Last Saturday, the city where I live in Western Canada held its annual Pride Parade. This year and against all odds, the first member of my mosque participated in the parade. Sister Sarah (a pseudonym) decided to participate in the parade after years of struggling with reconciling her faith with her sexuality. She decided “to try […]

I recently came across this video by UNICEF Nigeria about a community’s difficulty in getting all of their children vaccinated against polio. Polio mainly affects children under the age of five, where it can cause muscle weakness, irreversible paralysis, and death. This video recounts the story of a small settlement called Hawan Dawaki in the […]

When I was a teenager, my dad and I used to enjoy looking at the graffiti painted all over Mexico City. While my dad was a critic of the graffiti that was just scribbles and swear words and obscene signs, we enjoyed those graffitos that were not only truly artistic but also political. Graffiti was, […]

In Part 1 of this post, I introduced to you activist, artist and documentary filmmaker Red Summer. She along with the women in her upcoming film Al Nisa: Muslim Women in Atlanta’s Gay Mecca have been creating intentional spaces of community for Black Lesbian Muslims, where they can share and connect without negotiating the multiple […]

Oppression works in strategic ways. When we think of who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed, as Muslim women in “the West” we often automatically think about the white liberal feminist who speaks on the behalf of “Third World” women, women of colour and Muslim women. However, what about the level of social […]

Mainstream media often incites rebuttals from Muslim women defending themselves against vapid stereotypes and negative portrayals. Ostensibly, these include “We are not oppressed,” ”We play sports,” “We are educated and have choices,” “We have agency and support those who do not,” and so on and so forth.  Muslim women writing about inspiring feats of Muslim […]

For more than 20 years there has been a continuous stream of bad news where Somalia is concerned with images of war, famine and piracy. Now with Al Shabaaab driven out of Mogadishu, and the Somali Transitional Government and African Union in control of the capital, Somalia seems to have joined the Africa Rising tide, […]

I recently came across a publication by Cordaid, a Dutch development organisation, called “Looking for That Other Face: Women Muslim Leaders and Violent Extremism in Indonesia” (available here). This publication recounts the stories of six quadragenarian Muslim feminists from three islands of Indonesia (Aceh, Java and Lombok): Ibu Umi Hanisah (Meulaboh), Badriyah Fayumi (Kota Bekasi), Enung Nursaidah […]

In 2007, when Iranian president Ahmadinejad declared that ‘we don’t have any gays in Iran’, he was met with widespread media criticism. Yet, much of the world seemed content to believe in the crux of what he was saying: that according to conventional wisdom, there is no space for homosexuality in Islam. As the West’s […]

Movie stars have always fascinated me. We follow their dressing sense, emulate them, secretly envy them and even the most polite among us feel obliged to pass snide remarks on them as if they belong to each one of us. In this email interview, Pakistani actress Saeeda Imtiaz, who portrays the role of Jemima Khan […]