TW: rape. NB: this review contains a spoiler but the spoiler is pretty evident in the first pages of the book, and does not take away from the suspense of the rest of the novel. Stained is the story of Selina Hussain, an 18 year old whose father has died and who is living with […]

Izzat. It’s Old Rei, the language spoken by Scholars before the Martials invaded and forced everyone to speak Serran. Izzat means many things. Strength, honor, pride. But in the past century, it’s come to mean something specific: freedom. – Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes  Recently, and in tandem, I read Sabaa Tahir’s An […]

I recently became aware of rape threats made on social media towards Datuk Noor Farida Ariffin, a well-respected former Malaysian ambassador to the Netherlands. Also a lawyer, she was the co-founder of Sisters in Islam, a local non-governmental organisation for women’s rights, and is the spokesperson of a local group of prominent Malays called G25. […]

At Muslimah Media Watch, many of our posts are critical of the way Muslim women are portrayed in various films, literature, and news articles—Muslim women (and other racialised women) are not given the space and time to share their personal stories of struggle and triumph on their own terms. Women’s stories are often mired with […]