I can’t remember when I first learned that “Paradise is under the feet of mothers.” But I do remember the first time my parents quoted the story when the Prophet was asked who has greater right, the mother or the father, and replied ”Your mother, your mother, your mother, then your father.” This three-fold reiteration […]

The last few weeks in Libya have been tragic, depressing and hopeful by turn.  For months the militia situation in the country had been brewing, with increasing calls for disarmament and unification under a national army on the one hand, and on the other, calls for patience by those making the argument that the armed […]

In exploring the intersection of digital life and Islam over the last couple of years I’ve come across a number of projects and articles examining Muslims and the metaverse, from virtual hajj tours and Islamic sacred spaces in Second Life to academic articles on the concept of “e-hijab,” which the author describes as Muslim women […]

I like the long dark winter months in Sweden. This is something that tends to make people question my sanity. But even I will admit summers here are special, as everything seems to burst into exuberant life, Mother Nature in a hurry to her work done before the cold weather returns. Though the summer is […]

Ramadan Karim to all our readers, we’d like to wish you all a happy blessed month. And a reminder – starting next week will be our series on Ramadan experiences from different parts of the world!

On the 3rd of June, four Assyrian teenagers were sentenced to probation and community service for attacking a Somali Muslim woman in Södertälje, Sweden. The attack happened on November 17, 2011. The woman, who wears a headscarf, had been out to buy some milk from a shop in Hovsjö. On the way home, a group of teenagers […]

Isabelle Eberhardt’s extraordinary life is the stuff of legends – and movies, and operas. Song From the Uproar: The Lives and Deaths of Isabelle Eberhardt, Missy Mazzoli’s multi-media opera, which premiered this spring, explores the unconventional twists and turns of Eberhardt’s short, “operatic” life. You can see the trailer, the Kickstart video, some excerpts and a shorter […]

The Thousand and One Nights is by far the most famous collection of Arab popular narratives.  Its heroine Shahrazad has become the symbol of the complex interactions of gender and power as they relate to the region, from those who see her as a positive agent of change, as in Suzanne Gauch’s interestingly titled Liberating […]

Hayv Kahraman is an Iraqi artist whose work reflects on issues of gender, looking at the victimization of women during war, and the effects of practices such as honor killings and genital mutilation, as well as alienation, marginalization, and displacement. Kahraman addresses these contemporary issues through paintings which have a classical and timeless feel to […]

The two parts of Christopher Marlowe’s play Tamburlaine, loosely based on the life of  the Central Asian emperor Timur the Lame, tell the story of the Scythian shepherd who becomes a conqueror of kings. Although this play was written in the 1588,  it gives us an insight into representations of Muslim women at the time […]