I am not a hijabi. My choice is not religious or political, but rather cultural. Upon my conversion to Islam, it didn’t take too long before I was asked when I would wear hijab, and I was taught how to “properly” wear it. I must admit that I contemplated it for a couple of years. […]

The mayor of Indonesia’s second-largest city Surabaya, Tri Rismaharini, has vowed to close down the city’s largest brothel complex; other mayors have made similar promises, but this particular mayor is known for her can-do approach. Hundreds of Crimea Tatars, mainly women and children, are leaving Crimea for Ukraine, out of fear of how Russian rule […]

Earlier this month, Slate featured a photography-poetry project, “The Secret Lives of Afghanistan’s Female Poets.” The photography-poetry collaboration stems from the work of journalist Eliza Griswold and photographer Seamus Murphy, who reported “Why Afghan Women Risk Death to Write Poetry” for the New York Times magazine in 2012. Griswold and Murphy’s work will be published […]

Crossposted from Tumblr. I have been sent @DivineDavis’ recent popular tweet – complete with the hashtag #letsamahplay – many, many times. It involves a girls’ soccer team and hijab used in protest of an unfair rule. My family and friends thought I might have missed it. Perhaps they thought I might be excited by it. […]

Earlier this month, Shaykh Abu Eesa Niamatullah wreaked havoc on International Women’s Day (IWD) after posting a series of painfully sexist comments on Twitter and Facebook. Reactions were virtually instant and plentiful. Among the more interesting responses, Hind Makki started using #MuslimMaleAllies on Twitter. That the hashtag became widely popular raises questions about the expectations […]

The recent case of a teenage German girl travelling to Syria to allegedly actively join the “jihad” has German experts worried about the threat that men, and increasingly (often very young) women, involved in such activities can present to German society. France has indicted two people for aiding another teenage girl who has allegedly travelled […]

Cross-posted from Tumblr. We don’t know much about ABC Family’s new drama, “Alice in Arabia”, but I already have a feeling that it’s going to be pretty terrible. The network, which targets a younger crowd, has ordered three drama pilots, and one of them follows the story of a “rebellious American teenage girl who, after tragedy […]

Sometimes I don’t know where to start when it comes to critiquing Indonesia’s media, especially television programs. There is so much gibberish that comes out of the TV screen – and increasingly so – these days that sometimes I feel my head is heavy with rants after watching just one program. Having seen so much […]

Black Muslims took to Twitter last month in light of Black History Month, which is celebrated in February in North America. The Muslim Anti-Racist Collaborative (MuslimARC), a collaborative of diverse Muslims dedicated to combatting anti-Black racism, discrimination and exclusion within the Muslim community, launched a Twitter campaign that has opened the door to discussing anti-black […]

I will confess that I first became aware of Noor Inayat Khan, also known as Madeline, only quite recently, that is, during the campaign in 2011 to commemorate her, before it was discovered that she had already been commemorated. I remember looking up her story at the time and coming across her biography, Spy Princess: […]