanks Ali Eteraz for The Huffington Post tip. Last week, Peter Daou at The Huffington Post wrote about the use of the internet’s growing and powerful use as an activist medium. He stated that “[o]ne universal aspect of effective activism is raising awareness and there’s no doubt that the web is an ideal tool […]

I admit, the title put me off a little. Princess Hijab? But when I looked through her flicker albums, I was blown away. Princess Hijab is an anonymous 20-year-old guerilla street artist based in Paris, who began her “noble cause” of “hijab-ising” advertisements in 2006. She does this by using spray paint and a black […]

‘Eid Mubarak to everyone! ‘Eid ul’adha is a reflective time for Muslims all over. There’s the story Abraham and Ismail’s sacrifice to God and what that sacrifice means in terms of our own relationships to God. There’s also Hagar’s story of being in the desert and actively asking God to help her find food and […]

I have been wanting to write about this for a looooong time. As a South Asian who grew up in Canada, Hindi films (aka Bollywood films) were always a way to stay connected to the my South Asian heritage. However, I have always known this to be a problematic connection, for a number of reasons: […]

SAL.AM magazine is “a freely distributed, quarterly lifestyle magazine, targeted at Muslims”, according to the magazine’s website. The original idea was to have a paper magazine, which is why there’s a mock-up featured on the site. I am not comfortable with this woman’s body on the front of the magazine, with her head cut off. […]

A week ago, Heba Akad, the daughter of famous Moroccan singer, Laila Ghofran, was brutally murdered while sleeping over at the house of one of her girlfriends. Her girlfriend, Nadine Gamal, was also murdered and died from stab wounds and a slashed neck. Heba, who was stabbed half a dozen times, called her husband as […]