By guest contributor Wood Turtle; a longer version of this post was originally published at her blog. At what point does religious inclusion become too much for a public school board to handle? Apparently, it’s when the menstrual cycles of 12-year-old girls become the center of public debate. Every week for the past three years, […]

I was following with interest media commentaries on the recent experts meeting on women’s media empowerment convened by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia in Beirut (ESCWA). It was clear that independent communication campaigns to promote women’s causes and concerns are gaining a lot of ground in the Arab World. New digital […]

Kecya Felix, a Brazilian stylist/designer, wore a fake Chanel niqab and abaya and an iPad around her neck which played “Could Coco Chanel Create This Look?” at Sao Paulo Fashion Week. Kecya Felix wearing the abaya. As this article puts it, Felix intended to “make a statement” through the performance, wearing ”a fake Chanel Muslim garment” and, […]

The Star recently reported on the existence of “Begumpura” neighborhoods in Ontario. “Begumpura,” translated from Urdu as “the place where women live,” refers to neighborhoods where immigrant women live with their families. The areas are usually occupied by women of South Asian origin whose husbands work in the Middle East. The title “Colony of wives” […]

Deaf Sisterhood is a short documentary about Aran Slade, a 27-year-old white woman living in Birmingham, U.K., who is thinking of becoming Muslim (you can see the trailer below. For those in the U.K., it’s airing this week, on stations listed here.).  Although her family is not religious, Aran became Christian ten years ago, and […]

On June 17th, women in Saudi Arabia plan to take to the streets—they’re going to get behind the wheel to protest a religious edict forbidding them to drive. As Eman wrote in a post about the Women2Drive campaign yesterday, Manal Al-Sharif posted a Youtube video of herself calling on all women to drive their automobiles […]

Earlier this month, Ms. Magazine ran an article that looked at breast cancer stigma in Saudi Arabia.  The article provides breast cancer statistics in Saudi Arabia (without citation or link), breast cancer statistics in the United States, and American expat Carol Fleming’s experience with breast cancer in Saudi Arabia. Fleming suggests that promoting pink products […]

Is it just me, or has this spring seen a lot of de-jabbing articles lately?   As a “dejabi” myself, I alternate between taking these articles with a grain of salt and hoping that something put forth by the journalist will resonate with me. One of the recent pieces is NPR’s “Lifting the Veil” (har har), […]

In France, they really don’t like any type of head coverings.  After decades of one headscarf affair after another, where generations of young women who wear hijab are forced to stop their education (way to go in liberating women, France), things got serious when France woke up in recent years to the threat of illegal […]

In the last few years, the international emphasis on locating social rights within the Qur’an has primarily been driven by and for women. NGOs in Morocco, Malaysia, Jordan, Afghanistan, Tunisia, and countless other Muslim countries have rallied communities, encouraging them to look critically at the patriarchal structures that have dictated Qur’anic interpretation to date. Through […]