This was written by Cycads and was originally published at her blog. Since it’s Ramadhan, I thought it might be quite appropriate that I have a special religious feature in my feminist/Malay lit blog. So in today’s post I’d like bring to your attention a little known novel by Fatimah Busu, Salam Maria (or Hail […]

It’s always encouraging to see magazines for Muslims, especially for Muslim women, in parts of the world in which Muslims are the minority. Currently in North America, we have magazines like Azizah Magazine and Muslim Girl, both catering to the female, Muslim population of the region. Now the U.K. has Sisters Magazine, with the tagline […]

This was written by Eman and originally appeared at Hatshepsut. A while back I went into the Diwan bookstore in Zamalek only to find out that a book that I had spent around two weeks proof reading for publication is finally out (though as expected my name is not mentioned in it). This book is […]

We want to talk about sex and sexuality. Particularly, its politics. Particularly the power it has over us, the power to keep us quiet about violences that happen in our homes, the power to kill us with diseases we are not educated about or cannot prevent; how it is used for coercion and how it […]

Recently Mara Brock Akil, creator and producer of one of my favourite shows, Girlfriends, was featured on the August 2008 cover of Domino magazine (pictured to right). The show, initially about four, but then after a few seasons three, Black girlfriends, gained much critical acclaim for its content and its willingness to focus on serious […]

This was written by Tasnim and originally appeared at epiphanies. A while ago, the assistant editor of Destiny, a South African women’s magazine, emailed me asking for help in finding information on successful Libyan women online. Unsurprisingly she had found very little, since what information there is about Libyan women does not fit the criteria […]

Jennifer Heath published The Scimitar and the Veil: Extraordinary Women of Islam in 2004. And I loved it. It profiled strong, intelligent women in Islam’s history, including the women of the Prophet’s life, but also Hadith scholars, poets, warriors, etc. It was a quick read despite the thickness of the book because Heath made these […]

It’s a common assumption that Muslim women don’t—or can’t—speak for themselves. Fawzia Afzal-Khan aims to break that idea into tiny pieces with a book: Shattering the Stereotypes: Muslim Women Speak Out (2005). The book is a compilation of works written by different Muslim women, with a forward written by Nawal El Saadawi. In the introduction, […]

In 2007, hairdresser Deborah Rodriguez published a memoir of her experience in Afghanistan. Despite the cringe-inducing subtitle — An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil — the book itself, Kabul Beauty School, isn’t bad. (Interestingly, the book goes by a different subtitle in the U.K., The Art of Friendship and Freedom.) Rodriguez is moved to […]

This was written by Sakina and originally appeared at Ruined by Reading. The Veil And The Male Elite by Fatima Mernissi is probably worth reading even if you don’t agree with it, and it should only take you 2-4 hours to get through. I don’t agree with a lot of what she says, and I […]