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 […]

Complete with your standard extreme close-up of a hijab-clad woman confusingly looking at the voyeuristic lens before her, the Guardian’s “Comment is Free” section recently featured a piece by writer Nadiya Takolia, entitled: “The Hijab has Liberated Me From Society’s Expectations of Women.” Probably like many readers of this blog, my initial reaction consisted something […]

“Love  Marriage and Fairytales” is a somewhat misleading title to a popular Muslim Youtube video, trending in various social media circles, having gone “Muslim-viral,” as my fellow MMW contributor Sana Saeed calls it.  This video (according to information discerned from the Youtube account) is an attempt to highlight the most frequent and problematic issues facing […]

Long-time readers might remember a post from three years ago, where Sobia and I wrote a guide for How to Write About Muslims.  You can click on the title of that post for the full version, but here’s the list of rules we compiled:

Note: Patheos is going through a site redesign at the moment, as you may have noticed, so we apologise in advance if there are any problems with how MMW is working this week!  We should be functioning normally soon. If my Facebook newsfeed is anything to go by, this story has reached possibly everyone who’s […]

The ladies of MMW recieved a link to this video on Twitter. For the videophobes and those who don’t want their brain to melt and leak out of their ears, it is a song apparently about hijab called “You Got it Covered.” A sampling of the lyrics is as follows: “girl, you’re more than just […]

This post was written by guest contributor Maheen Nusrat. On March 24th, 2012, a 32-year-old Iraqi-American woman, Shaima Alawadi, passed away.  She been found three days earlier by her 17-year-old daughter, brutally beaten in her home with a note next to her that said, “Go back to your country, you terrorist.” The story made national […]

Last month, Egyptian journalist Dalia Rabie had an enlightening experience when she was banned from joining her own birthday party at one of Cairo’s fancy restaurants, L’Aubergine. Rabie relates that the guy standing on the door who stopped her asked her if the fact that she is – unfortunately – wearing hijab was mentioned prior […]

Have you ever dreamed of being a hijabi in couture, strutting the runway in the fashion metropolises of Milan, New York or Paris without having to unravel that scarf you hold dear?  Well, maybe you haven’t, but if you have, you’re in luck: thanks to Muslim fashion designer, Nailah Lymus, your dream may be in […]

When Lebanese writer and poet Joumana Haddad’s I Killed Scheherazade: Confessions of An Angry Arab Woman was published in 2010, it was described as a bold treatise, intentionally designed to be revolutionary, written in manifesto style. Recently, a revived interest has situated it in more superficial terms as “a provocative new book which “lifts the veil” […]