Stories about polygamy tend to surge and ebb in the media, but they never fail to intrigue people. Recently in South Africa, a Zulu man married four women–all at once–making the most popular story on the BBC news website (you can watch the clip here). In the video, a male wedding guest gives a thumbs-up […]

Our Stories, Our Lives is an anthology of a diverse group of women in Bradford, England, offering a glimpse into their lives and their issues with reconciling their Muslim identities with being British. With the media’s daily onslaught on the image of Muslims and assumptions about so-called conflicting alliances (Islam and the West), a “proud […]

Aged patronizing feminists, young veiled victims (of Islamist threat), and endangered laïcité éternelle (everlasting secularism): those were the main ingredients of a huge media bubble blown into people’s minds in France this summer. It all started with the sketch of a proposition bill: André Gérin, a left-wing deputy and mayor asked in June the French […]

When a woman says, “My guardian knows what’s best for me,” what should we do? Earlier this month, blogger Eman Al Nafjan posted her feelings about a new campaign in Saudi Arabia. The campaign, which began last month, is called “My guardian knows what’s best for me” and aims to gather one million signatures in […]

Melinda wrote a while ago about negative media representation of Latina Muslim women.  She described a lot of the common one-dimensional assumptions attributed to Latina women who become Muslim, such as the idea that: in Latino culture, men are macho jerks and women are sex objects. In Islam, they are covered up and immediately respected. […]

When I first saw the book Muhajababes by Allegra Stratton in a bookshop in Beirut, I was intrigued enough to buy it. The cover boldly claims to have found, “the new Middle East–cool, sexy and devout”. I happily forked out the $14. On closer inspection however, the cover of the book is quite problematic (featured […]

Who would have thought that sexuality rights were being celebrated in the historical and cultural heart of the Malaysian capital two weeks ago? Malaysia, like anywhere else (Muslim-majority or not) has long suffered from homophobia and transphobia in the most public of places: unsubstantiated accusations of homosexual behaviour landed one of the most influential politicians […]

This was written by Zehra Rizavi and originally published on AltMuslimah. An attractive Arab woman in her mid-30s, wearing a silver silk hijab and high-collared matching silver blouse, looks into the camera and says, “Recently, in Qatar there has been talk of providing sex education to the youth. Subjects [would] include dealing with sexual desires, […]

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, […]

For many of us, the last few weeks before the start of Ramadan mark a time to prepare ourselves mentally and spiritually for gaining the benefits of the month ahead. As such, the mass email forwards began arriving in my inbox in early August, with lists prepared by various Muslim institutions gently reminding the faithful […]