Living in an Arab country, I think anyone would find it rather difficult to overlook the feverish debates sparked by Arabic-dubbed Turkish soap operas featured on Arab television screens. Three years ago, it was the spectacular drama series Noor that captivated the region’s (and MMW’s) attention. But this time in 2012, it is the dazzling […]

Drug abuse among young women and girls in Kashmir is on the rise, but there actually is no addiction treatment program in the Valley that will actually admit female drug users. They are left on their own, often not returning to the consultations that are available to them. Two days before the one-year anniversary of the […]

The new “Bad Girls” music video by M.I.A. has been circulating over the past week or so.  For those who haven’t seen it, it’s posted below, and here’s one description from a  LA Times blog post: Set to M.I.A.’s Punjabi-laced chill-banger, “Bad Girls” is a lady gangsta fantasy but one that plays off very real […]

Media coverage of LGTBQ issues in Islam is largely influenced by the political contexts in which it is discussed. LGTBQ Muslims are often categorized and talked about in all sorts of weird ways (as this post demonstrates). In the media, this gets expressed in different ways. Sometimes, coverage focuses on the theological debates surrounding homosexuality. […]

Over the Christmas and New Year season, Quraysha Ismail Sooliman, South African Muslimah scholar and lecturer in Political Studies at the University of Pretoria, was on her way out of the country with her family. At Oliver Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, she and her daughters were stopped at passport control, and one of her […]

Azra reviewed this film for MMW back in August. In light of a recent appearance on The Colbert Report, heightened press, and an anticipated television premiere tomorrow night on PBS, we are taking a closer look at one of the film’s stars, Ameena Matthews. The South Side of Chicago, infamous for its crime infestation, history […]

February 6 is the International Day of Zero Tolerance to FGM/C (Female Genital Mutilation/Circumcision); while this is not an “Islamic” practice per definition, it affects the lives of many Muslim women and girls around the world. The UN published a report on this day that almost 2,000 African communities banned the practice in 2011. Kenyan MP and FGM survivor Sophia Abdi […]

“I wasted years because I didn’t think I fit into their conception of Islam or God. And I don’t. But God is greater than all that. There are as many ways to Him as there are people on the planet.” (Ayesha Mattu, “The Opening,” p. 54) For some writers, Love InshAllah is about reconciling their […]

When your everyday news consists of the purported collapse of your government and a small but unfortunate obsession with treating the ill with fake drugs at a major regional cardiology institute, it seems that very few things will actually cause you to upchuck any remaining disgust floating around in your metaphorically ulcer-ridden stomach. Fortunately for […]

As right-wing pundits are gaining momentum in North America, minority groups are unsurprisingly being targeted.  Among the questions being raised is: when does “national security” trump the need to address an instance of sexual assault against women? Muslim women, especially those who wear the hijab or niqab, experience a unique sense of vulnerability in the […]