In the Skin of A Jihadist by Anne Erelle (not her real name) is a book about a French journalist pretending to be an ISIS fan and interacting with a French-speaking jihadist via Skype. This sentence occurs on the first page: “Do you really love me, Mélodie murmurs, her voice childish and frail.” That one sentence, and the cover, should be enough to clue you in: sprinkled throughout the book’s 240 pages are passages that read like a sheik romance novel met an... Read more
Linda Sarsour is a woman in a hurry. Only 35, she has already helped to partly dismantle the New York Police Department’s program of spying on the city’s Muslims and has worked with officials in City Hall to close public schools for the observance of two of Islam’s most important holy days. The New York Times writes a special profile on Sarsour. Inside Behpooshi Modelling School in Tehran, models-to-be learn to pose and catwalk in accordance with Iranian law. The... Read more
What does it mean to ‘break’ a stereotype? Does it mean acting contrary to what society expects? Does it mean to be the first to do something? Does it mean to do something actually ground-breaking? Or does it mean to abide by what some else thinks is news worthy? A few weeks ago Al-Jazeera’s The Stream, a discussion program, featured an episode called “Muslim women breaking stereotypes.” The purpose of the show was to highlight the ways in which Muslim... Read more
A Singaporean news channel produced a series of Youtube videos featuring selected athletes with disabilities, or para-athletes. One featured athlete is Aishah Samad, a shooter who had to have all four of her limbs amputated after going into septic shock and contracting gangrene in the hospital on the way home from a trip to China. In the short 5-minute video, at least a fifth of the entire video focuses solely on footage of Aishah’s mobility aids. The video starts with... Read more
There are many not so nice things about being immediately recognizable as a Muslim in today’s world, but there are a few things that are, usually, nice. One of them is what I like to call the salam nod. You spot a fellow Muslim, and do a nod of acknowledgement, and depending on how you feel and the context, you either say a short salam or sing out the whole long greeting. And sometimes conversations happen. And sometimes this makes... Read more
A recent study has shown the number of Saudi women who do not marry young has shot up to four million, more than double the number five years ago, because apparently Saudi women prioritize employment and education over early marriage. A reader of The Arab American News, who had stopped at a traffic light with the Muslim biker, sent a photo to the newspaper. It was taken at an angle that did not reveal the woman’s identity, but still captured the... Read more
A few months ago I watched Abderrahmane Sisako’s Timbuktu, as part of a retrospective of Sissako’s work at the Walker Art Museum. It stunned me at the time—the film examines how daily life changes in a Malian community where an al-Qaeda group has taken over. While the film focuses primarily on a young family’s tribulations when a murder is committed, the film explores how mundane, everyday situations under ordinary circumstances can suddenly become a minefield when the new impositions are not... Read more
As is usually the case in France, any time anything happens where Muslims could even remotely be involved, it becomes a media circus – any time is a good time to talk about how “Muslims want it their way” or how “Muslims don’t want to integrate.” Last week, a 21 year old woman in a public park in the city of Reims was apparently assaulted by Muslim women for wearing a bikini in public. Several news outlets picked up on... Read more
A community basketball team in Cedar-Riverside Minneapolis, consisting of young Somali girls, made the news recently. These players did not gain attention from media outlets for bashing stereotypes or fighting against the Islamic oppressive patriarchy. They were lauded and positively represented for creating a solution to challenges they faced with their basketball uniforms. Their long skirts and flowy hijabs were not optimal for the courts. So, the girls partnered with the College of Design at the University of Minnesota and... Read more
Seven Muslim women from around the world are bicycling across Iowa as a way of “promoting female sports participation as a fundamental right“. The 470-mile ride, featuring 8,500 cyclists, began July 19 and finished July 25. In the last year and a half, as turmoil in Ukraine has dominated the news media’s attention, a group of young Moscovite Muslims saw a new window of opportunity to change perceptions by making Muslims the “trendsetters in fashion.” Adila Matra writes... Read more
Muslimah Media Watch
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