Complete with your standard extreme close-up of a hijab-clad woman confusingly looking at the voyeuristic lens before her, the Guardian’s “Comment is Free” section recently featured a piece by writer Nadiya Takolia, entitled: “The Hijab has Liberated Me From Society’s Expectations of Women.” Probably like many readers of this blog, my initial reaction consisted something […]

In April of 2011, 20 year-old Jessica Mokdad was allegedly gunned down by her stepfather Rahim Alfetlawi. The media uproar over the murder was immediate and, unsurprisingly, cloaked under the sensationalized trope of “honor killing.” While Mokdad’s family, including her biological father, stressed that Alfetlawi had issues of control and was not acting out of […]

Exactly a year ago on March 15th, the official day of Syrian uprising, I wrote about the Vogue feature on Syrian first-lady Asma al-Assad, which glamorized the haute couture-clad co-dictator while painting a painful picture of a woman genuinely fighting, on her own terms, for “democracy” in Syria.  The piece itself could not have been […]

The burdens of poverty affect most, if not all aspects, of social relations. Most prominently (and unsurprisingly), women carry the greatest burden of the social predicaments that arise from a dire lack of economic security.  Women in groups hit hardest by financial strain easily become seen as sources of further strain on their families. Education […]

When your everyday news consists of the purported collapse of your government and a small but unfortunate obsession with treating the ill with fake drugs at a major regional cardiology institute, it seems that very few things will actually cause you to upchuck any remaining disgust floating around in your metaphorically ulcer-ridden stomach. Fortunately for […]

Veena Malik is a Pakistani actress with a special flair for controversy. She first made major headlines after confronting a Mullah who accused her of inappropriate and vulgar behavior while participating on the Indian reality show ‘Bigg Boss.’ Her confrontation was praised by many, as she took a stand against general double-standards thrown at men […]

On December 6th, a headline hit Facebook and Twitter feeds that an unnamed Islamic cleric – a Salafi cleric at that – residing in an unnamed European country declared that women were forbidden from touching and eating fruits and vegetables that were phallic shaped unless accompanied by (“preferably”) a male relative who would then have […]

The election of the so-called ‘moderate Islamist’ party, Ennahda, to the head seat of the government, has put Tunisia at the center of the discussion on the rise of Islamist post-Arab Spring. Media coverage has focused primarily on the alleged ‘inevitable’ imposition of the headscarf on all women and the possibility of great setbacks to […]

When I clicked on a link forwarded to me, I was pleasantly surprised to see a woman wearing a headscarf with a guitar in hand, an almost rare sight given some socio-communal stigmas associated with music. I was even more intrigued by the subject of the video, “The Ramadan Song”–a take on Adam Sandler’s “The […]

What does one of the world’s premier fashion and culture magazines have in common with one of the world’s most relentlessly brutal dictators? A love for Asma al-Assad. In the recent issue of Vogue, writer Joan Juliet Buck profiles Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s charming, educated, eloquent and fashionable wife for her February 2011 piece “Rose […]