This is the second part of our conversation on dejabbing or removing hijab. Read part one here.  Tasnim:  Have any of you considered dejabbing as a way of not being marked as Muslim, and do you feel like where you live makes a difference? Nicole: My reasons for dejabbing are complex, and complicated, and personal – […]

The Toronto Star recently had an article interviewing four women about their “dejabbing” experiences. The title is “Why we stopped wearing the hijab.” However, the seemingly simple notion of removing the headscarf is acknowledged to be a complicated process. The article explains that “From safety to spirituality, each woman has her own reasons” for no longer wearing a […]

  Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley writes for the Time about how violence against Muslim Women is racist and misogynist. On December 10, Wheaton College associate professor of political science Larycia Hawkins announced on Facebook that she would wear a hijab. On Tuesday, the professor was placed on administrative leave by the Christian liberal arts school. Amid Rising […]

Julia Joffe at Huffington Post recently interviewed several “Mothers of ISIS recruits”, whose “children abandoned them to join the worst terrorist organization on earth.” The interviews are heartbreaking and as several of the commenters note, the piece is difficult to read though it is beautifully written  (if that word can even be applied to this context). It […]

In the ultraconservative context of Saudi Arabia, appeals such as recycling and creating Western style public libraries, are breaking new ground: They are coming from some of the more than 900 female candidates in the kingdom’s first nationwide election in which women are able to run — and vote. American Muslim women who wear religious […]

So the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino’s burqa ban (voted on since 2013) now involves fines for those who dare venture into Ticinese streets in burqas. I always joke that Switzerland is about twenty years behind its neighbors politically and here we are with Swizerland catching burqa ban fever. Things that get voted in Switzerland take […]

Moroccan sociologist and feminist writer Fatima Mernissi passed away on the 30th of November, aged 75. As the news broke on social media, many of us at MMW shared stories about the lasting impact Mernissi had on our lives, and what we had learned from this pioneer of Muslim feminism. Here is that conversation.   […]

The growing use of social media in recent years provides opportunities for Muslim women to speak truth to preconceptions. Wired lists 5 women quashing preconceptions about Islam on social media (including MMW’s own Sana Saeed). A group of Saskatoon Muslim women in Canada is trying to break through stereotypes by inviting other women to meet them, and […]

A recent report in The Independent highlighted that there has been a spike in Islamophobic hate crime of more than 300 per cent since the Paris attacks. Most victims of the UK hate crimes were Muslim girls and women aged from 14 to 45 in “traditional Islamic dress.” Even before the attacks, the recent high […]

On the occasion of Michel Houllebecq’s Submission being released in English, I volunteered to read it in order to review it here. In fact, I refused to read Submission when it first came out in French, and I still approached the book begrudgingly. The short version? I hated it. At the ripe old age of […]