On the morning of June 30, 2009 a quadruple-murder case rocked the city of Kingston in Ontario, Canada. Four women were found dead, submerged in the Rideau Canal, in their Nissan Sentra. At first it seemed as though boaters had come across a teenage prank gone awry or the victims of a horrific car accident. […]

In Afghanistan a widow and her daughter were stoned and shot to death, because they were accused of ‘moral deviation and adultery’. May Allah grant them both justice. Rape cases are soaring in refugee camps in Somalia. Conflicting statements on women’s issues, such as single mothers, make one wonder what the future really will be […]

Although Muslim women are often portrayed in the media as wearing nothing but black abbayas, black hijabs and, often times, burkas and niqabs, Muslim women are claiming a place within the fashion industry. On one hand, some Muslim women have become visible as models; on the other, some are working to change things for those […]

In a short interview in The New Yorker this past September, American photographer Lynsey Addario, who has covered the Middle East and South Asia for over a decade, talks about her experience photographing Muslim women: “The more I photographed Muslim women, the more I was able to metaphorically strip away the burqas and hijabs, and […]

This piece was written by a Guest Contributor, Summar Shammakhi. The interim Libyan leader, Mustapha Abdul Jalil declared Libya liberated on the 23rd October. The content of his twenty or so minute speech was a tribute to the February 17 revolution. He thanked all the brave men and women, all the martyrs, all the injured […]

Women in Afghanistan tend to be depicted as enigmatic objects that defy human comprehension. Media sensationalism and selective reporting bear some of the blame. But thanks to projects like an Afghanistan-based Community Supported Film workshop that trained men and women on how to tell the stories on film, Afghan women are now also using media […]

TLC’s All-American Muslim, which I previewed last week, aired last night in the United States. The show features a group of mostly Lebanese American Muslims from Dearborn, Michigan as they go about their lives. There has been a stream of reviews, mostly positive from mainstream media outlets and ones that are more questioning by Muslim […]

During this years hajj, not only did women outnumber men, for the first time there were trained female hajj guides available. On the first day of the Hajj alone, 20 women miscarried and 7 gave birth. The oldest woman to do hajj this year must have been a 110 (or 109) year old Turkish woman. May […]

Intersections International, a New York-based nonprofit that “works at the intersection of communities in conflict” to “promote peace through dialogue using direct service programs, advocacy, educational and informational outreach,” recently published a report called the “Muslim LGBT Inclusion Project.” The report is a narrative summary of the research done by the project, which started in […]

The election of the so-called ‘moderate Islamist’ party, Ennahda, to the head seat of the government, has put Tunisia at the center of the discussion on the rise of Islamist post-Arab Spring. Media coverage has focused primarily on the alleged ‘inevitable’ imposition of the headscarf on all women and the possibility of great setbacks to […]