Last month, Beyonce released her latest visual album, Lemonade. And the responses have been numerous. On CBC’s q, Naila Keleta-Mae called it masterful and discussed the legacy that Beyonce is creating. Courtney Lee listed the lessons about Black womanhood she sees, over at Sojourner, and the presence of God and Christianity in the album, over […]

When I attempted entering “Islamic erotica” in a search engine, I was not sure what to expect. A few weeks before doing that, I had stumbled upon the genre while reading Afrocentric Muslimah’s blog post on the need for Muslim women to embrace their sexuality. Curious to know more about Islamic erotica, I decided to search for […]

Mainstream media often incites rebuttals from Muslim women defending themselves against vapid stereotypes and negative portrayals. Ostensibly, these include “We are not oppressed,” ”We play sports,” “We are educated and have choices,” “We have agency and support those who do not,” and so on and so forth.  Muslim women writing about inspiring feats of Muslim […]

Bismillah. Originally intended to be posted in the start of Ramadan, this post has taken an unusually long time. The first draft was cathartic, yet it took longer to go into depth and dig deeper.  I am left in a position where I unapologetically want to share my truth – a truth that may, with […]

Apparently, and without much to my own knowledge, I, as the generic Muslim female, have been gettin’ the haraam on in public washrooms. Okay, a huge exaggeration but this stems from a frustration rooted in a justified source of contempt for media coverage of the female body of the non-European/White persuasion. There is something sincerely tiring about this voyeuristic obsession with not only the sex lives and sexualities of women but those, in particular, of Muslim (see also: ethnic, brown, ‘other’) women…

The Violence is Not Our Culture (VNC) Campaign and the Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) network recently launched a new publication on zina (illicit sex) laws and their tentative (re)introduction in some predominantly Muslim nations.  “Control and Sexuality – The Revival of Zina Laws in Muslim Contexts,” is an attempt by civil society organizations […]

This story was written by M. Lynx Qualey and originally appeared at Arabic Literature (in English). Al Jazeera reports that the cultural pages of Gulf newspapers are brimming with talk about sex. Or, rather, they’re brimming with talk about talk about sex. This is because sex has been a growing phenomenon in Saudi literature. Earlier […]

Part I of this review ran last week. You can read it here. Why do Muslim women merely serve a sexual purpose and a way to “feel power over another human being” in Eteraz’s relationships in Children of Dust?  The answer to this question ultimately lies within the convoluted cultural-religious matrix Eteraz finds himself in […]

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 […]

German-Turkish writer Seyran Ates thinks Islam needs a sexual revolution. This might seem a little tongue-in-cheek, given the countless political revolutions post-due in predominantly Muslim countries, yet Ates’ book couldn’t be timelier. Muslims, like everyone else, are exposed to sex at an earlier age, despite marrying later than past generations. It isn’t hard to prove […]