I first heard about the film The Source via a Mark Kermode film review. Put simply, it is a story set in a remote North African village (the country is not named in the film). The village depends on income from visiting tourists and the there is little work for men there, unless they move […]

While there has been much publicity about whether Saudi Arabia will send any female athletes to the London 2012 Olympics (the latest news is that they have allowed women to compete), there is another Muslim-majority country that definitely won’t be sending any female athletes. Actually, they won’t be sending any male athletes either, because this country does […]

To people of a certain age, the word Supergran might bring to mind a Scottish superhero from the 80’s, but this week a headline about an Afghan “supergran” was a world away from Saturday afternoon TV. The article tells us that Zarifah Qazizadah is Afghanistan’s only female village chief; in fact, she’s only the second […]

Muslim women were well represented in the Time Magazine list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World this year. Samya wrote yesterday about three of the women, Samira Ibrahim, Manal al-Sharif and Maryam Durani, who are portrayed as women fighting against oppression and in wider media coverage are clearly identified as Muslim women, […]

Burqa, burqa, burqa. Will we ever reach the stage where there is nothing more to say on the subject? Sometimes I think we’ve covered every angle of critique, but then there comes yet idiocy to be challenged. Worse still, this is idiocy in the name of art. Witness artist Rachel Joy’s latest work. Here we […]

With the recent high-profile acquittal (on charges of sodomy) of Malaysia’s former Deputy Prime Minister and current opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim, there has been increased international interest in Malaysian politics. Along with Ibrahim, the spotlight has also fallen on his People’s Justice Party and one of its leading lights, Nurul Izzah Anwar, daughter of Ibrahim […]

The development of a university course about Muslim women in the media and the threats faced by Muslim women activists would appear to be two very different stories. Yet they were both illustrated by nearly identical photographs: a lone Muslim woman wearing black clothing + black niqab. This is far from the first time such […]

When an act of bigotry or prejudice occurs, it is often accompanied by an insidious denial that an act of bigotry is even occurring. You would think that cancelling advertising during the reality television show All-American Muslim because showing Muslims as ordinary people apparently equals doom to the US – as the company Lowe’s (and […]

Look at pictures of real live white women wearing hijab! All the exclamation marks in existence could not hide that these are the usual soundbites in a story that gets repeated more often then Home Alone at Christmastime. The problem with these statements being that not only do they erase the experiences of convert from […]

I was really looking forward to reading this book, as I still love young adult fiction and was intrigued to see what a Muslim take on the genre would read like. From Somalia with Love focuses on 14-year-old Safia who lives with her Mum and two older brothers in the heart of the Somali community […]