Welcome to the Islamic freak show! Where women can be bought in bulk, wear one-eyed veils to avert temptation, and brides come with gift receipts! In a sensationalist news article, the BBC covers the unfortunate story of an Arab ambassador that decides to have his marriage annulled upon seeing that his new wife was “cross-eyed […]

Last week, I reviewed Emma Tarlo’s book Visibly Muslim: Fashion, Politics, Faith. This week, I got the chance to speak with her further about the book and her experiences writing it. Sara: Was there any inter-generational tension involving “newer” hijab fashions? Emma Tarlo: With most of the people I interviewed, their mothers did not wear […]

In her new book, entitled Visibly Muslim: Fashion, Politics, Faith, Emma Tarlo captures the diversity in the way that Islam is practiced against the backdrop of multi-cultural Britain. Refreshingly, the book did not aim to answer whether or not covering was a part of Islam, and neither did it represent the views of Muslim women […]

Christopher Dickey’s analysis of an interview with Defne Bayrak (pictured below), the wife of the Jordanian suicide bomber Humam Al-Balawi in Afghanistan, asks the wrong questions. Instead of pondering the reason why a woman of Bayrak’s intelligence would condone suicide bombing, he creates an image of women involved in al-Qaeda that made me feel like […]

I Can’t Think Straight is a film by Shamim Sarif that attempts to deal with culture, religion, and sexuality within the period of an hour and fifteen minutes. The story tells the tale of Leyla, an Indian Muslim, who falls in love with Tala, a Jordanian Christian. Heavy on Orientalist porn and thin on a […]

Recently, The Christian Science Monitor published a series of articles centered around the hijab. While I appreciated the valiant effort to offer some insight into the discourse around the hijab and the lives of Muslim women, it ultimately left me frustrated. The articles treat the headscarf as the heart of women’s issues in Islam. Centering […]

Reading Claudia Ricci’s scatterbrained piece in The Huffington Post about text message divorcing was not only infuriating, but also a reminder of many of the things, which I hate about attitudes towards women’s issues in the Middle East. The article opens with a snarky line about men being able to marry four women, and then […]

The advertisement begins with a short video of a woman moving from the back seat to the front seat, followed by the simple question, “drive?” The video sets the tone for this campaign, which asks the general population to discuss and also listen. The n7nu campaign has a very simple message: one of awareness.  The […]

A thin square of shiny polyester is the main player in Atiha Sen Gupta’s play, What Fatima Did. The plot focuses upon the sudden decision of a non-religious young woman to wear hijab. An insightful and funny look into the reaction of those around her, the play asked some very good questions about identity, religion, […]

As Muslims, we are asked about the details of our personal lives, and our relationship to what happens on the global stage. Because Islam does not have an official spokesperson, there is a relentless curiosity about our voices. Almost like a horrible reality show, many scramble for the role of spokesperson. Therefore, when a prominent […]