What does one of the world’s premier fashion and culture magazines have in common with one of the world’s most relentlessly brutal dictators? A love for Asma al-Assad. In the recent issue of Vogue, writer Joan Juliet Buck profiles Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s charming, educated, eloquent and fashionable wife for her February 2011 piece “Rose […]

In the last few years, the international emphasis on locating social rights within the Qur’an has primarily been driven by and for women. NGOs in Morocco, Malaysia, Jordan, Afghanistan, Tunisia, and countless other Muslim countries have rallied communities, encouraging them to look critically at the patriarchal structures that have dictated Qur’anic interpretation to date. Through […]

The story of Colleen LaRose, an American citizen charged with terrorist-related crimes, made headlines last March as Americans were assured that yet another terrorist plot had been foiled. Colleen La Rose, infamously known as “Jihad Jane,” was pictured all over the news, described in most cases as a victim of brainwashing. Captivated by the fact […]

Google executive Wael Ghonim became one of the faces of the Egyptian revolution through the Facebook page “We are all Khalid Said,” which was a vital spark to the revolution. But another important spark was a video posted by 26-year-old Asmaa Mahfouz from the April 6 Youth Movement, where she declared that she was going […]

This article was written for Muslimah Media Watch by Anny Gaul. Yesterday, The New York Times ran an article about what Iraqi women are wearing these days. It paints a picture of a once-secular society’s pluralism run amok: “Vendors around the Kadhimiya mosque in northern Baghdad sell all manner of women’s clothing, from drape-like black […]

Apparently, and without much to my own knowledge, I, as the generic Muslim female, have been gettin’ the haraam on in public washrooms. Okay, a huge exaggeration but this stems from a frustration rooted in a justified source of contempt for media coverage of the female body of the non-European/White persuasion. There is something sincerely tiring about this voyeuristic obsession with not only the sex lives and sexualities of women but those, in particular, of Muslim (see also: ethnic, brown, ‘other’) women…

The headline of a recent series about Muslim women of the community in the Utica Observer-Dispatch reads, “Behind the veil: Stereotypes can be frustrating for Muslim women.”  Major groan.  You know what else can be frustrating for Muslim women?  Headlines like “Behind the veil.” But for the most part, this article, and its related stories […]

The ongoing sexual excesses of Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi routinely make headlines. In fact, the tabloid fodder that is his life has been somewhat of a release for me in a time of heavy news (Egypt and Tunisia, anyone?).   Orgies with showgirls, presents for nubile barely legal girls who are “just friends,” and assorted […]

On Friday, the President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia fled his homeland as it was engulfed by an uprising, sparked by the suicide of Mohamed Bouazizi, an unemployed university graduate who had taken to selling fruit in Sidi Bouzid.  When authorities confiscated his wares for not having a license, Bouazizi set himself on fire in front […]

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani is now a high-profile human rights case around the world. The chronology of Ashtiani’s case has been reported by a number of sources, but here’s the basic story: in 2006, Ashtiani was accused of having an illicit relationship with two men after the death of her husband. However, the confession presented by […]