While in Washington, D.C., last month, I attended a forum on Muslim women’s rights titled “Women and the Politics of Change in the Middle East,” at the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. It was sponsored by the Women’s Learning Partnership, an international NGO dedicated to women’s leadership and empowerment, especially in Muslim majority […]

German-Turkish writer Seyran Ates thinks Islam needs a sexual revolution. This might seem a little tongue-in-cheek, given the countless political revolutions post-due in predominantly Muslim countries, yet Ates’ book couldn’t be timelier. Muslims, like everyone else, are exposed to sex at an earlier age, despite marrying later than past generations. It isn’t hard to prove […]

With the recent release of the suspected Pan Am 103 bomber, the 40th anniversary of Gaddafi’s coup, and improving relations with the west, Libya’s been in the news a lot lately. Next week,  Colonel Muammar al Gaddafi (Libya’s quirky dictator, known as much for his peculiar fashion sense as his outrageous statements) will make his […]

Uighur Women in the Spotlight The media loves Uighur women. They give them lots of margins, and inches on front pages. They plaster their photos and quote them favorably. In prominent photo spreads, they marvel at their exotic traditional attire. They sympathize with their struggle against the brutal, ruthless Communist China. Looking at the photos […]

The state of Georgia, which just last year infamously jailed a woman for wearing a hijab in a courtroom, is now under controversy again: this time Georgia State University is discriminating against a former student and visiting instructor. The start of the bullying began when Dr. Mary Stuckey, a senior faculty member in the communications […]

There is already a consensus amongst Islamic scholars that makes this debate illegitimate based on the Quran and the Sunnah, therefore the debate rather futile unless you can undoubtedly prove that it is not Islamically illegitimate-something neither the proponents or opponents did.

I’m not a dog person, or a cat person, or a pet person. But I love horses, so naturally I perked up when I saw a headline about a blind Muslim woman who uses one as a guide.  Then I realized the headline specified, “Muslim woman”, and my wandering mind came back from my daydream […]

I saw the movie Taken with my friend and her husband the other day and walked out of the theater feeling scared. It’s not a horror movie; the plot focuses on the sex trafficking of young women. The buyers are rich Arab men, of course. I wanted to be angry with the filmmakers for portraying […]

On Thursday, February 26, Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) welcomed Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders and sponsored a viewing of his short film Fitna. Muslimah feminists Irshad Manji and Daisy Khan were on CNN commenting on the issue, specifically whether or not Geert Wilders should be welcomed by our government and how it impacts Muslims. You can […]

All week, all I and my Arab and Arab-friendly friends (fellow Near Eastern studies graduates) have been talking about is Arabesque: Arts of the Arab World, being held at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.  It is the largest congregation of Arab artists ever. As a new Washington, D.C. resident, my status as an expatriate […]