Last weekend, my husband and I made the six hour drive to the coastal city of Durban, to attend a series of lectures and seminars by Professor Tariq Ramadan. In an earlier post, I reviewed Ramadan’s latest book, Radical Reform. I certainly appreciate Ramadan’s work, and feels he is one of the very few contemporary […]

They say that money is the root of all evil. At times, I couldn’t agree more. But now I hear that alcohol consumption is the “mother of all sins”. I’m not going into detail about which sins are worse, but more on the earthly consequences of such sins as defined by the male religious elite. […]

Whenever I encounter Asra Nomani’s works or see her in an interview, I usually wonder,“What is her point?” I don’t say this derisively. Is she trying to speak about gender inequality among the ummah? Is she trying to deal with gender norms in her own South Asian community? These questions formed in my mind as […]

Three family members have recently been charged in the deaths of three teenage sisters and a female relative.  The three girls–Zainab, Sahar, and Geeti Shafia–and their father’s first wife, Rona Mohammed, were found dead in a car that had been submerged in the Rideau Canal.  Innaa lillahi wa innaa ilayhi raaji`oun (to God we belong […]

Last weekend, Natalya Estemirova was murdered. There are pictures of her burial ceremony, which was stopped by police officers. May Allah give her peace and justice. A South African Constitutional Court has ruled that widows of polygamous marriages deserve to inherit a share of their deceased husbands’ estates. Dilshad Ali attends the WISE conference in […]

Marwa El Sherbini is in the ground away from those who love her most. She did not want to die, she did not choose to die. She was murdered. In Germany the Muslim community is ethnically homogeneous, with the vast majority being of Turkish ethnicity. Even without her headscarf, her coloring and ethnicity means that […]

Fatemeh already pointed out the obviousness of the title in last week’s Friday Links, but Hamida Ghafour’s article “Lewd stares distressing for women,” published in the U.A.E.’s The National newspaper, is worth a closer look.  Although it seems to promote resistance to sexism and sexual harassment, it does so in a way that perpetuates – […]

This was written by Allison McCarthy and originally appeared at GlobalComment. Tina Brown’s ploys for self-promotion are numerous, but her latest piece, along with a follow-up interview on CNN, takes the cake. Brown, former editor for noted U.S. magazines such as Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Talk, has always maintained some problematic notions of […]

This guest post was written by Rochelle Terman. Shadi Sadr, the prominent Iranian lawyer and women’s rights defender, was violently arrested by plainclothes security officials on her way to Friday Prayers on June 17, 2009. Sadr was the latest causality amidst the ongoing crackdown of Iranian civil society following the disputed Iranian election on June […]

If you’ve been following coverage of the fallout from the recent Iranian elections, you have been bound to see images of women in the streets as part of protests against the election results. In fact, the Western media has put a feminine face on much of its coverage of what is happening in Iran connecting […]