Salam alaikum, readers! This year’s Brass Crescent Award nominations are out, and MMW is proud to be in the running for Best Female Blog and Best Group Blog! Thank you so much to everyone who nominated us! Voting is open until November 19th. Vote now!

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 […]

“I wanted to own the article of clothing that was being talked about,” Jonas Otterbeck says, explaining his reasons for buying a niqab. Otterbeck, who teaches Islamic Studies at Lund University in Sweden, spoke of his view on the niqab on the documentary Black Polyester, the sixth in a sixteen part series broadcast on SVT1 […]

When 32-year-old divorcee Samar Al Badawi went to Jeddah court to challenge a “filial ingratitude” complaint filed by her father, the judge rejected her claims and ruled in favor of her father. And despite documented physical abuse, previous court rulings to lift her father’s guardianship, and even a royal order to send her to an […]

The Real Girl’s Guide to Everything Else, Strike.TV’s peppy new Web series, first struck me as ludicrous. Fast-paced and low-budget, it’s riddled with plot holes and inconsistencies, becoming more fantastical as the first season progresses. The writing lacks depth, the characters lack development, and the show’s thesis whacks you across the head with startling regularity. […]

With articles in Der Spiegel, Rue89, The Telegraph, and a YouTube video in recent weeks, the two self-described web-activists called Niqabitch are making a splash in the French (and European) media landscape. As they said themselves in the Rue89 article, throwing on a burqa in protest of France’s burqa ban would be “too simple.” They […]

One of the most anticipated Ramadan series this year was 3ayza Atgawez, (“I Want to Get Married”), based on a blog-turned-bestselling-book by Ghada Abdel Aal. The series stars Hend Sabry as Ola, an Egyptian pharmacist under pressure to marry having reached the age of thirty and facing the social stigma of spinsterhood. Each episode focuses […]

Founded by two sisters in 2008, the French webzine Hijab and the City has a unique place in the French cultural landscape.  In an interview given to the online news outlet Rue89, one of Hijab and the City’s stated goals was to “give a voice to those who are often talked about but never talked […]

After reading Nicholas Kristof and Sheryll WuDunn’s Half the Sky earlier this year, I began to frequent Kristof’s blog at the New York Times website, “On the Ground.”  While I found parts of his book lacking in portraying some of the women’s own voices (there are places where women from the developing world are portrayed […]

This post was written by M. Lynx Qualey and originally appeared on her blog Arab Literature (in English). Last Friday, the Independent reported that poet Joumana Haddad has been called the “Carrie Bradshaw of Beirut.” Yesterday, National Public Radio said that Ghada Abdel-Aal, blogger and author of Ayza Atgowaz (now a Ramadan TV series), is […]