Last week, Hanifa Safi, an Afghan Women’s Affairs official was killed by a car bomb. While she is not the first female Afghan official to be killed, the Afghan government has not done much to prevent these murders, or to bring those responsible to justice. In the same week, a young Afghan girls, Tamana, was killed, which […]

Ramadan Karim to all our readers, we’d like to wish you all a happy blessed month. And a reminder – starting next week will be our series on Ramadan experiences from different parts of the world!

As a person who interacts with a Western Muslim community that places great importance in women’s clothing and female modesty, I am rarely surprised by the focus on hijab as the sign of piety. Similarly, I have unfortunately gotten used to the obsession in some Western media with hijabs and black robes as symbols of […]

We are bombarded with images from Syria every day — flashing across our television screens and updating in our Facebook newsfeeds. They are horrific pictures of the carnage left in the aftermath of massacres. It has been over a year now since the beginning of the Syrian uprising and there seems to be no relief […]

Last month, one of my close friends in Dubai got engaged. She is 35, an accountant, and her fiancé is a doctor. I still remember how her mother used to worry about her not getting married, to the extent that she kept wondering what was going to happen to her daughter after she (the mother) […]

FIFA has overturned its headscarf ban, enforced since 2007, on women playing soccer with their heads covered. Predictably, the French Football Federation issued an instant “this won’t happen here” communiqué, whereas Qatar, hosting the 2022 Olympics, commended the decision. FIFA’s decision has incited strong criticism online. All you have to do is read the comments […]

On July 11, World Population Day, an international conference on Family Planning was held in London, which has resulted in a relatively large number of related articles in the news. Quite some articles covered the north-south divide in maternal health in Nigeria. The predominantly Muslim north is poorer and the topic of contraception is still very sensitive there; in […]

A recent post on the now dead phenomenon of Onitsha market literature and efforts to keep the genre alive by digitising its pamphlets brought contemporary Hausa popular literature to my mind. Not surprisingly, similarities have been drawn between both market literatures due their aesthetics, themes, and the manner in which they deal with social issues. […]

This post was written by guest contributor Arwa Aburawa. About a week ago, I was sitting in a cafe talking to a new acquaintance about racism. The person in question had worked on issues of race and racism for some time and I would say is a lot more clued up about the tensions and […]

After spending the past few weeks delving into President Obama’s foreign policy strategies, discussing the Rochdale case and surviving steamy temperatures of over 45 degrees Celsius, I was looking forward to covering something upbeat and inspiring. The appearance of Pakistani sous chef Fatima Ali on Chopped, a cooking competition on the Food Network, provided the […]