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 […]

This was written by Elise Auerbach and originally published on Human Rights Now, the Amnesty International USA blog. Ordinarily, human rights activists would be pleased when the rare major motion picture shining a light on human rights violations comes along. In fact, aside from documentaries, it is very unusual to see issues that Amnesty International […]

Sexy Girls. Arab Beauty that’ll rock your world. Sea, sex and sun. Let the funky Arabs turn you on! The new “Funky Arabs” single by Jad Choueiri, the Lebanese singer known for crooning love ballads, has had over 150,000 views on YouTube in one month. Choueiri spends four and a half minutes singing about how […]

Last week, Canadian Governor-General* Michaëlle Jean caused a huge storm in the media by eating a piece of seal heart while on a visit to an Inuit community in Nunavut, northern Canada.  In the context of increasing international (and domestic) outrage against the seal hunt in Canada, Jean had this to say about her act […]

As we all know, pop culture can’t get enough of the mysterious ‘Orient’ and its ubiquitous exotic women. The ’80s New Romanticism movement is a case in point. Known for its exaggerated and often outrageous attitudes to fashion and music, the movement inspired pop musicians to take on faraway locations to shoot their videos: Duran […]

I was excited when the book Does My Head Look Big in This? came out a few years ago (see Melinda’s MMW review of it here.) In that book, author Randa Abdel-Fattah tells the story of Amal, a young Australian Muslim woman who decides to wear hijab and navigates the challenges of expressing her identity […]

This was originally written by Megan and published on Jezebel. Sally Quinn just got back from a Brookings Institute conference in Doha and, judging by her appearance on MSNBC talking about the status of women in the Middle East, she didn’t apparently learn much. Quinn peddles so many offensive stereotypes about Middle Eastern countries, the […]

This was written by Cycads and originally appeared on her blog. \So there was this American guy, Jake, who sat with Gareth and me at lunch last Saturday and was telling us how much he wanted to go to Malaysia because it’s apparently a great place to meet women, and claimed that the country is […]

A few weeks ago, we featured a story in our Friday links about the introduction of Muslim dolls in the U.K., created to teach Muslim children about Islam. Sounds like a great idea at first, until I saw what this picture of the dolls and realized the disturbing  racial implications. The main problem comes in […]

Salam waleykum, readers. Last week, we brought you daily updates on the Muslim community’s response to Aasiya Hassan’s murder. This week, we’re bringing you our own thoughts on the coverage surrounding the case. Media coverage around Aasiya Hassan’s murder has been slow but steady in its speculation. Much of it has been Islamophobic, throwing around […]