A woman in Saudi Arabia defied the driving ban, but while doing so, lost control of her car and died in the accident. Another story here. Interestingly enough, both stories’ headlines have serious warning tones: “Saudi woman defies driving ban and dies” and “Young Saudi woman drives to death.” As if the cause of her […]

At first, I wanted to talk about this article because of the language of this white woman on a mission to “rescue” women in Pakistan. (This language was even reproduced in the MMW Friday links – come on sisters, we can do better than that!) Don’t we have a long enough history of images of […]

Reading through this report entitled Meet Your Average British Muslim Woman… from Asian Image on the preferences of the average Muslim woman in the UK reveals some interesting points about the ways in which Muslim women are viewed within the South Asian community. The reporter appeared “surprised” by some things and found other things “interesting” […]

This was written by Faith and originally published at Muslimnista. The NY Times published an article today titled “In Europe, Debate Over Islam and Virginity”. The article discusses how some Muslim women are surgically reconstructing their hymens before marriage to give the illusion that they’re virgins. The reason why their virginity is connected to their […]

Editor’s Note: A few Fridays ago, we published a link about the uproar over an Islamic studies course, entitled Women in Arabic and Islamic Literature, taught by Dr. Samar Habib at the University of Western Sydney in Australia. We at MMW believe that knowledge is power (yes, clichés and all), and institutions of higher learning […]

Summayyah Meehan’s article for the Khaleej Times starts out like this: “The headscarf, or hijab, is just a small piece of fabric but the controversy that often surrounds it is immeasurable. Muslim women who wear the hijab are often socially stigmatised, in non-Muslim and sometimes even Muslim countries, as being mindless drones who are under […]

Let’s play a game, shall we? It will be like a drinking game, but without drinking. Okay, here are the rules: every time you read a columnist use the follow words in an article that talks about Muslim women, give five dollars to charity: • “pushing boundaries” • “East and West” • “tradition” • a […]

MMW thanks bint battuta for the tip! Why do articles mention women’s clothing when it’s not relevant? Exhibit A: an article on the status of prostitution in Afghanistan (you might recognize it from Friday links). Exhibit B: the story of an attempted kidnapping, from the arms of the child’s grandmother, in Iraq. “A” was written […]

The BBC has a slide show that examines the Western Saharah independence on its 35th anniversary. The slide show is an interesting one, but troublesomely without context: we have no idea when these pictures are taken or by whom. Anyway, the real point of this post. The picture below (like all the others) appeared with […]

Written by Ebtihal Mubarak, originally published on Arab News. JEDDAH, 19 May 2008 — For 25 days supporters and friends of Saudi blogger Hadeel Alhodaif have waited anxiously, hoping that she would emerge from the coma she fell into unexpectedly. But on Friday these hopes died as the 25-year-old writer and social critic — known […]