It had to happen sooner or later. With Barbie and now Hannah Montana merchandise dominating the tween to early teenage market in Malaysia, products for young Muslim women in hijab are starting to appear, particularly on the bookshelves. And they look very pink. The increasing pinkness of girl’s books can be directly connected to the […]

This was written by Mohammed Ayish and originally published in The National. Most Arabs are resigned to being stereotyped by western media, but for Arab women the problem is particularly acute. I was invited to Doha in Qatar last week to present the Arab Women Media Strategy at a conference called East and West: Women […]

A Muslim woman in Surrey, U.K., was attacked by a passenger in a car, who threw an egg at her. The Al-Janabi matriarch faces the man in court who raped her granddaughter and killed her son’s family. On the role of headscarves in Indonesian elections. More from The Malaysian Insider. Two Swedish politicans offer up […]

Muslimahs who work hard in shaping the depiction of themselves and their sisters in the media, and who are engaged in Islamic feminist discourse to dispel cultural and literalist concepts unjustly attributed to them, are often left flattened under the heavy heap of misrepresentations and stereotypes by both Muslim and non-Muslim agencies. I would like […]

In the past, I have been critical of Muslim organizations for their relative silence on issues affecting women. So I was pleasantly surprised when the entire February/March edition of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA)’s magazine, The Message International, was dedicated to domestic violence. The front cover was nice with a picture of street […]

As I count the hours to the day I return to Malaysia, I’m compiling my notes and thoughts for a small research project on media images of women in the capital. But I’ve already started collecting preliminary data; my immense curiosity in the representation of Muslim Malay women in the current media took me as […]

Last week, Canadian Governor-General* Michaëlle Jean caused a huge storm in the media by eating a piece of seal heart while on a visit to an Inuit community in Nunavut, northern Canada.  In the context of increasing international (and domestic) outrage against the seal hunt in Canada, Jean had this to say about her act […]

The Khaleej Times profiles Maryam bin Fahad, the executive director of the Dubai Press Club. The Times of India recounts the political gains made by Muslim women recently. Speaking of politics, Iran’s presidential election is down to four candidates, one of which promises to pay housewives. Meanwhile, the Coalition of Iranian Women has stated the […]

News media reported at the beginning of the month that Saudi Arabia will hold its first beauty pageant, now in its second year. This pageant, unlike the standard pageants that feature contestants in various outfits and judge them on their appearance, is looking for “Miss Beautiful Morals.” The contest, open to women ages 15 to […]

The right to an education is one of the most basic rights that any person can have. Yet this right is often denied to women, including many women in various Muslim societies. We have examples of women in the formative era of Islam who benefited from education and who were scholars in their own right. […]