On Sunday, November 13th, TLC is set to premier a new 8-episode series: All-American Muslim in the United States. As this comes from the same channel that brings American viewers Sister Wives and the Kate+8 debacle, I’ll admit my immediate thoughts surrounding the show are wary, to say the least, when it comes to its […]

Steven James (director of the classic American documentary Hoop Dreams) and Alex Kotlowitz’s The Interrupters (2011) looks at the work of a group of violence preventers—the Interrupters—in Chicago. Inspired by an article on CeaseFire—the violence prevention organization the Interrupters work for—that ran in the New York Times Magazine by Alex Kotlowitz in 2004, the film […]

“My voice is a gift from God.” Khaira Arby in an interview with Steve Hochman for Spinner. Reading through a list of upcoming acts at my local music venue, I came across a woman whose name I hadn’t heard of before—Khaira Arby. Intrigued, I clicked on her act to learn more about her. Singing in […]

BHUTTO is the definitive documentary that chronicles the life of one of the most complex and fascinating characters of our time. Hers is an epic tale of Shakespearean dimension. It’s the story of the first woman in history to lead a Muslim nation: Pakistan. –Synopsis from the film’s website Duane Baughman and Johnny O’Hara’s 2010 […]

Earlier this month, Ms. Magazine ran an article that looked at breast cancer stigma in Saudi Arabia.  The article provides breast cancer statistics in Saudi Arabia (without citation or link), breast cancer statistics in the United States, and American expat Carol Fleming’s experience with breast cancer in Saudi Arabia. Fleming suggests that promoting pink products […]

In an issue of last month’s X-Factor comic (#217), one of the series’ long-time characters—M, also known as Monet St. Croix—revealed that she was Muslim (“I’m a Muslim and a mutant!”) during anti-Muslim protests in New York City, akin to the ones that took place last year in response to the proposal to build a […]

Pearls on the Ocean Floor, directed by Robert Adanto in 2010, profiles female artists who identify with an Iranian background to discuss their work.  The 16 artists explore the fluid confluence of identity, religion, and political expression for Iranian women as they strive to present it in their art.  The film is currently making its […]

Women Without Men, directed by Shirin Neshat, looks at the visually evocative and at times interspersing lives of four women in Iran in the early 1950s.  It is a time of political unrest, as Prime Minister Mossadegh faced increasing opposition from US and British-backed movements.  The film explores the women’s relationships with men and their […]

The back of her novel describes Taslima Nasrin’s Revenge: In contemporary Bangladesh, Jhumur marries for love and imagines life with her husband, Haroon, will continue much as it did when they were dating.  But once she crosses the threshold of Haroon’s family home, Jhumur finds she is expected to be the traditional Muslim wife: head […]

After reading Nicholas Kristof and Sheryll WuDunn’s Half the Sky earlier this year, I began to frequent Kristof’s blog at the New York Times website, “On the Ground.”  While I found parts of his book lacking in portraying some of the women’s own voices (there are places where women from the developing world are portrayed […]