I recently came across what I thought of as a beautiful poem, entitled I Am Woman – Celebrate Me, written by Canadian Muslim feminist and activist, Raheel Raza. Addressing issues of sexism, racism, and misogyny among others, this poem was written by Raza and presented to WOMANVOICE, on Dec 6, 2004 to celebrate the International […]

Last month, Zeynab commented on the portrayal of Muslim women in the Vagina Monologues, noting that there are no portrayals of positive sexual experiences by Muslim women. I attended a performance of the Vagina Monologues for the first time last week and noticed her observations. Indeed Muslim women were lacking from the moaning sketch. In […]

A smattering of articles have appeared in newspapers lately, aiming to spread the word about how fashionable Muslim women are. These articles seem to refute the idea that Muslim women are against or unreceptive to fashion: “You can be religious and fashionable! Lots of them are! See?” Is this supposed to be a compliment? Generalizing […]

In the post from earlier today, I talked about Muslim women featured in fashion news under the “fetishization” category. So instead of fetishization, how about Muslim women as a big joke? For an International Women’s Day show in Norway, designers created some new styles of burqas, including one outfitted in holly-jolly-Santa gear. The picture included […]

Last week, Forbes.com featured a briefing from Oxford Analytica entitled, “Why So Many Female Bombers?” The article outlines several reasons that there seem to be so many “female bombers”, according to Forbes and the rest of the news networks: Maternal loss Nationalism Absolution from sins Exploitation I’ll get to these reasons in a minute. A […]

A teenage Egyptian girl is shot in the head outside her home. May Allah give her peace. Wazhma Frogh is one bad-ass Afghan woman: she uses Islam to fight conservative Afghan cultural viewpoints on women’s rights. Barikallah! The body of Guinean former supermodel and activist against female genital cutting, Katoucha Niane, was found in the […]

“Muslim Comedy Prescribes Women’s Lib” By Bill Harris. This originally appeared here. Women’s lib is alive and well on Little Mosque on the Prairie. Think about the situations encountered by Sitara Hewitt’s character, Dr. Rayyan Hamoudi. Now think about the struggles of early-1970s sitcom characters such as Maude, or Mary Richards, or even Laurie Partridge. […]

MMW thanks Salma for the tip! Just like Qur’an recitation, devotional music is often designated the realm of men. Women’s voices are often thought to be too erotic to sing or perform religious content — they sway men to sinful thoughts when they should be focusing on God. But some women have broken from behind […]

MMW thanks Carmen for the tip! This is a t-shirt from ThreadPit.com’s online clothing store: The caption for the shirt reads: “The desert has many hot things. Unfortunately, in Southwestern Asia it’s mostly limited to roads, recently discharged firearms, and bombed out pre-fab metal buildings.” I hate racism/sexism that poses as irony. File this under […]