Iranian swimmer Elham Asghari swam 20 kilometres in open sea, which is a record breaking distance for Iranian women – but according to officials, her clothing was too revealing and they refused to register her record. A top female police officer, Islam Bibi, has been killed in Afghanistan’s Helmand province by unknown attackers. In Morocco, a […]

Last year, I got a call from a young cousin who informed me, with sheer glee, that the new One Direction music video featured a young Muslim in hijab. Those few seconds in the video that highlighted a giddy, veiled teenager were a breakthrough for young identifiable Muslimahs in the world. I think this meant […]

A few weeks ago, I attended the Critical Muslim Studies summer school in Granada, Spain. One of the speakers, Fatima Hamed Hossain, a lawyer, spoke to us about the social and political participation of Muslim women in Spain. There are about one million Muslims who currently reside in Spain, with an estimated number of about […]

Explosions, gripping fight scenes, artificial intelligence, funny one-liners, sexist playboy arrogance and close-ups of Robert Downey Jr.’s face overlaid with computer graphics are everything I expect when walking into an Iron Man movie. What I don’t expect are convenient and overused Hollywood tropes about Muslim women. So now you know my guilty pleasure. I’m a […]

In the past few years, drones have emerged from virtually been unknown to becoming a symbol of modern warfare. Almost simultaneously, artists have subverted drones by turning them into art in a rising subculture: from the drone cinema that features films shot from hexacopters, and the Drones of New York and quadrocopters fly-dancing in Austria, […]

A court in Burma/Myanmar has found two Muslim women guilty of sparking sectarian violence; both are sentenced to two years in prison with hard labor. One of the women bumped into a monk earlier this year, which resulted in Buddhist monks raiding shops and homes in the region. Many Tajik marriages are arranged, but the […]

In the past few years, images of Muslim women in war settings have become increasingly common, from depictions of Syrian female rebels to all-American girls being compared to Chechnya’s so-called “Black Widows.” Last year, while writing an article on the “Black Widows” I started reading reports about Muslim women’s participation in armed struggles and noticed […]

Late last year, Aceng Fikri, a district chief in the West Java province, ignited public uproar when news leaked that he had divorced a 17-year-old teenager, Fany Octora, via text message. Aceng had married Fany for only four days in an unregistered ceremony as a second wife. According to his lawyer, Aceng complained that Fany […]

MuslimasTRI (Tackling Real Issues) is a new channel on YouTube started by two American women, Dena and Erin. In one of their videos, Erin shares an extremely personal incident when a Pakistani man she was romantically interested in said he couldn’t speak to her because she was black. On her blog, Jamerican Muslimah offers an […]

As the summer vacation begins in Sweden, so does a campaign against a broad variety of crimes that the police have been addressing under the category hedersrelaterat våld och förtryck – “honour-related violence and oppression.” In particular, the police have focused on forced marriage, which they believe to be a “seasonal” crime, as the risk […]