I’m a member of the Congressional Muslim Staffer’s Association (CMSA), an organization on Capitol Hill that seeks to unite Muslims working in Congress and quell myths about Islam through outreach. Last Friday, some members of CMSA met with a group of young Egyptian men and women as their two-week congressional internship came to a close. […]

On Syrian TV dramas and their portrayal of women. Two women are holding a workship for aspiring writers of Arabic children’s books in Sharjah, U.A.E. IslamOnline covers the recent submission to parliament of a headscarf ban in Danish courts. In an attempt to attract more women to use public transportation, Dubai will soon launch pink […]

Last summer saw the launch of ALO Hayati, “America’s Top Middle Eastern Lifestyle Magazine.” Thanks to a gracious donor, I finally got my hands on a copy of the July 2008 issue. All lifestyle magazines have an aspirational feel to them, and this one was no different. Chock full of advertisements for Dubai hotels and […]

It has been 30 years since the Islamic Revolution in Iran and Western media has a slew of various features looking at Iran. The subject of many of these features is Iranian women and, the common themes in these stories are that Iranian women have made some progress, but that more progress has to be […]

Last week’s Iraqi elections received lots of media coverage, but at MMW we were mostly fascinated by women candidates, especially since election rules require 30% of the candidates be female. The Huffington Post defines Iraq’s exercise in democracy as rebellious, while the Gulf News qualified it as an act of political maturity. I’ll take a […]

Who says young adult fiction about Muslim girls can only be contemporary or historical? Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu’s 2007 novel shows that Muslim teen lit can venture into the realm of the future.  Young adult novel The Shadow Speaker explores science fiction and fantasy with a story that plays out in a futuristic, magical universe with worlds […]

Various news organizations have reported that a CIA officer stationed in Algeria, identified by CBS News as Andrew Warren, has been accused of drugging and raping two Algerian women. The women, according to CBS, came forward separately and “reported the incidents months after they occurred.”  This from ABC News: The CIA’s station chief at its […]

Sex. Always an attention getter. So there’s no wonder why Jasad, or “Body,” a new quarterly Arabic magazine published in Lebanon, is making waves in the Arab world by promising to “deal with the forbidden,” the *gasp* human body. The magazine’s logo is ‘body’ spelled in Arabic and the first letter is a broken handcuff, […]

A Toronto judge has recently ruled that a complainant in a sexual assault trial – who happens to wear the niqab, a face-covering worn by a small percentage of Muslim women – will have to uncover her face in order to testify.  According to this article, The judge, Ontario Court Justice Norris Weisman, determined he […]

A bank in California denies a woman services because of her headscarf. More here. The Saudi Gazette profiles artist Zaina Zahid. The E.U. launches a program to boost gender equality in the Mediterranean. The Muslim parts, anyway. (rolling eyes) Several women ran in Iraq’s recent provincial elections. There are profiles from the Ledger-Enquirer, the New […]