On the occasion of Michel Houllebecq’s Submission being released in English, I volunteered to read it in order to review it here. In fact, I refused to read Submission when it first came out in French, and I still approached the book begrudgingly. The short version? I hated it. At the ripe old age of […]

I am apparently on a book review kick for MMW, with my last post being about the interfaith anthology Faithfully Feminist, and next week’s post on Michel Houllebecq’s Submission (stay tuned). This week’s book review is for a lovely little book in French, Des voix derrière le voile (Voices behind the Veil) by the French […]

This article was written by Peter Gray. France’s decision to outlaw face veils sparked a robust debate about religion and women’s rights. In response to concerns that the law will negatively impact Muslim women, its advocates frequently mention that it enjoys the approval of several prominent French Muslim feminists. What is not mentioned, however, is […]

In France, they really don’t like any type of head coverings.  After decades of one headscarf affair after another, where generations of young women who wear hijab are forced to stop their education (way to go in liberating women, France), things got serious when France woke up in recent years to the threat of illegal […]

This was written by Lobna Hadji and originally appeared at OWNI.eu, Digital Journalism. I wasn’t meant to die so young… My name is Sohane Benziane. I was born in France to Algerian parents. On October 4th, 2002 my life came to a sudden end when my ex-boyfriend NoNo set me on fire. I remember the […]

The Swiss political and media landscape is charged with loaded images of Muslim women.  The French side of Swiss media (namely, in newspapers like Le Temps) usually presents a balanced view of Muslim women, and television shows are of a decent quality, especially compared to television in the U.S. So I had no reason to […]

In July, two women in France were asked to leave a holiday camp because of an attempt to swim while wearing burqinis, because of “hygiene” issues. While such an incident occurred last summer, this time around it comes hot on the heels of the ban on the burqa and niqab. The PBS program, To The […]

I’ve been working on a curriculum project involving novels and memoirs about Muslim women, so the next few posts from me will probably be focusing on some of the books I’ve come across, even if none of them were published especially recently.  So, for those of you who like following our posts about literature (some […]

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 […]

Headscarves are the hot talking point in French politics again. But on this occasion, we aren’t talking about girls getting kicked out of high school or women getting kicked out of mayors’ offices. No, the latest uproar comes about Ms. Ilham Moussaïd, a candidate from the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) in France’s upcoming regional elections […]