[Source].On June 8th, the 2014 Headwrap Expowas held in Dearborn, Michigan, billed as an event on “the art of headwrapping and scarf styling,” bringing together fashion, culture and interfaith dialogue.
The event was presented by Beautifully Wrapped, an organization celebrating the art of headwrapping. According to Zarinah El-Amin Naeem, founder of Beautifully Wrapped, The Headwrap Expo is intended to celebrate “fusion — looking at how different cultural aspects, different things that people wear in different parts of the world are adopted across into other cultures.”
As Naeem further explains,
“It’s an intercultural, multi-faith event that brings together all these different groups…We have the Sikh Indians, we have Muslims, we have Christians, we have Jews, we have African Americans, African immigrants, everybody coming together. Once we’re there, we share, we talk about love, we have workshops, we have fashion stylings, fashion shows throughout the day. It’s a whole affair.”
The “whole affair,” as Naeem puts it, includes dozens of vendors and educational workshops on spirituality as well as style, topics ranging from natural hair care to “African adornment” to a special workshop for people dealing with hair loss from chemo or from other causes. In an interview about last year’s Expo, Naeem said:
“We pull a multi-religious, multi-ethnic eclectic group of people, many of whom are humanitarian minded and enjoy diverse colorful atmospheres and mingling with people from various backgrounds…From London, New York Runways and Prada, to the streets of Morocco, Malaysia and Nigeria, headwrapping is a global phenomenon enjoyed by women and men of all backgrounds.”
This sense of a hybrid, multiethnic “colorful atmosphere” is very much evident from looking at the poster from the 2013 expo, which features women of different ethnicities in various kinds of hijab and in elaborate headwraps. In contrast to such events as World Hijab Day, the Headwrap Expo presents itself as a way of bringing people together around the idea that head-covering is a common practice across many religions, rather than just focusing on hijab. (more…)
This post was originally published at Aquila Style.
The liberal feminist organisation Femen and its members’ naked breasts have had their media run. Now a more modest sort of uncovering is happening, this time in Iranian social media. Last month, London-based Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad started a movement on Facebook and Twitter, translated as “My Stealth Freedom”, to highlight the “legal and social restrictions” faced by women in Iran.
Secular and Muslim women all over Iran are posting photos of themselves without the mandated headscarf, in secluded places where there are no Basij (religious police) to punish them for violating the country’s dress code. The movement is led by women who are removing their headscarves and posting photos of themselves of their own free will.
But the title of an article on Vocativ, “The great unveiling”, gave me a bad feeling. It made me uneasy because the idea of “uncovering-as-freedom” is fraught with historical baggage.
The “great unveiling” has already happened. In fact, it’s occurred many times over in modern history. Algeria under French colonisation is the best example of this.
In Frantz Fanon’s A Dying Colonialism (1959), he points to the use of women as a metaphor for the colonised Arabs. Essentially, they represented the Orient. Because women were the main target of lamission civilisatrice, unveiling them was a way for the French to prove that they had utterly penetrated their Algerian colony.
And unveil the French did: in 1958, the military organised mass unveiling ceremonies of women. These ceremonies took place in several major cities, including the capital city of Algiers, as a deliberate display for the international press. There are reports of women who had never worn a headscarf being forced to put it on and take it off, just for the ceremony. Despite the fact that rural women then also did not habitually wear any head coverings, the veil was taken as a symbol of Algeria’s secret primitivism – for the French to civilise, of course. (more…)
A new ad for a fashion label features a man in a burqa (oops, just spoiled the ending!)
A Muslim woman walking away after casting her vote at a polling station in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, on Monday. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images [source].The photographer whose photos of girls from Guinea-Bissau were used as part of campaigns related to the girls kidnapped in Nigeriawrites about how African girls are not, in fact, interchangeable.
Teenage Muslim girls from Indonesia, Yemen, Mali, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Afghanistan speak out on the importance of education for girls and their reactions to the kidnapping of over 200 female students in Nigeria.
A recent TIME magazine post about hijab being “a pain in the summer” was widely criticised on social media.
An article about the lack of wheelchair access in many UK mosques talks about how accessibility issues have a particularly strong negative impact for disabled Muslim women.
When Love, InshAllah, edited by Ayesha Mattu and Nura Masnavi, was initially published two years ago, I was thrilled. I may not have necessarily related to all the stories of those women but was happy to read them. And as cliche as it sounds, it was really challenging the notion that Muslimahs are a monolith. But the editors’ second anthology, Salaam, Love, “an anthology of stories about love written from the perspectives of Muslim men,” initially had me less convinced.
