A couple of weeks ago I came across this BBC Panorama  story on “Women at risk” which warns that “some Sharia councils in Britain may be putting Muslim women “at risk” by pressuring them to stay in abusive marriages.” The story presents a case of a couple going to one of the Sharia councils for […]

The weeks following the Boston bombing have been filled with media reports with all-too-familiar suspicion of Islam and –as Nicole explored in a recent post— hijab-wearing Muslim women. However, both local and international media largely missed an act of activism from my part of the world that had taken place even before Ann Coulter appeared […]

When I converted to Islam, before Love Inshallah (which Merium reviewed last year) and Sex and the Citadel, I was immersed in a religious culture that had an ambivalent relationship with sex and sexuality. While the women in my community occasionally discussed matters of “lawful” vs. “prohibited” when it came to sex, they were also […]

When I was growing up in a small city on Canada’s East Coast, many of my classmates had no idea where Pakistan was located. It was the mid-eighties and I was unable to convince them I was NOT Indian just because both my parents were born in India. I decided to do an extensive geography […]

For the past two years, sweeping political changes in parts of the Middle East have had a profound impact on socio-cultural and legal traditions. Arab women have been at the forefront of this change, exercising their rights as political citizens and raising their voices against injustices within their own countries and in support of others […]

Cooking hasn’t been one of my strong points ever, and after getting married to a family whose cuisine was completely different to mine, I was lost. Since most of the dishes prepared in my husband’s home are unique, their recipes were pretty hard to find online as well. That’s when I found Thasneen Ansi’s blog […]

This post was written by guest contributor Hafsa, and originally published at Sisterhood. Last June, while visiting a north-western province in Sri Lanka, I had the chance of observing a community development initiative that focused on women’s empowerment and enhancing their role in participatory democracy. One of interesting prescripts that I observed was that most […]

This post was written by guest contributor Yasmin N. Ali. I was seventeen years old when I first encountered, in full force, the hierarchies that are often built into many Muslim communities.  Back then, I was fighting to make my debate team coed so I’d get one more year of experience before I graduated high […]

This post was written by guest contributor Yasmeen Nizamy. “Sexual harassment is a crime that’s inexcusable!” This is the title of the campaign that HarassMap started recently, coinciding with the launch of their annual report on the latest statistics and analyses on sexual harassment in Egypt (the report is not yet available online, but I […]

Last October, I wrote a post discussing FEMEN’s tactics to “liberate” Muslim women in France. Since then, FEMEN has hit the media again with their International Topless Jihad Day campaign, which was said to be in support of Amina Tyler, who despite her association with FEMEN has condemned  the burning of Islamic symbols and the […]