Taking the title of “Best Documentary Short Film 2012” in the third Mumbai International Queer Film Festival is the telling documentary, “Amra Ki Etoi Bhinno.” The KASHISH – Mumbai International Queer Film Festival, an annual event held in Mumbai, India since 2010, screens films related to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and queer issues India and […]

On the 3rd of June, four Assyrian teenagers were sentenced to probation and community service for attacking a Somali Muslim woman in Södertälje, Sweden. The attack happened on November 17, 2011. The woman, who wears a headscarf, had been out to buy some milk from a shop in Hovsjö. On the way home, a group of teenagers […]

A few years back, when shopping malls turned into major destination for shoppers and tourists in the United Arab Emirates, the issue of how men and women appear in public began to gain greater attention. Mall entrances have come to carry signs and instructions relating not only to pets, trash, bicycles and skaters, but dress […]

A few months ago, while reviewing one of my friend’s profiles on Facebook, I was surprised to see the amount of discussion that Shari’ah rulings regarding marriage provoke in the West. My friend, an orthodox Sunni Muslim and avid follower of the Hanbali school, had commented in a picture from 2010 that depicted Malaysian women […]

In light of several interesting comments to my previous post on the Rochdale “grooming” case, I decided a follow-up piece was in order. Much of the furore surrounding the case has been with respect to race and its alleged role in the attack, specifically: does the “Asian” (Pakistani and thereby Muslim) origin of the attackers […]

The post was written by guest contributor Maheen Nusrat. In the latest episode of Swedish television channel SVT’s investigative news programme Uppdrag granskning, ten Swedish mosques were visited, and in six of them, imams were caught on camera giving advice harmful to women and contrary to Swedish law.  (An unofficial subtitled version of the episode, […]

Complete with your standard extreme close-up of a hijab-clad woman confusingly looking at the voyeuristic lens before her, the Guardian’s “Comment is Free” section recently featured a piece by writer Nadiya Takolia, entitled: “The Hijab has Liberated Me From Society’s Expectations of Women.” Probably like many readers of this blog, my initial reaction consisted something […]

Certain topics related to Muslims seem to go on and on like broken records in European countries. If it isn’t headscarves, it is swimming lessons (like these stories from Germany, Finland, and Norway).  This spring, a story about yet another Muslim family refusing swimming lessons made headlines in Switzerland.  In Basel, the families of five […]

Last week, Samya covered the TEDxMogadishu talks for MMW.  As Samya wrote, “TEDx Mogadishu is not just a meeting of creative minds to gather and share their views on the welfare of the people in Somalia; it is also an opportunity for outsiders to change their perceptions about developments in that country, especially as they […]

A group of nine men of Pakistani and Afghan origin were sentenced to jail recently for using alcohol and drugs to “groom” white British girls for sex.  The abuse took place in the town of Rochdale, near Manchester in northwest England.  The men, aged 24 to 38, were employed as taxi drivers, and included a […]