This was written by Shelina Zahra Janmohamed and originally published at Comment is free. The last few weeks have been particularly eventful for Muslim women on Comment is Free. We would have felt extremely exhausted by all the excitement, were it not for the fact that – with the notable exception of Samia Rahman and […]

Ramadan Mubarak everyone! I spent the first day of Ramadan at the Republican National Convention in the Twin Cities protesting the 2,342,343,253 ways (roughly) that our lovely ruling party has screwed over the world. But maybe that’s another story for another blog. This post might be a little shorter than usual because, honestly, marching all […]

Sometimes I wonder why I even browse CNN.com anymore. However, it does tend to make for a good story for MMW each week 🙂 This story about an Iraqi woman being detained because she is an alleged suicide bomber is pretty ridiculous….more so than what I’m used to seeing on there. Anytime mainstream news sources […]

Knowing that my regular post day, Thursday, was quickly sneaking up on me, I frantically searched the internet for something to cover. I used the keywords “Muslim women”, “media,” “news,” and finally “Pakistani women” (trying to cover South Asia). And the majority of the stories I came across in news were very negative. Most of […]

MMW thanks HijabStyle for the links! With the Olympics in full swing, I thought I’d take a quick peek at the way in which media was presenting the participation Muslim women, if they were at all. Initially, while watching the opening ceremony, I heard tidbits of references to the women competitors from Muslim countries such […]

The pen is mightier than the sword. Or the voice is mightier than the bullet, as the case may be. Except that if you’re Muslim, and you use words like “explode” or “hit,” it seems that all possibilities for metaphor might fly right out the window. The very talented Sofia Servando Baig, a Muslim spoken word […]

Women suicide bombers have been receiving increasing coverage in the media in recent years. Just this past week, at least three articles have been written about women suicide bombers in Iraq. The coverage of women terrorists in the Western media is often colored by gender expectations and stereotypes of women as well as the usual […]

Speaking of Muslim women’s clothing in the media…did we expect anything but Islamophobia and sexism from the New York Post? Some of Serena French’s thoughts on an Islamic clothing fashion show in Tehran, Iran, from her article “Perfect for Today’s Medieval Woman”: “Having a bad body day? This chador’s for you. Sexy, it ain’t, but […]

About a month ago NPR did a story on polygyny among African American Muslims in Philadelphia. Coming from Philly, this story hit close to home. In fact, one of the women interviewed is a family friend that I have known since I was a child. Polygyny among Black Muslims is rather complex. Some women, like […]

A Pakistani man, Chaudhry Rashid, in Atlanta murdered his 25 year old daughter this weekend and had his first court appearance today. Deemed an ‘honor killing’, this story is unfortunately not unique. What always confuses me about stories on “honor killings” is that every case of domestic violence that leads to death (which happens all […]