In early February, a story broke about a briefing being given to Belgian soldiers departing for Afghanistan. In this briefing, the speaker notably made the following points, as related by the Belgian newspaper Le Soir: “[Having a] girl to a Muslim usually means that the man has poor sperm quality. I’m not joking. Manly men make […]

In a reversal of Egypt’s recent trends regarding women in the judiciary, Egypt’s State Council voted this month to ban the appointment of female judges to the council. Despite the fact that Tahani El Gebaly was appointed to be Egypt’s first female judge in 2003, and 31 more women were appointed as judges in 2007, […]

Children of Dust, prominent writer Ali Eteraz’s recently published memoir, provides an excellent example of a Pakistani-American Muslim in search of his own self-identity.  Eteraz’s prose is a delight to read—I randomly started reading a segment from the middle of the book upon its arrival and proceeded to read a good chunk before realizing that […]

Allow me to choose four, five or even nine men, just as my wildest imagination shall chose. I’ll pick them with different shapes and sizes, one of them will be dark and the other will be blonde. Tall or maybe short, they are to be Chosen from different denominations, religions, races and nations. And I […]

Reading Claudia Ricci’s scatterbrained piece in The Huffington Post about text message divorcing was not only infuriating, but also a reminder of many of the things, which I hate about attitudes towards women’s issues in the Middle East. The article opens with a snarky line about men being able to marry four women, and then […]

A recent decision to auction a “Burqa Barbie” for a Save the Children fundraising campaign (“to educate children in conflict areas around the world”) has been making its rounds online this past week.  Of the 500 different Barbies designed by Eliana Lorena, it was only natural for the culturally inappropriate (Islamic!) “Burqa Barbie” to be […]

While in Rome for the U.N. World Food Summit last week, Libyan leader Muammar al Gaddafi engaged in an unusual form of dawah:  inviting 500 Italian escorts to convert to Islam. The women, employed by Hostessweb agency, were under the impression they were attending a party. The agency advertised for “…500 attractive girls between 18 […]

A substantial amount of the media critiqued at MMW involves Muslim women being viewed as part of a minority. As flawed as it often is, one wonders if the media in Muslim majority countries may make fewer missteps. Moving on from that possibility, what about countries which have an interpretation of Islam as their legal […]

Liaison Dangereuse, a German online lingerie store, recently released a new video advertisement.  With Arabic-sounding music in the background, a woman is shown getting out of the shower (we can see, from the back, that she has no clothes on), putting on her make-up, then walking (wearing nothing but high heels–to each her own, I […]

Have you ever noticed how minorities—and oppressed people in general—lack a sense of humor? Lately, there have been plenty of jokes about Arabs and Muslims. So why aren’t we laughing? French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux recently felt his joke fall flat after this year’s summer congress. One of his traditional supporters, Amin Benalia, asked if […]