The desire to crown an intelligent, sexy-yet-fashionable lady as the Carrie Bradshaw of the Middle East has been a fierce competition, because, you know, there is nothing more mysterious than the lack of sex and dating in the Middle East. With the help of a string of labels, high society, and awkward adventures in romance, […]

This is a guest post, written by Layla in response to our Doha Debates Roundtable. I’m a Muslim woman by birth and cultural affiliation that has lived in the U.S., the Middle East, and most recently, France.  For a year and a half now, since President Sarkozy first began advocating the ban on the face […]

Angelina Jolie is known more for being the sexier half of Brangelina and her patchwork family, but her luscious lips and film projects are a close second.  The latest controversy regarding the actress’s directorial debut flick in Bosnia is about a Muslim woman. The yet-to-be-titled film is set in Bosnia on the eve of the […]

Last month, Tory councilor Gareth Compton was arrested and later released on bail for writing a message in Twitter that said: “Can someone please stone Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to death? I shan’t tell Amnesty if you don’t. It would be a blessing, really.” Compton has apologized for the Tweet and has declared that he was quite […]

This was originally published at American Bedu. American Bedu is pleased to present an exclusive interview with an inspirational Saudi woman, Aysha AlKusayer.  Aysha (and her husband) have always been writers.  Aysha now shares with American Bedu readers about a TV dramady she has lead with a group of 15 Saudi women under the umbrella […]

In case you haven’t heard enough about Bill 94 from my two posts this week, I wanted to let you know that today, December 3, is a day of action against the bill.  Below are some suggested actions from the Non/No Bill 94 Coalition: Speak up! Write, email, phone, fax Quebec Premier Jean Charest, along […]

(See Part 1 here.) I didn’t make it to the Friday panels because of schoolwork, but I was able to catch the talks on Saturday (November 20).  The first panel was called “The Theoretical and Analytical Challenges of Identity Politics,” with speakers Monique Deveaux, Cécile Laborde, and Beverley Baines; the second panel was entitled “’Managing’ […]

Quebec’s Bill 94, which would deny access to public services to women who wear niqab, is back in parliamentary hearings and, by all accounts, likely to pass.  This past weekend, an international conference entitled “Revealing Democracy: Bill 94 and the challenges of religious pluralism and ethnocultural diversity in Quebec” was held at Concordia University in […]

When discussing prominent Pakistani women, references are usually made to former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, human rights activists Asma Jahangir and Hina Jilani, or even entertainers like Zeba Bakhtiar and Nazia Hassan.  Pakistani women like Mukhtaran Mai or Asia Bibi have also rightly garnered media attention for different reasons. Fatima Jinnah, sister and confidante of […]

Women Without Men, directed by Shirin Neshat, looks at the visually evocative and at times interspersing lives of four women in Iran in the early 1950s.  It is a time of political unrest, as Prime Minister Mossadegh faced increasing opposition from US and British-backed movements.  The film explores the women’s relationships with men and their […]