I really wanted to dislike this book and was wary of the way it was framed.
We live in a society that is already reluctant to hear the voices of Muslim women, whose experiences and discussions are often co-opted by Muslim men. Muslimahs struggle, creating hashtags and seeking platforms to have their voices heard. They constantly add their voices (to help of course!) when they should just sit and listen instead of disingenuously trying to increase their online profiles by jumping into discussions that should be women-only.
When I saw that dedication of Salaam, Love read: “For all the men who asked: “Where are our stories?” I almost wanted to hijabdesk.
Men are asking where their stories are? Men, who have dominated writing circuits, mainstream blogs, are quoted in BuzzFeed because of their popularity (not their substance or relevance), and are still in control of so much that is published within Muslim communities? Even when the topic is feminism? *sigh*
But 70 excuses aside, I have previously referenced Love,InshAllah for their initiative in starting and continuing important discussions about sexuality and Islam in an open, mature and responsible manner — even if I don’t always agree with them.
I had a lot of questions even before I began to read the book. Who was writing? Would they be generalizing? Was I reading this so I could get some insight into the romantic mind of a believing man?
I did a little bit of research and looked at the writers page on the book’s website. I wanted to get an idea of what and who I was going to be reading.
Although contributors are predominantly of the same age and same geographic area (California), they are of different ethnic backgrounds and sexual orientation. They all self-identify as Muslims.
They were all going to be sharing their stories as a Muslim man. I hoped they would be varied. As a reader, I wasn’t reading it to get into the mind of *a* Muslim man. I was interested in reading about different experiences. I appreciate that each story is unique. No two struggles or outcomes are the same. I wasn’t sure that one book was going to be able to capture all of these complexities in a meaningful way.
I am also not used to hearing Muslim men express their feelings of love in an intimate manner- unless it is in the lyrics of music or poetry. Not in a manner that I can relate to or that isn’t solely for entertainment purposes.
Still, I received my copy and dove in.
The book was divided into three parts: “Umma: It Takes a Village,” “Sirat: The Journey,” and “Sabr: In Sickness and in Health.”
I found the first story, “Soda Bottle and Zebra Skins,” to be hilarious. It touched upon references that I was familiar with: MSA experiences; the new moments of fear, excitement and newness of a relationship; the constant balancing of halal versus haraam in mixed-gender company. The style in which the storyteller was narrating was one I really enjoyed. I certainly laughed out loud when I read this line: “Marriage is a life raft wherein one’s libido can float along safety as it sails down a river of choppy American hypersexuality.” (more…)
Unlike past elections, the number of female candidates for the upcoming Iraqi elections is actually quite promising and some are hopeful that this will actually mean that things will change for women.
Following an upsurge in Boko Haram violence, southern Niger has been flooded by Nigerian refugees and returnees, mainly women and children, which is straining the already very poor host population.
Just last week Boko Haram abducted hundreds of girls from a boarding school in Borno state, Nigeria, most of them are still missing. Local women’s organizations say that they are willing to storm the Boko Haram stronghold in order to plea the abductors to release the girls. Muslim women in a neighbouring state have gone to the street to decry the actions of Boko Haram and called on the government to take action to find these girls.
Another week, more elections. A Libyan woman holds up her ink-stained finger after voting in the municipal elections in the city of Benghazi. Image by Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters
After being temporary closed after the death of its founder, the Islamic boarding school for transgender people in Yogyakarta, Indonesia has reopened.
Two Austrian teenage girls, who disappeared from their homes earlier this month, are now the subject of an international man-hunt by Interpol, as there is reason to believe that they have travelled to Syria to join the “jihad.”
A project which delivers energy efficient cookstoves in the Darfur region has local women issuing carbon credits.
Al Jazeera features a short documentary on illiterate Sahrawi poet Al Khadra, who uses her poetry as a tool to fight for the Sahrawi cause.
A convoy consisting of approx. a hundred Muslim women and children, escorted by French peacekeepers, is the latest to flee the Central African Republic’s capital of Bangui after fear of attacks by the Christian Anti-Balaka militia. The conflict, which started 2 years ago, has many worried about the future of the Muslim community in the country.
Sierra Leone is sending at least 65 female peacekeepers to Somalia later this spring; it is hoped that these women can help in the peace process and can become role models for local Somali women, especially because Sierra Leone is a country with a Muslim majority too.
