In the post from earlier today, I talked about Muslim women featured in fashion news under the “fetishization” category. So instead of fetishization, how about Muslim women as a big joke? For an International Women’s Day show in Norway, designers created some new styles of burqas, including one outfitted in holly-jolly-Santa gear. The picture included […]

All our hearts ached for the victims of the devastating tsunami a few of years ago. One of the worst natural disasters in recent history. Many people asked why such a horrible thing would happen. How could so many innocent lives be taken like that? Who knows why things like this happen. Who knows God’s […]

Valentine’s Day isn’t a day where women can just forget about all the problems we face as a gender every day of the year. This parody of Valentine cards has a decent aim: to remind us that just because we may receive a card or some flowers one day out of the year,–or two, if […]

Recitation of the Qur’an can be a spiritual experience for even those who don’t understand Arabic. The sounds and rhythms of the words remind listeners of the Qur’an’s poetry. For those who do understand Arabic, the experience is only more profound. In the Muslim world, the professional Qur’an reciter (qari’) releases tapes and CDs and […]

This originally appeared as part of a larger post at the blog Pedestrian. It has been edited for length, but you can read the entire version at the original website. I don’t know whether this is considered a virtue or a vice: Laleh Sedigh’s showing up for a sports race with a face full of […]

Last year, the Internet advocacy group Avaaz created the video “Stop the Clash of Civilizations” to complement a petition by the same name. Avaaz, “Talk is rising of a ‘clash of civilizations’. But the problem isn’t culture, it’s politics – from 9/11 to Guantanamo, Iraq to Iran. This clash is not inevitable, and we don’t […]

Speaking of words we call ourselves, I must mention the derogatory terms. “Hojabi” and “muhajababe” have worked their way into our vocabulary (hojabi even has its own entry in UrbanDictionary.com). And, they are pervasive enough that non-Muslims have begun to use them in reference to us. They exist because we ourselves have invented them and […]

The names we call ourselves has been on my mind a lot lately. It started when I read a fellow blogger’s post that about an alleged hejabi- and niqabi-only cafe. In it, she implied that right-wing conservatives used the term “hijabi” and “niqabi”. Since I don’t consider myself a Muslim version of Michelle Malkin, I […]

You’ve probably heard about the recent ruling given to a Saudi gang-rape victim: 110 lashes added onto the original sentence of 90 lashes because she protested her sentence to the media. It’s a horrible and vindictive sentence, and the callous treatment this woman has received as a victim is insulting to her, Saudi Arabia, and […]

Recently, the U.K.’s Daily Mail ran a story uncovering the fact that between 2005 and 2006, 24* hymen reconstructions have been performed on “immigrants and British women of ethnic origin” by the National Health Service (NHS), which is funded by taxpayer money. Hm. (Personal thoughts: Do you think that if these 24 women were white […]