This piece was originally published at PolicyMic. By now you have probably already heard of the harem of Tunisian sex-warrior slaves heading to Syria in order to give up their young bodies to the appetites of deprived rebels to fulfill ‘jihad al-Nikkah’ — “Sexual Jihad” — and are coming back to the country with bellies […]

A couple of years ago I attended a lecture delivered by Dr. Natasha Bakht at the University of Alberta, who had come to advocate for women’s right to religious accommodation in the courtroom, a subject which proved to be quite divisive. I wrote a post about it on my personal blog, as I personally felt […]

During Ramadan, a great uproar took place in Nigeria over actions by the government that were interpreted as trying to legalise child marriage. During a constitutional review, Senator Ahmed Sani Yerima argued that a subsection of Nigeria’s 1999 constitution should not be removed as it affects the rights of Muslim women. Section 29 of the […]

The news here in Quebec – and in many other parts of Canada – has been flooded in the past few weeks with stories about the newly-proposed Charter of Quebec Values.  Formally announced on Tuesday, September 10 (although some details had been leaked a couple weeks prior), the charter, if eventually passed as law, would […]

When you google the possible variations of these words: Women, Role & Arab Spring, you will be faced with massive numbers of articles, studies and interviews that examine thoroughly women’s involvement in the Arab Spring. The prevalent sentiment of such works revolves around how it’s newsworthy that “Women played an active role during the Arab […]

A few weeks ago, I attended the Critical Muslim Studies summer school in Granada, Spain. One of the speakers, Fatima Hamed Hossain, a lawyer, spoke to us about the social and political participation of Muslim women in Spain. There are about one million Muslims who currently reside in Spain, with an estimated number of about […]

In the past few years, images of Muslim women in war settings have become increasingly common, from depictions of Syrian female rebels to all-American girls being compared to Chechnya’s so-called “Black Widows.” Last year, while writing an article on the “Black Widows” I started reading reports about Muslim women’s participation in armed struggles and noticed […]

Recently, the Huffington Post re-published an Associated Press article on Sufi resurgence in Somalia. Following the withdrawal of the armed militant group Al-Shabab from the country’s capital of Mogadishu, Somalis are once again allowed to engage in Sufi practices without fear of death and violent repression. The article paints a landscape of men and women […]

I recently came across this video by UNICEF Nigeria about a community’s difficulty in getting all of their children vaccinated against polio. Polio mainly affects children under the age of five, where it can cause muscle weakness, irreversible paralysis, and death. This video recounts the story of a small settlement called Hawan Dawaki in the […]

For more than 20 years there has been a continuous stream of bad news where Somalia is concerned with images of war, famine and piracy. Now with Al Shabaaab driven out of Mogadishu, and the Somali Transitional Government and African Union in control of the capital, Somalia seems to have joined the Africa Rising tide, […]