I am not an Islamic scholar, therefore my opinions on Islam do not count. Worse still,  I’m told that it’s not my place to have an opinion on Islam at all. This is the general climate of thought in Malaysia put forth in the recent proposal by the country’s main Islamic party, PAS, to investigate […]

Last week, Canadian Governor-General* Michaëlle Jean caused a huge storm in the media by eating a piece of seal heart while on a visit to an Inuit community in Nunavut, northern Canada.  In the context of increasing international (and domestic) outrage against the seal hunt in Canada, Jean had this to say about her act […]

News media reported at the beginning of the month that Saudi Arabia will hold its first beauty pageant, now in its second year. This pageant, unlike the standard pageants that feature contestants in various outfits and judge them on their appearance, is looking for “Miss Beautiful Morals.” The contest, open to women ages 15 to […]

The right to an education is one of the most basic rights that any person can have. Yet this right is often denied to women, including many women in various Muslim societies. We have examples of women in the formative era of Islam who benefited from education and who were scholars in their own right. […]

In early April, Mukhtar Mai, the Pakistani survivor of a tribal-ordered gang rape who prosecuted her rapists rather than accepting a tradition of suicide after rape, married her bodyguard, Nasir Abbas Gabol. Scathing condemnations of the marriage came from Pakistani writers, women’s groups, and news outlets. While the circumstances under which she married are troubling, […]

When I first read the BBC’s article on Tajik women who are left destitute because their Islamic marriages (nikaah) were not recognized by the secular government in Tajikistan, I have to admit that I cringed and felt a bit defensive. Here was another story portraying Muslim women as poor victims of Muslim men but, even […]

The Fédération des femmes du Québec (Federation of Quebec Women; abbreviated as FFQ) recently had a special assembly in order to clarify its position on whether headscarves should be permitted for people working in the public service.  (The question of “reasonable accommodation” for minority groups has been the subject of intense debate in Quebec for […]

It’s become common belief that Muslim women, particularly those wear the hijab, are liberated from the media-driven standards of beauty that values the thin and the willowy. But it’s a belief that couches on the idea that head-coverings and modest clothes provide little incentive for showing off a great looking body in public. In other […]

Reading Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s commentary in The Independent reminded me a bit of a group of people that Khaled Abou El Fadl mentioned in his introduction to Amina Wadud’s Inside the Gender Jihad. The group of people I refer to are “self-hating Muslims” with “tormented soul(s)” who seem all too eager to assuage the bigoted view […]

I wrote a little while ago about the media coverage of the Toronto sexual assault case in which the female complainant was ordered by the presiding judge, Justice Norris Weisman, to remove her niqab while testifying. At the time that I posted my earlier article, hearings were underway in Ontario’s Superior Court to appeal the […]