The internet is abuzz with talk of Khamisa Sawadi, a 75-year-old Syrian widow living in Saudi Arabia who was sentenced to 40 lashes and 4 months in jail for the crime of khalwa, being alone with a man who is not her relative. The verdict, issued on March 3rd, also demands that Sawadi be deported after […]

A longer version of this article appears on altmuslimah, while this version appeared at Racialicious. I finally got around to watching AmericanEast this weekend. Full disclosure: I had originally read Tariq Nelson’s review, which was a pretty good rundown. AmericanEast is an attempt at mainstreaming American Muslims and attempts to portray the struggles Muslims face […]

There’s a new Moroccan movie out that, on the surface, seems to tackle the issue of pre-marital sex in the country. They’re a dime a dozen these days, but this one is stirring up controversy like crazy. Why? I’ll give you a hint: The name of the movie is Amours Voilées,  Hijab al-hob, which translates […]

All week, all I and my Arab and Arab-friendly friends (fellow Near Eastern studies graduates) have been talking about is Arabesque: Arts of the Arab World, being held at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.  It is the largest congregation of Arab artists ever. As a new Washington, D.C. resident, my status as an expatriate […]

Okay, I’ll admit it. When I first heard the title, my immediate reaction was to roll my eyes. “Not again!” I thought. “Not another book with sad kohl-rimmed eyes peeping out from under a black niqab on the cover and which talks about a poor/ downtrodden/ oppressed (add your own adjectives) Muslim woman who is beaten/ […]

Two women, Khuloud Faqih and Asmahan Wuheidi,  have become judges in Islamic courts in the West Bank. This is such a great milestone, not only for Palestinian women, but for Muslim women, too. We often have our ability to be judges questioned because we’re seen as too emotional and irrational to be judges. This bias was evidenced by […]

This was written by Cycads and originally appeared on her blog. \So there was this American guy, Jake, who sat with Gareth and me at lunch last Saturday and was telling us how much he wanted to go to Malaysia because it’s apparently a great place to meet women, and claimed that the country is […]

CNN recently featured a story of a social science experiment conducted by Dr. Akbar Ahmed, professor and chair of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington. …[t]he project that’s been dubbed Journey into America…is an offshoot of a 2006 endeavor that took him, and a few of those traveling with him now… into the Muslim […]

Sex. Always an attention getter. So there’s no wonder why Jasad, or “Body,” a new quarterly Arabic magazine published in Lebanon, is making waves in the Arab world by promising to “deal with the forbidden,” the *gasp* human body. The magazine’s logo is ‘body’ spelled in Arabic and the first letter is a broken handcuff, […]

A Toronto judge has recently ruled that a complainant in a sexual assault trial – who happens to wear the niqab, a face-covering worn by a small percentage of Muslim women – will have to uncover her face in order to testify.  According to this article, The judge, Ontario Court Justice Norris Weisman, determined he […]