*names changed to protect privacy I came across an uplifting piece by David Sim of the IB Times featuring gorgeous photographs of Syrian girls envisioning their future career goals. They pose as a radiologist examining X-Rays or as an architect holding building and project plans. The series is called “When I Grow Up” and was […]

All too often, art relating to Muslim women blurs the lines between challenging and mimicking stereotypes. Other times, Islamic art is reduced to “calligraphy and rugs.” There are, of course, spaces that cultivate and present a diverse selection of Muslim art, but these spaces are too few. Western narratives tend to prefer to portray Muslim […]

Seven Muslim women from around the world are bicycling across Iowa as a way of “promoting female sports participation as a fundamental right“. The 470-mile ride, featuring 8,500 cyclists, began July 19 and finished July 25.   In the last year and a half, as turmoil in Ukraine has dominated the news media’s attention, a […]

My dad has been an avid photographer since I can remember. As a kid I was constantly photographed with a traditional analog camera and black and white film. As a teenager, it was my dad’s passion that led me to learn professional photography through vocational education. Photographs, my dad used to tell me, are a […]

In a short interview in The New Yorker this past September, American photographer Lynsey Addario, who has covered the Middle East and South Asia for over a decade, talks about her experience photographing Muslim women: “The more I photographed Muslim women, the more I was able to metaphorically strip away the burqas and hijabs, and […]

The Big Picture usually does an excellent job compiling a diverse set of photos. So it’s especially hard to believe that the blog couldn’t apply that diversity to the gender of its subjects. Women are in only four of 32 photos — that’s 12.5 percent. At the same time, there are multiple pictures of elephants and orangutans. And many, many photos of men. One would think that only men represent the world’s most populous Muslim country.