A few months ago I watched Abderrahmane Sisako’s Timbuktu, as part of a retrospective of Sissako’s work at the Walker Art Museum. It stunned me at the time—the film examines how daily life changes in a Malian community where an al-Qaeda group has taken over. While the film focuses primarily on a young family’s tribulations when […]

As is usually the case in France, any time anything happens where Muslims could even remotely be involved, it becomes a media circus – any time is a good time to talk about how “Muslims want it their way” or how “Muslims don’t want to integrate.” Last week, a 21 year old woman in a […]

A community basketball team in Cedar-Riverside Minneapolis, consisting of young Somali girls, made the news recently. These players did not gain attention from media outlets for bashing stereotypes or fighting against the Islamic oppressive patriarchy. They were lauded and positively represented for creating a solution to challenges they faced with their basketball uniforms. Their long […]

Seven Muslim women from around the world are bicycling across Iowa as a way of “promoting female sports participation as a fundamental right“. The 470-mile ride, featuring 8,500 cyclists, began July 19 and finished July 25.   In the last year and a half, as turmoil in Ukraine has dominated the news media’s attention, a […]

This article, co-authored by Laurent Dubois (@soccerpolitics) and MMW’s Shireen Ahmed, previously appeared in Sports Illustrated. A recent special issue of the French Surface Football Magazine includes this portrait of national team player Jessica Houara-d’Hommeaux. The photograph is an invitation, even an incitement. In contemporary France, the discussion about and policing of what Muslim women do and don’t wear is a […]

A few weeks ago, I was meeting a friend of a friend for the first time. Now usually, my name gets transformed into Tamsin, or Tasmeem, or Tasmeen (the last two have quite unfortunate meanings in Arabic). In this case, the person I was introducing myself to said “Oh, like that creepy ISI woman.” I […]

This post was originally published on the writer’s blog.  I left the mosque many years ago. I think the last straw for me was seeing female teachers and preachers telling us that women should not be in positions of leadership; that they should stay home and care for their children; or that a woman’s nature […]

Brick Walls by  Saadia Faruqi is a collection of seven short stories set in Pakistan, featuring a diverse cast of characters, from Asma, a widow struggling to feed her child, to the priveleged Rabia, who finds that wealth does not always protect women, to the precocious ten year old Nida, an aspiring cricketer who is […]

  We at Muslimah Media Watch send our very best wishes to our readers this Eid al-fitr! We hope you had a beautiful Ramadan, and a joyous first day of Eid.

Editor’s note: The writer of this piece wishes to remain anonymous.  This piece is a follow-up to one published last year, and contains discussions of disordered eating.  A few months ago, I was having a conversation with a friend about how hard Ramadan was for me last year. “You know,” she said cautiously, “the exemption […]