Editor’s note: A longer version of this post is available on Tasnim’s personal blog. Craig Thompson’s graphic novel Habibi took 7 years to complete and is close to 700 pages. The result is described on the book’s website as “a parable about our relationship to the natural world, the cultural divide between the first and […]

I was really looking forward to reading this book, as I still love young adult fiction and was intrigued to see what a Muslim take on the genre would read like. From Somalia with Love focuses on 14-year-old Safia who lives with her Mum and two older brothers in the heart of the Somali community […]

Fatima Mernissi’s book The Forgotten Queens of Islam is a historical study that analyzes women’s place in the public sphere and their relationship with power. Her book explores the ironies and oxymora of women and power through Islamic history. Mernissi transcends the historical to discover the bits and pieces of the situations surrounding political women […]

Ahdaf Soueif’s novel The Map of Love, published in 1999, tells the history of Egypt through two parallel plots, set at the beginning and at the end of the 20th century. During a conversation with Egyptian intellectuals, one of the characters argues, familiarly, that: we live by slogans. We take comfort in them: the great […]

This great picture from Kawdess is one reason why MMW needs to exist. Thanks to Sabina England for the tip!   We’re going to go on a little vacation until Ramadan starts. We’ll miss you a lot, but we’ll see you again next week!

This was written by Kubra. In Turkey and beyond, it is a common misconception that struggle for women’s rights is a new phenomenon. This struggle is thought of as not organic to the Muslim world, but imported from “the non-Muslim West.” This particular misconception has not only nurtured the neo-colonialist rhetoric of “liberating Muslim women,” […]

The Atlantic featured this picture on its latest magazine, which includes an article about the Arab Spring and the future of democracy in the region. The article does talk briefly about women’s rights in the region, but it seems hardly fitting that there should be a woman wearing niqab on the cover with the fearmongering […]

A new magazine is “making waves” in Europe and North America—or so it would seem from the media coverage. Al-Shamikha, a publication directed to women and published by Al-Fajr Media Centre (Al-Qaeda’s online propaganda distributor), has been defined as “Al-Qaeda’s Cosmopolitan” or “Jihad Cosmo.” The magazine, which is roughly 30 pages long, covers a variety […]

Sila Şahin, a Turkish-German actress, shed her clothes in order to “free” herself from her conservative Muslim background. The Daily Mail says: Ms Sahin’s declared intention was to used the controversial Playboy photoshoot as a call to action for other Turkish girls who suffer the effects of their strict backgrounds, where women’s choices are often […]

“An identity neither begins nor ends on a stretch of land, for identity lives within the heart and consciousness. Land erodes, land evolves; it is plundered, and it is cultivated. It is not the master of its destiny. An identity is elusive; it can be neither contained nor defined by standards other than its own. […]