This is a guest post, written by Layla in response to our Doha Debates Roundtable. I’m a Muslim woman by birth and cultural affiliation that has lived in the U.S., the Middle East, and most recently, France.  For a year and a half now, since President Sarkozy first began advocating the ban on the face […]

Last month, Tory councilor Gareth Compton was arrested and later released on bail for writing a message in Twitter that said: “Can someone please stone Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to death? I shan’t tell Amnesty if you don’t. It would be a blessing, really.” Compton has apologized for the Tweet and has declared that he was quite […]

In case you haven’t heard enough about Bill 94 from my two posts this week, I wanted to let you know that today, December 3, is a day of action against the bill.  Below are some suggested actions from the Non/No Bill 94 Coalition: Speak up! Write, email, phone, fax Quebec Premier Jean Charest, along […]

(See Part 1 here.) I didn’t make it to the Friday panels because of schoolwork, but I was able to catch the talks on Saturday (November 20).  The first panel was called “The Theoretical and Analytical Challenges of Identity Politics,” with speakers Monique Deveaux, Cécile Laborde, and Beverley Baines; the second panel was entitled “’Managing’ […]

Quebec’s Bill 94, which would deny access to public services to women who wear niqab, is back in parliamentary hearings and, by all accounts, likely to pass.  This past weekend, an international conference entitled “Revealing Democracy: Bill 94 and the challenges of religious pluralism and ethnocultural diversity in Quebec” was held at Concordia University in […]

When discussing prominent Pakistani women, references are usually made to former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, human rights activists Asma Jahangir and Hina Jilani, or even entertainers like Zeba Bakhtiar and Nazia Hassan.  Pakistani women like Mukhtaran Mai or Asia Bibi have also rightly garnered media attention for different reasons. Fatima Jinnah, sister and confidante of […]

Last month, the Qatar Foundation’s Doha Debates took on the French niqab ban, discussing the motion: “This House believes France is right to ban the face veil.” Since the niqab ban (or the “burqa ban,” and we’ve dubbed it) has been a big media issue on MMW,  a few of MMW’s ladies decided to get […]

Lauren Booth, half sister of Tony Blair’s wife Cherie Booth, a human rights activist and a British journalist working for the Islamic Republic of Iran’s state channel PressTV, caused an gasping uproar when she converted to Islam a little less than a month ago, after having an alleged spiritual experience while at the tomb of Fatima Masuma in the Shi’ite holy city of Qom.

Early this month Amparo Sánchez Rosell (President of the Islamic Cultural Centre in Valencia) met with the Special Commission on the Study of Gender Violence of Les Corts Valencianes. As reported by ABC Agencias and WebIslam, Sánchez asked the commission to eradicate the idea that Islam consents or encourages gender violence, which she believes is […]

Recently, NPR analyst Juan Williams was quoted as saying, “…when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.” on The O’Reilly Factor. As a […]