A Muslim woman in Canada alleges that she was fired because of her headscarf. “It’s stopping anybody perving on anybody in there really.” My favorite quote from The Sydney Morning Herald’s story on a local pool putting up privacy curtains for Muslim women’s swimming hours. Meanwhile, here’s another story about ladies-only times at public Australian […]

This article was written for Muslimah Media Watch by Anny Gaul. Yesterday, The New York Times ran an article about what Iraqi women are wearing these days. It paints a picture of a once-secular society’s pluralism run amok: “Vendors around the Kadhimiya mosque in northern Baghdad sell all manner of women’s clothing, from drape-like black […]

Netflix offered Sabah: A Love Story, a story about a devout Muslim Canadian woman who falls in love and has to deal with the subsequent culture clashes that result. Arsinée Khanjian stars as Sabah, a Muslim woman in her forties who has never been married and dutifully takes care of her mother, while her controlling […]

Apparently, and without much to my own knowledge, I, as the generic Muslim female, have been gettin’ the haraam on in public washrooms. Okay, a huge exaggeration but this stems from a frustration rooted in a justified source of contempt for media coverage of the female body of the non-European/White persuasion. There is something sincerely tiring about this voyeuristic obsession with not only the sex lives and sexualities of women but those, in particular, of Muslim (see also: ethnic, brown, ‘other’) women…

While the state-run Pakistan Television channel (PTV) maintains its reputation as the government channel, a growing number of private channels have a tendency to sensationalize news with their shiny news desks, attractive anchorpersons and modern shows, something I have seen in channels across state lines in India.  The “masala angles” (news with dramatizations of a […]

The common-law wife of an accused terrorist in Edmonton, Canada, speaks out after his arrest. More here. The Los Angeles Times reports that Muslim and Jewish women grow close at monthly meetings about spirituality. The Women’s Legal Centre in South Africa welcomed the draft of the Muslim Marriages Bill as a way forward for Muslim […]

The headline of a recent series about Muslim women of the community in the Utica Observer-Dispatch reads, “Behind the veil: Stereotypes can be frustrating for Muslim women.”  Major groan.  You know what else can be frustrating for Muslim women?  Headlines like “Behind the veil.” But for the most part, this article, and its related stories […]

The ongoing sexual excesses of Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi routinely make headlines. In fact, the tabloid fodder that is his life has been somewhat of a release for me in a time of heavy news (Egypt and Tunisia, anyone?).   Orgies with showgirls, presents for nubile barely legal girls who are “just friends,” and assorted […]

It is a scene that wouldn’t be unfamiliar in France or Belgium: a woman’s hijab is snatched away by strangers on the street from her head despite her protest. She is told she shouldn’t wear it, or rather, she has no right to because her wearing it mocks other women and femininity itself. But it […]

Na’ima B. Robert’s second book, “Boy vs. Girl” is set in a South Asian community in Britain. The two main characters, Farhana and Faraz, are sixteen-year-old twins trying to negotiate their identities as the children of Pakistani immigrants and as Muslims.  Robert attempts to tell the story of struggling with trying to find a sense […]