David Cameron has been accused of stigmatizing Muslim women after he announced plans to help them learn English and warned that migrant spouses who fail language tests may have to leave the UK. Cameron made it to the top headlines, when he decreed that Muslim women need to learn English, and came up with plans […]

I used to lie about being Muslim. I would pretend that I was any other minority. It depended on the friend group I was trying to impress. Sometimes I masked myself as a Mexican girl. Other times I decided that my father was Arab, while my mother was White. I’m mixed! I would say. I […]

This week, I am excited to write about Secrets Under the Olive Tree, a book about a Palestinian-American girl written by a female Palestinian-American author. As a passionate champion of diverse narratives, I think it is incredibly important to have narratives by writers who belong to the communities they are depicting. I believe this adds […]

Kashif Pasta is the founder of Dunya, a communications agency that aims to bring relatable narratives to South Asian and Muslim communities in North America. He and his team recently produced Zoya, a short film following a high school girl who doesn’t quite expect her peers’ reactions when she decides to experiment with hijab.   […]

The New Year’s Eve assaults and sexual assaults in Cologne (as well as in other European cities, including mine, Zurich) have been all over the news lately and people have been taking cultural relativism a little too far. Within the difficult context of the ongoing influx of refugees since last year in Germany, many see […]

Typically, in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north, discussing personal and marital issues, like sex and domestic violence, is seen as going against the grain. However, an Instagram page is changing how Muslim women in Nigeria share personal problems. Hadja Lahbib’s insightful documentary, Patience, Patience, You’ll Go to Paradise!, focuses on Belgium’s Muslim community, where the older generation […]

I am incredibly proud of Iqbal Al Assaad. The news of her being possibly one of the youngest doctors in the world has been in and out of the media over the last few years. Her story is not a new one and it remains inspiring and yet tainted at the same time. Assad excelled […]

I recently became aware of rape threats made on social media towards Datuk Noor Farida Ariffin, a well-respected former Malaysian ambassador to the Netherlands. Also a lawyer, she was the co-founder of Sisters in Islam, a local non-governmental organisation for women’s rights, and is the spokesperson of a local group of prominent Malays called G25. […]

When Ala’a Basatneh was recently contacted by the office of U.S. Representative Mike Quigley’s, she thought there must have been something urgent about the situation in Syria. But she was invited to attend the State of the Union address as a designated Invitee. Violence against Muslims has skyrocketed in recent years, and especially since the […]

  I was shocked to read recently about evidence of women who were filmed giving two-hour lectures in London in secret closed women-only meetings in community centres ‘glorifying’ ISIS to women and children. Hannah Stuart, a counter-terrorism expert with the Henry Jackson society, labelled the presence of young girls and children “particularly worrying,” in regards […]