Inas Nofal aims to win medals for Palestine at international competitions, but training in Gaza presents a challenge. Inas says: “running is my life. Before I go to sleep, I think about which routes I’ll run the next day.” Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world where women cannot legally drive. Over the […]

In Copenhagen, a swimming club has recently started offering female-only sessions to allow more girls the opportunity to swim. Since it began, the program has drawn around 246 girls of non-Danish origin (interestingly, it is much more difficult to find information on whether any girls of Danish ethnic origin also take part). The numbers are […]

Trigger Warning: This post contains discussion of underage rape and of transophobia Four months ago, the Singaporean newspaper The Straits Times ran a few articles on a case involving Malay Muslim transgender man Zunika Ahmad, 39. He had been charged with 20 counts of sexually penetrating a girl, a minor who was between the age of 13 […]

Dedicated just for women, Indian IT major Wipro announced that it has signed a tripartite deal to set up Saudi Arabia’s first all-women business and technology park in collaboration with Saudi Aramco and Princess Nourah University in Saudi Arabia. Leila Ben Gacem is one of many entrepreneurs determined to revive her country’s struggling economy and […]

In the UK, Sadiq Khan, the first Muslim MP for Labour, is campaigning to be the mayor of London. In recent news, comments from an interview with him stated, ‘Questions need to be asked about why Muslim women wear hijabs’. Now at first glance, I thought this must have been quoted wrong. After all, being […]

N.J. fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad embraces a bigger Olympic platform as a Muslim woman. She is the first American in the Olympics wearing a hijab. For the first time in its history, the 1000-year-old mosque at Thazhathangady, famous for its rich architecture and wood carvings, has thrown open its doors for Muslim women in Kerala. Amal […]

Radical Islam is invading Paris’s elite political science universities; or at least that’s what opponents of Hijab Day would have everyone believe. On Wednesday, April 20th, students at Sciences-Po organized a hijab day. Salaam Sciences-Po, the Islamic reflection group behind the event, invited people to don headscarves in opposition of Islamophobia. While Hijab Day has […]

Author’s Note: Quotes are taken from an uncorrected proof. The Green Bicycle is the debut novel by Haifa al-Mansour, based on her movie, Wadjda. Both the movie and the book tell the story of free-spirited 11-year-old Wadjda who enters a Quran competition to raise money to buy a green bicycle. Wadjda reminds me a lot […]

I received a free copy of the H.M. Hymas’s The Prayer Rug from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.   I really wanted to like this book. I love to hear lesser-told narratives, and this one checked all the boxes: it features a female protagonist and Muslim characters. More specifically, the characters are Iraqi, […]

So the French are talking about their enduring obsession, Muslim women and their clothing, again. I am a little late to the ball game on this one, but between a needed vacation and Handshake Gate in Switzerland, I had to walk away from the hate to keep my own sanity. Laurence Rossignol, the French Minister […]