At the recent three-day Film & Comic Convention in Dubai, I was struck by the number of young, female collective art groups from the Gulf region. One example of such a collective, Light Studio, has members who travel from Saudi Arabia to attend conventions such as this in order to sell and promote the work […]

International development policies have been my bread and butter for the past two years, both academically and professionally. When I first entered this field, I wanted to understand why development programming was only guided towards non-white people. Didn’t the world overall need “development”? As I soon learned, the word “development” as it is used in […]

A travelling exhibition showcasing Muslim fashion in Australia has opened at the National Archives in Canberra. Australian fashion designers have tapped into an international market of women who want fashionable clothing that still adheres to Muslim tenets of modesty. Muslim women are much less likely to have a graduate level job than Christian women with […]

A few days ago, Malaysian online news platform Malay Mail Online reported on how some married Muslim men in Malaysia are using “halal speed dating” to find a second wife. Halal Speed Dating (HSD) is a matchmaking platform for Muslims, co-founded by Malaysian couple Munirah Tunai Shamsidi and Zuhri Yuhyi. Together they run matchmaking events […]

Last month, Beyonce released her latest visual album, Lemonade. And the responses have been numerous. On CBC’s q, Naila Keleta-Mae called it masterful and discussed the legacy that Beyonce is creating. Courtney Lee listed the lessons about Black womanhood she sees, over at Sojourner, and the presence of God and Christianity in the album, over […]

One of the rare books I didn’t read in French first (and as such cannot vouch for the translation), Asma Lamrabet’s Women in the Qu’ran: An Emancipatory Reading is a short (just under 170 pages) and uplifting read.  The book is definitely an interesting contribution to scholarship on women in Islam, and i found it […]

Turkey’s first International Modest Fashion Week has opened in Istanbul bringing designers and models of conservative wear from around the world. During the event, models hit the runway at a historic train station donning a bright palette of breezy garment and kaleidoscopic headscarves. Founder Deeyah Khan founded “Sister-hood”, a magazine that aims to highlight diversity, […]

Jasmine Falling is the debut novel of British Palestinian writer (and MMW Contributor!) Shereen Malherbe. It is a tale of self-discovery and finding belonging, set mostly during ten action-charged days in Jerusalem, where Jasmine travels to find her missing father after her mother’s death.  I spoke with Shereen about the inspiration for the novel, the […]

Jasmine Falling by Muslimah Media Watch’s very own Shereen Malherbe recounts the story of Jasmine, a young English girl who, in order to receive her inheritance after her mother dies, searches for her father in his native Palestine and winds up discovering not only the family she left behind, but also the culture to which […]

The hijab is in the news again. For whatever reason, people just can’t seem to stop talking about it. This time, a Muslim woman is being denied the right to wear her hijab to The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina. After being admitted, the young woman, who has remained unidentified, was called by […]