Un voile, Un certain moi de juin is the story of French artist Bérengère Lefranc’s decision to wear a “burqa” (although she hesitates to define it as such) for one month and write about it.  I was skeptical about this book after reading an initial review of it in Swiss daily Le Temps. Not normally […]

The proposed French ban on facial coverings* worn by some Muslim women seems like it hasn’t left the news for weeks, with new developments popping up regularly and prompting, again, a wave of articles and editorials on the topic. One theme that I’ve noticed lately is the tendency for people opposed to the ban to […]

It’s hard not to judge a book by its cover, or in this case, an article by its headline, when the first words that scream out at you are: From bikinis to burkas: A Yemeni memoir. If your first thought is, “Not again. Haven’t we been down this cliché-littered road before?” then you’re not alone. […]

This was written by Sara Elghobashy and originally appeared at elan. It seems that everywhere you turn there is a burqa product hitting the market. From the Wine Bottle Burqa to the Bluetooth Burqa, Burqa Barbie to the Laptop Burqa, the fascination with covering just won’t go away. But if you haven’t gotten your fix […]

Liaison Dangereuse, a German online lingerie store, recently released a new video advertisement.  With Arabic-sounding music in the background, a woman is shown getting out of the shower (we can see, from the back, that she has no clothes on), putting on her make-up, then walking (wearing nothing but high heels–to each her own, I […]

Not to be outdone by Egypt’s Shaykh Tantawi, the Muslim Canadian Congress (MCC) released a statement two weeks ago that calls for the Canadian government “to introduce legislation to ban the wearing of masks, niqabs and the burka in public.”  Their rationale for this statement seems twofold: one one hand, the MCC is concerned that […]

This was originally published at my personal site. Phyllis Chesler and Naomi Wolf have gotten themselves into a battle royale over…the veil. And everyone seems to be concerned what two privileged non-Muslim white ladies think about this subject. Funny, considering Chesler picks fights all the time, and no one seemed to be interested in an […]

Alicia wrote last week about female members of the British police force wearing burqas and headscarves to try to better understand the Muslim community.  Well, it seems like it’s “dress like a Muslim” month in Britain, because the Daily Mail’s Liz Jones has just written about her own experience wearing a burqa for a week.  […]

Oh, this is just hilarious. Three female police officers were ordered to dress up as Muslim women for the day just to see what it felt like. They wore traditional burkhas as part of a scheme designed to help police interact better with the Islamic community. It’s like going to a fancy dress party, because, […]

This was written by Allison McCarthy and originally appeared at GlobalComment. Tina Brown’s ploys for self-promotion are numerous, but her latest piece, along with a follow-up interview on CNN, takes the cake. Brown, former editor for noted U.S. magazines such as Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Talk, has always maintained some problematic notions of […]