When I first heard about the solidarity movements happening mainly in the US; the interfaith meeting in Utah,‘Walk a Mile in Hijab’ initiative at a Chicago high school, the Christian professor at Wheaton College, I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I kept thinking it’s a nice gesture but was it necessary?  Weren’t there […]

In a recently aired Saturday Night Live skit, comedian Kenan Thompson played host to a gameshow called Should You Chime in on this? In it, contestants (caricatured as having little intellect and even less of a personal connection to the topics presented) had to refrain from weighing in on recent news items. Even when knowing […]

The Muslimah Media Watch team would like to wish all of our readers a very happy new year! May your 2016 be full of happiness and well-being and bring new goals and new achievements.  

Since I moved to Canada, I cannot go a spring without someone asking what I will be doing to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. The first time I heard it, I was pretty confused. Now I am just annoyed. You’ll see, Cinco de Mayo is a civic holiday in Mexico. We commemorate a battle won against […]

The word ‘bomb’ has so much weight now that it can bring crowded roomfuls of people down to hushed tones. Just as you cannot yell “fire” in a crowded theatre, you cannot say the word ‘bomb’ on an airplane. Well, if there is anyone who really cannot say that word in that specific location, it […]

For the past few weeks I have become increasingly concerned about many of the women in my life. Canada, these days, has seen a rise in Islamophobic attacks, the majority of which target Muslim women. The majority of the attacks have happened in the province of Ontario, but women across Canada report feeling unsafe, including […]

Until December 2, 2015, it was difficult to imagine a Muslim-American woman with a machine gun in her hand.  Even though Muslim-American women have often been accused of being guilty by association when it comes to terrorist attacks, few people made direct connections between the women themselves and the crimes. That changed on December 2nd, 2015, […]

This is the second part of our conversation on dejabbing or removing hijab. Read part one here.  Tasnim:  Have any of you considered dejabbing as a way of not being marked as Muslim, and do you feel like where you live makes a difference? Nicole: My reasons for dejabbing are complex, and complicated, and personal – […]

The Toronto Star recently had an article interviewing four women about their “dejabbing” experiences. The title is “Why we stopped wearing the hijab.” However, the seemingly simple notion of removing the headscarf is acknowledged to be a complicated process. The article explains that “From safety to spirituality, each woman has her own reasons” for no longer wearing a […]

Julia Joffe at Huffington Post recently interviewed several “Mothers of ISIS recruits”, whose “children abandoned them to join the worst terrorist organization on earth.” The interviews are heartbreaking and as several of the commenters note, the piece is difficult to read though it is beautifully written  (if that word can even be applied to this context). It […]