Interview with Celebrity Food Blogger Thasneen Ansi

April 30, 2013 By

Cooking hasn’t been one of my strong points ever, and after getting married to a family whose cuisine was completely different to mine, I was lost. Since most of the dishes prepared in my husband’s home are unique, their recipes were pretty hard to find online as well. That’s when I found Thasneen Ansi’s blog “Cooking with Thas.”  Almost all of mother-in-law’s signature recipes, like steamed plaintain cakes and layered crepes, were available to me. I became an ardent fan of the blog, especially because she got down to basics, and included pictures of every step in her cooking process.  Not to mention, it immensely helped me in impressing my in-laws.

A Muslim Malayalee born in Trivandrum, Kerala, and now working in Ontario, Thasneen Ansi’s knowledge of Malabar cooking astonished me. With 12,000 fans on her Facebook page, and ranked 17th in the friendsEat list of best food bloggers of 2011, Thasneen is a celebrity in her own right.

In an email interview, I also realized she is down-to-earth and witty. Shared below are excerpts from the interview. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Culture/Society, Web Tagged With: , ,

Of Indian Marriage Laws and Conversions: The Case of Saifeena

February 27, 2013 By

Celebrity marriages always come with a lot of public anticipation, and this was the case with the wedding of Saif Ali Khan and  Kareena Kapoor, who after five years of  a very public courtship, married on Oct 2012. However, the speculation surrounding the relationship didn’t end post-marriage. Apart from being India’s heartthrob, Saif Ali Khan was crowned the Nawab of Pataudi in 2011, after his father’s death. The Nawab of Pataudi is considered to be the Islamic religious head in the state of Pataudi, Haryana. So it was not very surprising when the Darul Uloom Deoband proclaimed that, as Kareena Kapoor hadn’t converted to Islam prior to marriage, the “Saifeena marriage” is illegal and “anti-Islam,” and that “Since Saif has married a Hindu girl, he wouldn’t be a believer in Islam.”

Saif Ali Khan’s mother, Sharmila Tagore, who is a renowned actress herself, converted to Islam and became Begum Ayesha Sultana before marrying the then Nawab of Pataudi, Saif Ali Khan’s father, Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, and was under pressure from her mother-in-law who didn’t want  a “sexy siren who wore bikinis and worked in films’ as her daughter-in-law.” [Read more...]

Filed Under: Cinema, Culture/Society Tagged With: , , , ,

Book Review: Lajja, by Taslima Nasrin

February 6, 2013 By

Taslima Nasrin. Via taslimanasrin.com.

I have been hearing about Taslima Nasrin from the time I was a child. The Muslim Bangla woman was accused of writing blasphemous anecdotes about Islam in her 1993 novel  Lajja, which drew a number of protests, including at least one group calling for her death and offering a reward; Lajja was banned in Bangladesh following widespread protest against its contents.

So it was natural that I picked up a copy of Lajja when I recently found it in a roadside bookshop, as it was hard to find a copy in established book houses in India.  Nasrin’s work over the last twenty years since the publication of Lajja has been controversial as well, but this post will focus on Lajja specifically.

Lajja is about a Bengali family, the Duttas, who are Hindus by birth, but are atheists in their belief system. The family consists of Sudhamoy and his wife, Kiranmoyee, and their two adult children, Maya and Suranjan. Though the book is written about the 1992 Riots in Bangladesh following the Babri Masjid Demolition, during which there was widespread violent riots in Bangladesh, against its Hindu minority community, it also mentions in detail two other significant events in Bangladesh history:

1. The 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, which was fought with the State of Pakistan, where Bangladesh fought to become an independent secular state. This is told through flashbacks from Sudhamoy’s experience as a young man.

2. The 1990 Babri Masjid dispute in Ayodhya India, during which large scale communal disturbances were caused in Bangladesh.

The book chronicles the story of the family in the 13 days following the Babri Masjid Demolition. While news of an ensuing riot fills the news channels, Sudhamoy is reminded of his grim experiences during the Bangladesh Liberation war, where he was captured by Pakistanis and tortured. His wife had to stop wearing the Sindhur, which is a compulsory custom among married Hindu women, for fear of being identified . However, following the declaration of Bangladesh as an independent state, Sudhamoy believed all his trials and tribulations would be over. Much to Sudhamoy’s dismay, Bangladesh, which was founded on secularism, was later converted to an Islamic state.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Books/Magazines, Culture/Society, Politics Tagged With: , ,

Sania Mirza: A Pride or Disgrace to Indian Muslims

January 10, 2013 By

Sania Mirza is a source of pride in India. She is the first Indian woman to:

  1. Win a WTA (Women’s Tennis Association) tour title of any kind
  2. Win a Grandslam Title
  3. Surpass US $1m in career earnings

She has also won the Arjuna Award, which is the highest sports honour in India, and the Padma Shri, which is the fourth highest civilian award in India; she was  named one of the “50 heroes of Asia” by Time Magazine, and named by The Economic Times in the list of “33 women who made India proud“.

