For me, Gayle Tzemach Lemmon’s The Dressmaker of Khair Khana is a journalistic field story masquerading as a feel good beach novel in the Oprah Book Club genre. That isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy reading it, but I felt it warranted something more. While Lemmon’s storytelling is her strength–the way the book is organized […]

What does one of the world’s premier fashion and culture magazines have in common with one of the world’s most relentlessly brutal dictators? A love for Asma al-Assad. In the recent issue of Vogue, writer Joan Juliet Buck profiles Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s charming, educated, eloquent and fashionable wife for her February 2011 piece “Rose […]

After our review of Boy vs. Girl, a couple readers asked for MMW’s thoughts on The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf.  Having really enjoyed the book when I read it last summer, I was happy to oblige! Beware: minor spoiler alerts! Written by Mohja Kahf, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf tells the story of Khadra […]

Recently, I was in a bookshop with my daughter. We were in the children’s section, enjoying the vast array of colorful books. Lift-the-flap books, tactile books, storybooks, craft books, there is a great selection available. However, this diversity only goes so far. While books now will make a small effort to have characters that aren’t […]

It is a scene that wouldn’t be unfamiliar in France or Belgium: a woman’s hijab is snatched away by strangers on the street from her head despite her protest. She is told she shouldn’t wear it, or rather, she has no right to because her wearing it mocks other women and femininity itself. But it […]

Na’ima B. Robert’s second book, “Boy vs. Girl” is set in a South Asian community in Britain. The two main characters, Farhana and Faraz, are sixteen-year-old twins trying to negotiate their identities as the children of Pakistani immigrants and as Muslims.  Robert attempts to tell the story of struggling with trying to find a sense […]

The Violence is Not Our Culture (VNC) Campaign and the Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) network recently launched a new publication on zina (illicit sex) laws and their tentative (re)introduction in some predominantly Muslim nations.  “Control and Sexuality – The Revival of Zina Laws in Muslim Contexts,” is an attempt by civil society organizations […]

Despite some memorable characters and moments, as well as the (ultimately brief) acknowledgment of Hind Husseini’s work and life, the books fails to be anything more than, as the Omar El-Khairy notes in a review of the film, “Palestine as Hollywood fantasy.” While the film is markedly different from the novel in many ways, El-Khairy’s critiques remain as relevant as for the book as they do for the book. The book is written to be a film seemingly more about sexually adventurous, politically aggressive and unorthodox Palestinian Muslim women…

The desire to crown an intelligent, sexy-yet-fashionable lady as the Carrie Bradshaw of the Middle East has been a fierce competition, because, you know, there is nothing more mysterious than the lack of sex and dating in the Middle East. With the help of a string of labels, high society, and awkward adventures in romance, […]

Although the wives of the Prophet are held up as examples for Muslim women to follow, little is told about the human beings behind the women on pedestals. We all get told the same stuff—how Khadija supported her husband, Aisha’s work as a jurist and teacher—but the discourse focuses on their actions, not their persons. […]