By now many Muslims have heard of the tragic murder of Marwa el-Sherbini, mother, daughter, wife, pharmacist, who lived in Germany while her husband completed his Ph.D. May God give her peace and grant her paradise. According to the BBC: Marwa Sherbini, 31, was stabbed 18 times by Axel W, who is now under arrest […]

As I’m sure many of you have seen already, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said last week that he supports a commission to consider banning the wearing of burqas in public places.  Here are some excerpts of his speech, quoted from this article: “We cannot accept to have in our country women who are prisoners behind […]

Sophie Ashraf, also known as The Burkha Rapper, is an Indian Muslim female rapper for whom Muslim identity seems central to her art. This comes across clearly in her following statement on the Blind Boys website: Its like when you really like a band, you wear T-shirts of that band, Well we really, really like […]

I wrote last week about a positive portrayal of a Muslim woman who had recently been voted president of a mosque.  I’m going to stick with the positive stuff for at least another week (although, considering the state of global media portrayals of Muslim women, this probably won’t last too much longer) and talk about […]

There is already a consensus amongst Islamic scholars that makes this debate illegitimate based on the Quran and the Sunnah, therefore the debate rather futile unless you can undoubtedly prove that it is not Islamically illegitimate-something neither the proponents or opponents did.

It seems as of late, the media has taken a very keen interest in the personal details of the lives of Muslim women. My fellow writers here at MMW have discussed this phenomenon. The Associated Press is now adding to this by telling us how Hamas is getting in on the matchmaking business. The title […]

Muslimahs who work hard in shaping the depiction of themselves and their sisters in the media, and who are engaged in Islamic feminist discourse to dispel cultural and literalist concepts unjustly attributed to them, are often left flattened under the heavy heap of misrepresentations and stereotypes by both Muslim and non-Muslim agencies. I would like […]

As I count the hours to the day I return to Malaysia, I’m compiling my notes and thoughts for a small research project on media images of women in the capital. But I’ve already started collecting preliminary data; my immense curiosity in the representation of Muslim Malay women in the current media took me as […]

News media reported at the beginning of the month that Saudi Arabia will hold its first beauty pageant, now in its second year. This pageant, unlike the standard pageants that feature contestants in various outfits and judge them on their appearance, is looking for “Miss Beautiful Morals.” The contest, open to women ages 15 to […]

The right to an education is one of the most basic rights that any person can have. Yet this right is often denied to women, including many women in various Muslim societies. We have examples of women in the formative era of Islam who benefited from education and who were scholars in their own right. […]