This post was originally published at the interrogations of shamshouma. In the last few weeks, The Saudi TV channel MBC has been broadcasting an ad of a Saudi national breast cancer campaign, organized by Zahra Breast Cancer Association. Officially launched on October 10th, the national campaign is led by Princess Hessah Bint Trad Al-shaalan (the […]

This year the Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality (WISE) held its third global conference in Istanbul Turkey. The conference, titled “WISE: Muslim Women Leaders at the Frontlines of Change,” lasted just four days, from October 14 to October 17, 2011.  It included panel discussions, debates, and training sessions. This year’s conference was centered […]

Last week, as Halloween approached, searching for Halloween costumes online was interesting. Once more, like every year after 9/11, I was faced with the issue of hijabs, niqabs and burqas as Halloween attire.  As we’ve previously discussed on MMW, hijabs, niqabs, burqas and the like are not okay as Halloween costumes. More generally, cultural appropriation […]

Nisreen Mansour al Forgani, centre, with fellow Gaddafi female militia members. She is now under armed rebel guard in a Tripoli hospital. Picture: AFP Gender roles are nowhere more prominent than in war, as we see male political and military leaders taking the most visible roles in armed conflicts, promoting the tendency to see the […]

Fatima Mernissi’s book The Forgotten Queens of Islam is a historical study that analyzes women’s place in the public sphere and their relationship with power. Her book explores the ironies and oxymora of women and power through Islamic history. Mernissi transcends the historical to discover the bits and pieces of the situations surrounding political women […]

Ahdaf Soueif’s novel The Map of Love, published in 1999, tells the history of Egypt through two parallel plots, set at the beginning and at the end of the 20th century. During a conversation with Egyptian intellectuals, one of the characters argues, familiarly, that: we live by slogans. We take comfort in them: the great […]

In June, a small business lawyer and politician named Farha Ahmed was in a run-off election against Harish Jajoo for a city council seat in Sugar Land, Texas. In the final hours of the election, an anonymous mailer was sent around the town proclaiming that Ahmed is connected to Al-Qaeda. The “concerned citizen” links her […]

This was written by Kubra. In Turkey and beyond, it is a common misconception that struggle for women’s rights is a new phenomenon. This struggle is thought of as not organic to the Muslim world, but imported from “the non-Muslim West.” This particular misconception has not only nurtured the neo-colonialist rhetoric of “liberating Muslim women,” […]

This article was written by Peter Gray. France’s decision to outlaw face veils sparked a robust debate about religion and women’s rights. In response to concerns that the law will negatively impact Muslim women, its advocates frequently mention that it enjoys the approval of several prominent French Muslim feminists. What is not mentioned, however, is […]

HBO is set to air “Love Crimes of Kabul” at 9pm tonight as part of their documentary films summer series. This intimate documentary goes inside Badam Bagh, a women’s prison in Kabul, Afghanistan, to tell the stories of three women who are being accused of committing “love crimes” or more commonly termed, “moral crimes”. Among […]