The development of a university course about Muslim women in the media and the threats faced by Muslim women activists would appear to be two very different stories. Yet they were both illustrated by nearly identical photographs: a lone Muslim woman wearing black clothing + black niqab. This is far from the first time such […]

Progressive Muslim Identities: Personal Stories from the U.S. and Canada is a recently-published anthology, edited by Vanessa Karam, Olivia Samad, and Ani Zonneveld.  As described by Zonneveld in the book’s introduction, “This is not a book of Islamic theology or history; a reader looking for that has other sources.  This book is a snapshot that […]

A research in Iraqi Kurdistan proves that there is a link between mental disorders and Female Genital Mutilation. Iraqi Kurdistan has banned FGM last year, but at the moment, an approximate 40% of the female population in Kurdistan has undergone this procedure. In Sudan, an opposition leader has received criticism about his comments on women rights in the country. […]

After having written my undergraduate dissertation on depictions on Mexican First Ladies in political cartoons, I gained some insight into what it means to be a woman portrayed in editorial cartoons. Despite how funny political cartoons may be, they might also carry very strong messages, and these are often gendered. Political cartoons are a powerful […]

By all standards, 2011 was quite an exceptional year for men and women in the Arab world. It was a year of dramatic transitions marked by the so-called Arab Spring of political democratization and social emancipation. It all started in Tunisia, going through Egypt and Libya in the West, and continuing to drag on in […]

Fatimah Tuggar is one of the artists Jiwa has discussed, in his article on Imaging, imagining and representation: Muslim visual artists in NYC. As  Munir Jiwa has pointed out, the past couple of decades have seen “the larger tropes of Islam/Muslims—terrorism, violence, veiling, patriarchy, the Middle East—become the normative frames and images within and against which Muslim artists […]

Veena Malik is a Pakistani actress with a special flair for controversy. She first made major headlines after confronting a Mullah who accused her of inappropriate and vulgar behavior while participating on the Indian reality show ‘Bigg Boss.’ Her confrontation was praised by many, as she took a stand against general double-standards thrown at men […]

The excessive use of tear gas during protests in Bahrain endangers women protesters in particular. Many miscarriages and spontaneous abortions have been linked to this dangerous gas. At Uganda’s Makerere University a student has been denied access to an exam with her hijab, as she was deemed not be ‘legally dressed’ to sit an exam. It […]

The Crescent Directive was, for me, a fun but perplexing read.  The concept is simple and noble: it gives guidelines for American Muslims on how to lay a groundwork for action in our communities in order to improve our image in America. Written by Khurram Dara, the book starts out with looking at how Islam […]

Miriam Cooke has described her use of “Muslimwoman” in one word as a reference to embracing and performing a singular gendered and religious identity, a way of reflecting the intertwining of gender and religion and describing this erasure of diversity. In 2008, in her essay on deploying this term, Cooke explained: The neologism Muslimwoman draws […]