After the Afghan parliament rejected several of his cabinet member appointments, Hamid Karzai submits new nominees, three of which are women. But don’t get excited yet: the rejected nominees include a woman, so it’s unclear whether parliament doesn’t want any women, or just one in particular. One of Turkey’s most prominent human rights lawyers reveals […]

Something decidedly medieval is in the air in Saudi Arabia. Fears of black magic and curses cast by Indonesian domestic helpers have spread across the country, and  Saudi employers increasingly feel the need to hire private investigators to check their domestic workers for suspicious behavior and evidence for witchcraft. Investigators, mostly foreign women from neighboring […]

This post was written by Jillian C. York, and originally published in the Winter 2009 issue of Bitch magazine. Muslim women, as a group, don’t lack for media attention, but to say their representation in mass media is lopsided would be an understatement: They’re the subject of political, religious, and feminist debates, but their own […]

This is part two of Krista’s review of the Reviving the Islamic Spirit Convention. You can see part one here. Dr. Zainab Alwani, an Islamic studies professor and community activist, was the second of the female speakers, on a panel entitled “The Apple’s Rotten Core: The Social Implications of Domestic Violence.”  She listed a number […]

This is part one of a two-part series reviewing the Reviving the Islamic Spirit Convention. Stay tuned tomorrow for part two! This year’s Reviving the Islamic Spirit (RIS) Convention was held in Toronto from December 25-27, 2009.  Those of you who have been reading MMW for a while might remember my reflections on it last […]

The Yemen Observer profiles Dr. Nadiah Al-Kokabany. A 20-year-old girl was auctioned in a Pakistani village last week. Let me repeat that: AUCTIONED. May Allah keep her. The Age examines the Lebanese magazine Jasad. Dia Diwan interviews Kinda Hibrawi. A Dubai couple is facing jail if convicted of issuing forged marriage certificates to sex workers. […]

This is a slightly edited version of an article written by Susannah Tarbush. A complete version originally appeared in the Saudi Gazette. The shortlist of six contenders for the annual International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF,) announced last Tuesday at the Beirut International Book Fair, is arousing much interest, as in the previous two years […]

It seems that Muslims seeking meaningful relationships with members of the opposite sex, and how they go about acquiring such relationships in an Islamically appropriate way, have been quite a popular subject.  A recent perusal of the blogosphere over the past week brought me to the wonderful blog Organica where Organic Muslimah has a two-part […]

I Can’t Think Straight is a film by Shamim Sarif that attempts to deal with culture, religion, and sexuality within the period of an hour and fifteen minutes. The story tells the tale of Leyla, an Indian Muslim, who falls in love with Tala, a Jordanian Christian. Heavy on Orientalist porn and thin on a […]

This was written by Mandy van Deven and originally appeared at Bitch Magazine. Poster 4 Tomorrow is a project based out of France that was founded this year to encourage artists to advocate “on behalf of those who don’t enjoy the same freedom of expression that you do” by designing posters that pronounce an explicitly […]