Muslimah Media Watch

This piece was written by Sarah Farrukh, and originally posted at altmuslimah. Written by Tahmima Anam, The Good Muslim is the story of an educated, “modern” woman who loses her brother to Islamic fundamentalism. And perhaps this storyline is why the book has garnered so many rave reviews and literary awards—because Western critics and audiences [...]

In a 2010 television interview, quoted in a more recent article (I was not able to find an original recording of the interview), Pakistan’s highest-ranking female squash player, Maria Toor Pakay, spoke on the rights of women in Pakistan: “Girls don’t get any rights. They cannot go out of the house. They cannot do whatever [...]

Isabelle Eberhardt’s extraordinary life is the stuff of legends – and movies, and operas. Song From the Uproar: The Lives and Deaths of Isabelle Eberhardt, Missy Mazzoli’s multi-media opera, which premiered this spring, explores the unconventional twists and turns of Eberhardt’s short, “operatic” life. You can see the trailer, the Kickstart video, some excerpts and a shorter [...]

Victims of bride kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan cannot rely on the Kyrgyz legal system for help, even though the practice is legally forbidden. One reason for this is that many of these marriages are religious marriages only, and are not registered as civil marriages. According to Kyrgyz official up to 8,000 girls are bridenapped annually, based on [...]

In April of 2011, 20 year-old Jessica Mokdad was allegedly gunned down by her stepfather Rahim Alfetlawi. The media uproar over the murder was immediate and, unsurprisingly, cloaked under the sensationalized trope of “honor killing.” While Mokdad’s family, including her biological father, stressed that Alfetlawi had issues of control and was not acting out of [...]

Rughum &Najda by Samar Habib is a fictional love story set in ninth-century Baghdad. Rughum, a Muslim woman, meets Najda, a witch who was raised with a Manichean family. Rughum and Najda’s love story is the main story around the stories of several lesbian (or “tharifa”) women in the book. Besides Rughum and Najda, we [...]

In the past few weeks, Chechnya has been in international news after the president of the independent republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, made few remarks supporting and justifying honor killings.  After years of war in the region, including the First and Second Chechen wars, Chechnya has undergone a challenging road to reconstruction. Although it seems that Kadyrov’s [...]

Chechnya’s president has openly spoken out in support of honour killings, which leaves Chechen women in fear. Chechnya’s president is known for wanting to make Chechnya “more Islamic than the Islamists.” The Rohingyas are a Muslim ethnic group in Burma/Myanmar, and many of them have fled the country to neighbouring Bangladesh, where they often live in [...]

Earlier this year, South African Muslim media was abuzz with the story of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, an American-educated Pakistani cognitive neuroscientist who was convicted and sentenced to 86 years in prison for assault with intent to murder her U.S. interrogators in Afghanistan. The media campaign served to raise awareness about Siddiqui’s alleged abuse at the [...]

With general elections expected in May 2013, Imran Khan’s political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) or Pakistan Movement for Justice is said to be gaining momentum, if its massive October 2011 political rally is any indicator.  Buoyed by popular support from an empowered youth demographic (36 million people in Pakistan are between 15-24 years old) and [...]

In our roundtable on the Foreign Policy “sex issue” I spoke about the responsibility one has when representing, speaking or acting on behalf of one’s own community.   Among other reactions to that issue, Mona Eltahawy’s article garnered various responses from Arab women, expressing their disapproval of Eltahawy’s claim to speak on behalf of Arab women. [...]

The recent Foreign Policy issue focused on sex drew a number of responses around the internet.  Earlier today, we posted a round-up of some of the other blog posts and articles that were written about the issue; here, Sharrae, Azra, Tasnim, Nicole and I discuss our many thoughts on the issue as a whole and [...]

So I’m sure that pretty much everyone has, by now, seen Foreign Policy magazine’s recent “Sex Issue,” which looks at issues related to gender, sex, and politics in various countries.  The article that’s gotten the most attention is Mona Eltahawy’s piece “Why Do They Hate Us?,” in which Eltahawy writes about the many forms of [...]

From April 19 to April 24, the Association of Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) organised a forum in Istanbul, Turkey on the theme of transforming economic power. Women activists from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in particular spoke about the ongoing struggle to enshrine women’s rights into new constitutions and increase female participation in new [...]

Muslim women were well represented in the Time Magazine list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World this year. Samya wrote yesterday about three of the women, Samira Ibrahim, Manal al-Sharif and Maryam Durani, who are portrayed as women fighting against oppression and in wider media coverage are clearly identified as Muslim women, [...]

I spent the last weekend in Istanbul, having decided with my husband to escape the hectic daily news cycles of cosmopolitan Dubai, bustling with all kinds of events. It was meant to be a time for relaxation, to enjoy the beautiful natural scenery and the delicious Turkish cuisine. But my obsession with how international media [...]

A couple of weeks ago Kecia Ali, Juliane Hammer, and Laury Silvers presented the e-book A Jihad for Justice: Honoring the Work and Life of Amina Wadud (the link takes you to a full PDF of the book). The e-book is meant to be a Festschrift, a German word for “a collection of academic essays [...]

“Love  Marriage and Fairytales” is a somewhat misleading title to a popular Muslim Youtube video, trending in various social media circles, having gone “Muslim-viral,” as my fellow MMW contributor Sana Saeed calls it.  This video (according to information discerned from the Youtube account) is an attempt to highlight the most frequent and problematic issues facing [...]

Addressing sexual harassment in Tunisia is a real challenge, as it is often considered to be a non-issue, especially as Tunisia is viewed to be such an advanced country, when it comes to women’s rights. For many women though, sexual harassment is a daily reality. Afghan Massoud Hossaini was awarded a Pulitzer price for his picture of an Afghan [...]

Long-time readers might remember a post from three years ago, where Sobia and I wrote a guide for How to Write About Muslims.  You can click on the title of that post for the full version, but here’s the list of rules we compiled: Rule #1: Don’t assume that Muslim women need to be saved, [...]