Le Temps is the French part of Switzerland’s newspaper of record, and one of the newspapers I read daily. I am a huge fan of their literature section, I have acquaintances who work there, and (full disclosure) I have even had the honor of being citied in that paper. So in other words, I […]

How to keep a hijab on when skydiving in Dubai? A Canadian female skydiving instructor discusses how Muslim women can experience all the excitement in the emirate of Dubai.   What made a young Australian lady defend a Muslim woman against a racial rant? A viral video shows a Muslim couple as victims of a […]

Six years ago I attended a contemporary dance workshop, and while I’ve been dancing for most of my life, what struck me most was one improvisation that involved dancing as if you were the furniture in your room. When we had come up with a sequence of movements representing various wardrobes, nightstands, mirrors, beds and […]

Originally published here.  Where does parody end and self-exoticization begin? At what point does the Arab woman artist, stepping into the so-often imagined space of “The Harem” risk pandering to an audience that seems to have a never-ending appetite for remediations of Orientalist artwork? Lebanese photographer Rania Matar’s wonderful and insightful A Girl in Her Room […]

          Last month Canadian social media went wild with covering puns and jabs at the extraordinarily Islamophobic leader of the government, Prime Minister Harper. The Harper Government are challenging a ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada that allows Ms. Zunera Ishaq to wear her niqab at her Canadian Citizenship ceremony. […]

A local council in Victoria, Australia asked non-Muslim women to wear hijabs to raise awareness and combat islamophobia, stirring controversy.   A group of Muslim Pakistani-American women are pushing the boundaries on how Muslim women are perceived, especially when it comes to the comedy scene. They say: “Nobody expects Muslim women to be comedians.”   […]

Before I go right into this post, I think I should make some things clear. This is not a post about the “moral” or religious side of sex work. In fact, very much the opposite. It is rather an analysis of how sex work is depicted in intersection with Muslim identity and traditionally Muslim garments […]

Azra continues her review of the TV show American Crime. Read her earlier review here.  (Spoiler alerts ahead!) It was a quiet show for Aliyah this week, where she shared only one scene with her brother, Carter. She sets him up with an apartment in Modesto, and has a job lined up for him at […]

This article was originally published at Sixteen Minutes to Palestine  by Sami Kishawi. Saying that this photograph recently resurfaced would imply that it had somehow gotten buried. But that is simply not true. Published for the New York Times just days after Israel pulled back on its most deadly assault on the Gaza Strip yet, the […]

Tajik state television has aired a documentary that alleges that prostitutes in the country have been wearing Islamic veils to earn more money.   Once a month, Muslim women gather in a bright open space inside a brick building near downtown Los Angeles. They come for jumu’ah or Friday prayer. This “all women’s mosque” has […]