This is the first of a two-series post on South Africa’s Muslim Personal Law bill. Today’s post will cover the history of the bill. The issue of Muslim Personal Law (MPL) in South Africa, which has been under scrutiny in the media recently, is a contentious one, with a volatile history that spans over two […]

This week in Doha, Qatar, the “East and West — Women in Media’s Eye” conference took place in Education City. The Peninsula and The Gulf Times both had pieces on the event. However, I was hard pressed to find any articles about the conference in any Western based, English language media outlet. Insha’Allah (God willing), […]

This piece is also posted at Muslim Lookout. I know I just talked about this last week, but all these questions about Canada’s involvement with the rights of Afghan women have remained a major news story, so I thought it was worth doing a follow-up.  There are still quite a few articles out there about […]

A few weeks ago, the news of a new law for Shi’a Muslims in Afghanistan was met with outrage in governments and media around the world.  This law would, among other things, force women to have sex with their husbands and obligate them to seek permission for activities outside the house. News since then has […]

Check out Muslim Lookout for an expanded version of this post. Be prepared for some major eye-rolling in this article from the Calgary Herald.  In it, Mahfooz Kanwar praises Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney (see here for why this is a bad idea), and berates Canadians that he perceives as not having “assimilated” enough. I […]

Salam waleykum, readers! I’m traveling, and so I didn’t have time to put together Friday Links this week. In their place, I’m sharing this great critique with you. It was written by Cycads and originally appeared on her blog. Next week, our regularly scheduled programming will resume, so stay tuned. Any self-respecting news editor would […]

After Sobia’s post last week about The Other Half of the Sky, a Tunisian film that tells a story about a woman’s experience with inheritance laws, I was interested to see this article, which talked about other cracks that women may fall through in another shariah-inspired legal system.  In this case, Mariam Mokhtar is writing […]

I saw the movie Taken with my friend and her husband the other day and walked out of the theater feeling scared. It’s not a horror movie; the plot focuses on the sex trafficking of young women. The buyers are rich Arab men, of course. I wanted to be angry with the filmmakers for portraying […]

The internet is abuzz with talk of Khamisa Sawadi, a 75-year-old Syrian widow living in Saudi Arabia who was sentenced to 40 lashes and 4 months in jail for the crime of khalwa, being alone with a man who is not her relative. The verdict, issued on March 3rd, also demands that Sawadi be deported after […]

A longer version of this article appears on altmuslimah, while this version appeared at Racialicious. I finally got around to watching AmericanEast this weekend. Full disclosure: I had originally read Tariq Nelson’s review, which was a pretty good rundown. AmericanEast is an attempt at mainstreaming American Muslims and attempts to portray the struggles Muslims face […]