A couple weeks ago, I was walking with a friend, when she abruptly stopped listening to me and turned to look at a bulletin board we were passing.  I followed her gaze, and… oh.  Uh.  Wow. Poster image for “Re-Humanize Me.” Via Deha Vasana. Advertising a contemporary dance theatre performance called “Re-Humanize Me” at Montreal’s […]

Popular singer Ghazala Javed has been killed in northwestern Pakistan, along with her father. Ghazala Javed was a Pashto-language singer in her early twenties. While government sources insist that her ex-husband was the culprit, it is still not clear who is responsible for her death. May Allah give her everlasting peace and justice! Hoda Badran, […]

Earlier this month, the Russian capital held the first Islamic Style festival.  The festival was organized by the Council of Muftis in Russia and aimed to show a “correct” image of Muslim women’s clothing. The Muftis, perhaps concerned with mainstream media showing Muslim women as weak and oppressed, decided try out fashion world by encouraging […]

The title of Juliane Hammer’s new book American Muslim Women, Religious Authority, and Activism: More Than a Prayer, refers to the much-publicised Friday prayer led by Amina Wadud in March 2005. As Hammer explains in the introduction to her book, “The 2005 prayer, itself part of a larger trajectory of events, debates, and developments, focused […]

Taking the title of “Best Documentary Short Film 2012” in the third Mumbai International Queer Film Festival is the telling documentary, “Amra Ki Etoi Bhinno.” The KASHISH – Mumbai International Queer Film Festival, an annual event held in Mumbai, India since 2010, screens films related to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and queer issues India and […]

On the 3rd of June, four Assyrian teenagers were sentenced to probation and community service for attacking a Somali Muslim woman in Södertälje, Sweden. The attack happened on November 17, 2011. The woman, who wears a headscarf, had been out to buy some milk from a shop in Hovsjö. On the way home, a group of teenagers […]

More than a third of Turkish women have experienced sexual and physical violence at some point, but an anti-violence law was watered down in Turkey last March.  Activists now fear the erosion of women’s rights and increasing gender based violence. While violence between the Buddhist majority and Muslim minority in Burma/Myanmar is still increasing, neighbouring […]

A few years back, when shopping malls turned into major destination for shoppers and tourists in the United Arab Emirates, the issue of how men and women appear in public began to gain greater attention. Mall entrances have come to carry signs and instructions relating not only to pets, trash, bicycles and skaters, but dress […]

A few months ago, while reviewing one of my friend’s profiles on Facebook, I was surprised to see the amount of discussion that Shari’ah rulings regarding marriage provoke in the West. My friend, an orthodox Sunni Muslim and avid follower of the Hanbali school, had commented in a picture from 2010 that depicted Malaysian women […]

Editor’s Note: Please join me in welcoming Anike, MMW’s newest contributor!  You may know her better from her blog as “cosmic yoruba.”  We’re thrilled to have Anike join the MMW team. It is still quite rare to come across depictions of Muslim women in “mainstream” Ghanaian or Nigerian media. (By “mainstream”, I am referring to […]