Sania Mirza on the cover of Time Magazine. [Source].

She also happens to be a Muslim woman, who according to her father and coach, is a deeply religious girl who prays five times a day, tries hard not to play during the holy month of Ramadan, and reads the Quran every day.

However, to many Indian Muslims, she is a media personality, who doesn’t wear the “proper” attire that a Muslim woman is supposed to be seen in. She dresses like any other tennis sports star, and is popular for her style statements as for her skill with the racket. This resulted in a Maulvi in Midnapore (West Bengal, India) issuing a fatwa on her dress code stating “The dress she wears on the tennis courts…leaves nothing to the imagination.” He also said she should follow the example of Iranian women who wore head scarves and long tunics when they played in badminton tournaments. Islamist groups such as Jamiat-ulema-e-Hind allegedly threatened to disrupt her tennis matches.

Recently another fatwa was also issued against her, for living together with her current husband, before their marriage; the fatwa stated that ”It’s un-Islamic for a man and woman to see each other during the ceremonies before the ‘nikah.’” (Mirza’s husband stayed in her parental home for few weeks prior to their wedding. )

Mirza was also heavily criticized for hugging non-Mahram men after a match, and for wearing t-shirts with bold statements on them. She also spoke in a conference about safe sex, which was understood as implying that she supported premarital sex, following which her effigy was burnt.  [Read more...]

Filed Under: Culture/Society, Sports Tagged With: , ,

Muslim Women’s Stories in the Kerala Gulf Boom

December 5, 2012 By

The Kerala “Gulf Boom” refers to the mass migration of a large number of people from the Indian state of Kerala to the Gulf Countries from 1972 to 1983. The movement of many migrant workers from Kerala to the Gulf Countries continues to the present day. By 2008, the Gulf countries contained a total Keralite population of more than 2.5 million, who annually send home a sum of around $ 6.81 billion (US), which was more than 15% of the total Remittance to India in 2008. And were 15 to 18 times the size of foreign exchange earned from the export of cashew and marine products. Forty-two per cent of Malayalis in the Gulf countries are Muslims.

Director Kamal, in two of his critically acclaimed movies, based on true stories, gives us the Muslim women’s side of the Gulf Boom story, from both sides.

Gadhamma (“Housemaid”) showcases the life of a Muslim woman who is employed as maid-servant in a wealthy Arab household and falls prey to Saudi Arabia’s modern slavery. Perumazhakkalam (“The season of heavy rains”) depicts the plight of Gulf wives, predominantly Muslims, who are left behind in Kerala, while their husbands work abroad.

Both the movies have Saudi Arabia, and its Shariah rule, as their background. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Cinema Tagged With: , , , ,

Film Review: Unveiled Views

November 8, 2012 By

“When someone wants to be an artist, because they cannot let what’s going on around them stay the same, achieving fame in the world of art becomes unimportant.” –Alma Suljevic

I am a lover of all art forms, including cinema; the Women Make Movies initiative, and the kind of varied and thought-provoking cinema they help produce, has always captured my interest.

Alba Sotorra’s 2009 film Unveiled Views was a movie I could sit and proudly watch on my own, or even watch with family.

It’s a movie that makes a Muslim woman proud to be a Muslim, or most importantly proud to be a woman who is not looking to be saved by others, as MMW’s Sana describes out in her recent “Broken Record” article. This documentary speaks about women who, in spite of having undergone tremendous personal loss, retain their passions and use them to better their tumultuous world, which is in dire need of reformation.

Like most documentaries, it’s not always what is obviously portrayed or being spoken about that leaves a lasting impression on you. It’s mostly about what is happening around these women, the images that are shown about the country as a whole, where these wonderful women exist and survive. I will be referring to them as the Silent Moments (if any) in my take on each segment.

The movie is about five extraordinary women from five different countries. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Cinema, Culture/Society, Film Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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