This post is written by guest contributor, Sarabi N. Eventide (@SarabiNEventide) Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), the extremist group in Bangladesh responsible for the deaths of numerous secular and liberal bloggers, is once again attempting to dictate what is and is not acceptable in Bengali media. In its most recent move, the group issued a threat to media companies employing women […]

Last week, Christopher Majka posted an article on rabble.ca in response to Sheema Khan’s piece in the Globe and Mail entitled “Muslim men: Stop blaming women.” At the centre of the debate is: what is the best way to bring gender equality and rights to Muslim women? Is it at all possible? Should it be […]

I was rather excited about Francois Hollande winning the French elections this month.  I hoped that five years of hateful, fear mongering policy towards Muslims by Sarkozy and his minions would come to an end and that Hollande, for all his supposed blandness, would bring some low-key normalcy to the French presidency. There was one […]

A year ago this week, a French law came into effect banning face veils for women.  At the time, the law was subject to much derision for “only” affecting the very specific number of 367 niqab and burqa-clad women (as of 2009) in France, although at its time, the law was thought to concern a […]

On Friday, the President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia fled his homeland as it was engulfed by an uprising, sparked by the suicide of Mohamed Bouazizi, an unemployed university graduate who had taken to selling fruit in Sidi Bouzid.  When authorities confiscated his wares for not having a license, Bouazizi set himself on fire in front […]

Quebec’s Bill 94, which would deny access to public services to women who wear niqab, is back in parliamentary hearings and, by all accounts, likely to pass.  This past weekend, an international conference entitled “Revealing Democracy: Bill 94 and the challenges of religious pluralism and ethnocultural diversity in Quebec” was held at Concordia University in […]