While in Washington, D.C., last month, I attended a forum on Muslim women’s rights titled “Women and the Politics of Change in the Middle East,” at the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. It was sponsored by the Women’s Learning Partnership, an international NGO dedicated to women’s leadership and empowerment, especially in Muslim majority […]

Two constitutional court cases in Kuwait raise questions of a paradigm shift in women’s rights.

At the heart of many of the problems plaguing Muslim women in developing nations is a dollar bill, not a Qur’an. That was the overall impression I received from reading last Sunday’s Times Magazine. The issue of women in developing nations may not appear to be an impending issue for the Muslim community. In fact, […]

Mosque in Morgantown, a documentary about Asra Nomani’s quest to eradicate gender segregation in the mosque, airs tonight on PBS at 10 pm EST. I watched the film this weekend. Twice. I took three pages of notes, but still had a difficult time writing a review. This could be because my head has been in […]

A few weeks ago, the news of a new law for Shi’a Muslims in Afghanistan was met with outrage in governments and media around the world.  This law would, among other things, force women to have sex with their husbands and obligate them to seek permission for activities outside the house. News since then has […]

Covering Afghan women must be an especially hard task for many Western journalists. I say this because every piece I have read about Afghan women makes them seem like they are some of the most oppressed women in the world, with little to no hope for happiness, sans intervention by a Western savior or “Western” […]

This was originally published at Hurriyet Daily News. The author is unknown. In a Fethiye beauty salon window, I saw an advertisement suggesting customers celebrate International Women’s Day, or IWD, by getting a manicure and a new hairdo. I received messages from my bank wishing me “Happy Women’s Day.” And then there were the ads […]

It has been 30 years since the Islamic Revolution in Iran and Western media has a slew of various features looking at Iran. The subject of many of these features is Iranian women and, the common themes in these stories are that Iranian women have made some progress, but that more progress has to be […]