NPR did a piece on the “honor killing” of Sandeela Kanwal on January 26, 2009. Kanwal was the daughter of Chaudry Rashid, a Pakistani immigrant who lives in a suburb of Atlanta. The police in Clayton County (where Kanwal and Rashid lived) say that Rashid killed his daughter because she wanted to divorce her husband and Rashid […]

CBC radio’s weekly documentary program, Dispatches, recently ran a documentary by Natasha Fatah on Nia Dinata, one of Indonesia’s best known film directors. In the documentary, entitled Cinema, censorship and sex, Fatah speaks with the internationally acclaimed director about her latest film, Chants of Lotus, as well as her experiences with film making in Indonesia. […]

Dr. Asifa Quraishi, a specialist in Islamic law at the University of Wisconsin, was recently profiled as part of a series called Inside Islam: Dialogues and Debates, created by the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Wisconsin Public Radio and described as “a new media initiative that seeks to challenge misconceptions and stereotypical perceptions about Islam and […]

Recently, Australia’s ABC National Radio show, The Religion Report, covered the issue of racism experienced by Muslim women. In light of a recent Australian report entitled “Race, Faith and Gender” published by the Islamic Women’s Welfare Council of Victoria that assessed the impact of racism on Muslim women, host David Rutledge interviewed Joumanah El Matra, […]

The internet is abuzz with talk about an all new rock band, The Accolade. Nothing special, you would think, until you realize that not only are the members all women, but all Saudi women. On the day the band made the front page of The New York Times (NYT), their ‘friends’ on their MySpace page […]

“Audio blogging” is the new ‘it’ thing in Egypt. Cheap and censorship-free in a country where the airwaves are controlled by the government, it’s not hard to understand its appeal. There are many new web radio stations out there, but perhaps one of the most interesting is Banat w bas, Girls Only, which began streaming […]

A few months ago, my mother gave me the CD of a Muslimah who she saw rapping at a masjid in Philadelphia. The CD is titled Muslimas with Attitude and the artist is Miss Undastood (link to her MySpace page here). She’s still a relatively new rapper who has released a few mixed-track CDs. Listening […]

This was written by Amal and originally published at Improvisations: Arab Woman Progressive Voice. In Lebanese singer Nawal el Zoghbi’s latest video clip, “Albi es’alou” (ask my heart), the director wanted a really sexy man to play the singer’s love interest. Of course, there are the usual ways of sexing men in these video clips: […]

Mona Eltahawy recently did an interview with Ron Kuby on Air America Radio on the recent New York Times articles about hymen reconstruction, a Moroccan couple in France who divorced because the wife was not a virgin, and feminism in Islam. The interview was 12 minutes, which is longer than those five segments you see […]

The three-hour public radio show Forum devoted one of its hours two weeks ago to discussing Muslim women in Northern California. Host Michael Krasny talked to four women — Amra Tareen, Dian Alyan, Farhana Khera, and Shaherose Charania — and emphasized their positions as successful career women, “practicing Muslims,” and of Asian heritage. All of […]