At the moment about 70 percent of medical students in Iran is female, but a shortage in male physicians has the government contemplating action to change this ratio.
An 61-years-old Omani sheikh was arrested in Hyderabad, India last week, after a 14-year-old girl ran away after she was introduced to him for marriage and reported this to the police. Many Arab men travel to the Hyderabad area to marry underage girls.
Due to an increase of women joining the Kyrgyz labour migration to Russia, many children are now being raised by their grandparents, which creates a whole different set of problems.
Iranian president Rouhani has spoken out in support of gender equality in a speech marking Iran’s Women’s Day.
A hundred couples were joined in matrimony during a mass wedding in northern Nigeria; all brides received a dowry and household items from an Islamic charity.
This post was originally published at wood turtle.
Goggles and gears, corsets adorned with brass and lace brocade, Victorian aesthetics meshed with clockwork, artisans selling creative curios, side show fancies and handmade wares — all came together seamlessly for an imagined moment in time that transformed the historic Gladstone Hotel in Toronto for an annual steampunk street festival.
With my feathered top hat pinned firmly to my hijab and my robotic “ocular enhancement” painted on my face, I joined hundreds of other diverse hobbyists who have taken this sub-genre of science fiction beyond imagination and into the reality of fashion, music, performance art, design, philosophy and lifestyle.
I’m fairly new to the steampunk scene in Toronto — and even though I’ve appreciated the culture for years (decades? centuries?) and take any opportunity I can get to dress up in my collection of steampunk gear — this was the first time I’ve actively attended a public event instead of just shyly looking from afar at convention centres.
Recently I’ve decided to become more involved in the steampunk community and was encouraged by a good friend and talented graphic designer who helped create a part of my character. I don’t have the artisan skill to work with metal and leather — but as you know, I’m crafty and enjoy expressing my artistic side with more fluid mediums *cough* like eyeliner.
The final product. Ms. K, Inquisitor of the social sciences and robotics. I’m on the hunt for a man named Rex Marxley.
The girls were decked out in their goggles and held on tight as they took in the fantastical and carefully choreographed event pulled together by Adam Smith, director of Canadian Steam Productions. Soon the dulcet tones of Sir Alfred E Tennyson, Scholar and Gentlemanly DJ, enthusiastically welcomed the crowd, delighted our oratory senses and welcomed an array of steam-inspired entertainment.
While it’s difficult to define exactly what it means for something to be “steampunk,” it’s generally understood to be rooted in an alternative history (or historical future) where steam-power rules and aesthetics are largely influenced by the Victorian period to the mid-20th century. In terms of attitude, steampunk rests on a world of possibility, futurism, but also romantic idealism of the past — and criticisms of the subculture often highlight negative elements that include Empire-worship, the colonial spirit (colonizing other worlds, at least), and overlooking the child labour, rampant disease, institutionalized slavery and racism of the Victorian period.
Since many modern, negative stereotypes about Muslims — as the exotic, savage, sexualized, Orientalized “other” — originate from the Victorian era, what would Muslim Steampunk actually look like? Would it draw specifically from prejudiced Victorian sensibilities, or focus on the strengths and glory of Islam’s Golden Age? (more…)
This woman is my hero because we’ve laughed together, shared incredible experiences, seen each other at our most vulnerable, and have given each other support in countless ways.
This woman is my AMAZING sister-in-law and I am incredibly proud of her and all her achievements.
Eye is determined, resilient, totally bad-ass and one of the most courageous people I know. She was recently interviewed by the Ottawa Sun about her return to boxing after a brief hiatus to finish writing her PhD dissertation.
Yeah, no biggie.
When I first heard about the interview, I cautioned her to watch out for being positioned as a “token” Muslim, or as the “ideal” representation of Canadian Islam. This is the Sun — Canada’s conservative news network in love with tabloid-worthy headline news and sensationalizing or demonizing issues relating to Muslims.
Now my filters are 100% biased. I’ve watched this video a hundred times and can only feel intense love and excitement for her words. Because that is how this story is framed. According to her words.
When I’m in a fight, I’m thinking of how much I need to protect myself —and how worthy I am of being protected. It’s almost as if you’re like a mother who wants to protect her child — and that self love is something that is beautiful to be able to get from a sport. Honestly, the satisfaction at the end of a fight is worth it. Regardless of the outcome… The outcome is truly something that is from God. (more…)
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