I recently came across a publication by Cordaid, a Dutch development organisation, called “Looking for That Other Face: Women Muslim Leaders and Violent Extremism in Indonesia” (available here). This publication recounts the stories of six quadragenarian Muslim feminists from three islands of Indonesia (Aceh, Java and Lombok): Ibu Umi Hanisah (Meulaboh), Badriyah Fayumi (Kota Bekasi), Enung Nursaidah […]

In 2007, when Iranian president Ahmadinejad declared that ‘we don’t have any gays in Iran’, he was met with widespread media criticism. Yet, much of the world seemed content to believe in the crux of what he was saying: that according to conventional wisdom, there is no space for homosexuality in Islam. As the West’s […]

Movie stars have always fascinated me. We follow their dressing sense, emulate them, secretly envy them and even the most polite among us feel obliged to pass snide remarks on them as if they belong to each one of us. In this email interview, Pakistani actress Saeeda Imtiaz, who portrays the role of Jemima Khan […]

Reports about Syrian refugee women getting sold in marriage in Jordan remain rampant, especially young girls are considered to be desirable. In Egypt too, Syrian refugee women are often singled out by Egyptian men with propositions of marriage. Last weekend were the elections in Pakistan, for some women it was the first time in half a century […]

A couple of weeks ago I came across this BBC Panorama  story on “Women at risk” which warns that “some Sharia councils in Britain may be putting Muslim women “at risk” by pressuring them to stay in abusive marriages.” The story presents a case of a couple going to one of the Sharia councils for […]

This post was written by guest contributor Maria Salman. Defiance. In light of a recent landmark election, this is the one word dominating the media’s rhetoric on the civic engagement of Pakistani women. On May 11, scores of Pakistanis came out to exercise their right to vote – many for the first time in their […]

The weeks following the Boston bombing have been filled with media reports with all-too-familiar suspicion of Islam and –as Nicole explored in a recent post— hijab-wearing Muslim women. However, both local and international media largely missed an act of activism from my part of the world that had taken place even before Ann Coulter appeared […]

Pakistan will vote on May 11, and women, both as voters and as candidates, are the subject of many articles in the news last week. First there is the question of women voters: IPS speaks with several Pakistani women and asks them what women voters really want. But not all women get a chance to vote […]

Sex and the Citadel is a collection of stories by Shereen El Feki, who spent five years traveling across Egypt and several other Arab countries asking people about sex: “what they do, what they don’t, what they think and why”. Why write about sex? Her choice of subject matter is partly stimulated by how sexual […]

When I converted to Islam, before Love Inshallah (which Merium reviewed last year) and Sex and the Citadel, I was immersed in a religious culture that had an ambivalent relationship with sex and sexuality. While the women in my community occasionally discussed matters of “lawful” vs. “prohibited” when it came to sex, they were also […]