I don’t know how you spend your Thursday nights, but mine are usually spent in front of the television for NBC’s Thursday night comedy line up. And usually, Community is one of my favorite shows. It’s a comedy about a misfit group of community college students. This weekend, I saw the “Basic Geneaology” episode while […]

This was written by Özlem Sensoy and Elizabeth Marshall, and originally appeared in Rethinking Schools Online. Part I & Part II ran earlier this week. Learning a Stereotype Lesson #3: Muslim Girls and Women Want To Be Saved by the West For many in the West, the plight of Afghanistan is framed exclusively within a […]

This was written by Özlem Sensoy and Elizabeth Marshall, and originally appeared in Rethinking Schools Online. You can read Part I here. Learning a Stereotype Lesson #2: Veiled = Oppressed Gendered violence in Middle Eastern countries, or the threat of it, organizes many of the books’ plots. With few exceptions, the “good” civilized men in […]

This was written by Özlem Sensoy and Elizabeth Marshall, and originally appeared at Rethinking Schools Online. Does popular young adult fiction about Muslim girls build understanding or reinforce stereotypes? Young adult titles that focus on the lives of Muslim girls in the Middle East, written predominantly by white women, have appeared in increasing numbers since […]

Writing for MMW, I often get tired of seeing images, over and over, of Muslim women as oppressed, helpless, and passive. It’s always a nice change to see pieces in the media that demonstrate alternate representations, even when these can come with their own problems.  Two recent articles about Muslim women working as activists and […]

Looking at the title of Mark Milke’s editorial, “The 21st century-style subjection of women” I have to admit that the first group of people that didn’t come to mind was Muslim women. Maybe it’s because Muslims are usually portrayed as being stuck in the middle ages. However, my first impression was wrong and the editorial […]

This was written by Mohammed Ayish and originally published in The National. Most Arabs are resigned to being stereotyped by western media, but for Arab women the problem is particularly acute. I was invited to Doha in Qatar last week to present the Arab Women Media Strategy at a conference called East and West: Women […]