This post is crossposted at the writer’s blog.  Snow in Amman: An Anthology of Short Stories is a collection of eleven contemporary short stories from Jordan translated and edited by Ibtihal Mahmoud and Alexander Hadded, with a foreword by Samir Al Sharif which provides a very brief overview of the Jordanian short story for the reader unfamiliar with the […]

  In the Skin of A Jihadist by Anne Erelle (not her real name) is a book about a French journalist pretending to be an ISIS fan and interacting with a French-speaking jihadist via Skype. This sentence occurs on the first page: “Do you really love me, Mélodie murmurs, her voice childish and frail.” That one […]

There are many not so nice things about being immediately recognizable as a Muslim in today’s world, but there are a few things that are, usually, nice. One of them is what I like to call the salam nod. You spot a fellow Muslim, and do a nod of acknowledgement, and depending on how you […]

A few weeks ago, I was meeting a friend of a friend for the first time. Now usually, my name gets transformed into Tamsin, or Tasmeem, or Tasmeen (the last two have quite unfortunate meanings in Arabic). In this case, the person I was introducing myself to said “Oh, like that creepy ISI woman.” I […]

Brick Walls by  Saadia Faruqi is a collection of seven short stories set in Pakistan, featuring a diverse cast of characters, from Asma, a widow struggling to feed her child, to the priveleged Rabia, who finds that wealth does not always protect women, to the precocious ten year old Nida, an aspiring cricketer who is […]

  We at Muslimah Media Watch send our very best wishes to our readers this Eid al-fitr! We hope you had a beautiful Ramadan, and a joyous first day of Eid.

A couple of years ago, I bought my first bike. I had a bike as a child, but since I inherited it from my sister it wasn’t technically mine. I loved that battered old thing, used to spend long hours finding all the slopes in the vincinity and rushing down them as fast as I could. Then I […]

Following Malak Kazan’s lawsuit, the Police Department has announced that it will be implementing a new policy for women who wear a religious headscarf In case you haven’t had enough, here is another story on Muslim women fashion bloggers breaking stereotypes  The BBC asks how  London’s young Muslims view the 7/7 attacks, interviewing a group […]

Rebecca Perring writes about “Sham sharia weddings” which leave women “exposed to lying and cheating husbands” In more Sharia wedding news,the Times reports that young Muslims are fuelling the rise of Sharia marriage.  In the wake of this report, the UK’s first female Sharia judge made some comments, stating that the “government cannot ask Muslims not to […]

I was breaking my twenty hour fast when I saw the footage from Sousse for the first time, a video taken by one of the hotel workers who is heard saying, repeatedly: “aleish, aleish tugtel fil naas?” (Why, why are you killing people?). The familiar accent, and the bewildered tone of the man speaking, brought […]