I grew up with hundreds of fond memories when I moved in the third grade to a house of baby-pink bricks in the Deep South of the United States. There was a tree in the yard for my sisters and me to climb during the summer months and to avoid altogether during the spring when […]

…However else the fiction functions, it fills you with the sound of crows chirping, alive alive alive. But that’s temporary too. Tell my story, begs the past, as if it was a prayer for an imagined life or a life that’s better than the life you live -For Brothers of the Dragon by Terrance Hayes […]

I remember once when I was in third grade, I was assigned a worksheet to familiarize myself with the structure of an atlas. I found pages of maps of the world. Much like anyone else does when they stumble upon a map, I automatically looked for the city of Atlanta, where I lived and called […]

The days are getting longer and all too hot. The heat is unbearable with the sun’s directness. Open windows can only do so much. Ramadan is the perfect moment for you to realize just how much the body needs water. We are sixty percent water, but in the middle of June, it can seem a […]

In Copenhagen, a swimming club has recently started offering female-only sessions to allow more girls the opportunity to swim. Since it began, the program has drawn around 246 girls of non-Danish origin (interestingly, it is much more difficult to find information on whether any girls of Danish ethnic origin also take part). The numbers are […]

I will never be surprised by the amount of discrimination and racist language used in state policy. From Canada’s Bill C-51 to America’s Patriot Act, proposed bills and enforced legislation say a lot about current atmospheres of tension. Most recently, a proposal has been made in Belgium to ask newly admitted immigrants to sign an […]

We have all heard of the male gaze, and some of us have heard of the contested female gaze where “the gaze” refers to the way images are created with a male (or female) subject in mind. I have been thinking about what “the gaze” might mean when the subject is Muslim. All this began […]

“Ask a Muslim” events have become frequent in the West with the rise of Islamophobia. Now, a restaurant in Melbourne has offered a chance for members of the local community to ask Muslim women any questions they have. As the leader, Hana Assafiri has taken it upon herself to lead group question and answer sessions […]

I used to lie about being Muslim. I would pretend that I was any other minority. It depended on the friend group I was trying to impress. Sometimes I masked myself as a Mexican girl. Other times I decided that my father was Arab, while my mother was White. I’m mixed! I would say. I […]

The word ‘bomb’ has so much weight now that it can bring crowded roomfuls of people down to hushed tones. Just as you cannot yell “fire” in a crowded theatre, you cannot say the word ‘bomb’ on an airplane. Well, if there is anyone who really cannot say that word in that specific location, it […]