Life in a Women’s Shelter in Palestine: Q & A with Samar Hazboun

Last updated on: May 23, 2012 at 12:39 am By Guest Contributor

This post was written by guest contributor Arwa Aburawa. Back in December 2011, gender-based violence hit the headlines in the Arab world when soldiers brutally attacked a hijab-wearing Egyptian protester. Following the incident, there was widespread outrage that a woman would be treated in such a violent manner. And rightly so. However, it got me thinking whether there would have been such a public display of anger if that kind of abuse was happening in someone’s home. By someone’s brother... Read more

Change Is Now? No, Not Yet: Manuel Valls as France’s New Interior Minister

Last updated on: May 21, 2012 at 3:19 pm By nicole

I was rather excited about Francois Hollande winning the French elections this month. I hoped that five years of hateful, fear mongering policy towards Muslims by Sarkozy and his minions would come to an end and that Hollande, for all his supposed blandness, would bring some low-key normalcy to the French presidency. There was one flaw in my reasoning: Manuel Valls, Hollande’s new Interior Minister. The Interior Minister in France is a quite important cabinet position, responsible for internal security,... Read more

In the Name of the Caliphate: What the “Islamic State” Seems to Mean for Muslim Women

Last updated on: May 21, 2012 at 12:04 am By eren

If you ever wondered about “Islamization” and the so-called return to the Caliphate, recent debates arising from a number of Muslim countries regarding the “Islamization” and the status of Muslim women bring important questions to the table. First of all, it raises the question of what really is the “Islamic state” and what describes it. Most of us have heard about “ideal” visions of Islamic statehood (here, here and here). Yet, I would dare to say that we have seen... Read more

Friday Links | May 18, 2012

Last updated on: May 17, 2012 at 11:41 pm By anneke

Twenty years after the war in Bosnia, there are still refugees living in makeshift camps that lack basic necessities, such as running water. Many of the refugees are elderly women, who are often widowed because of the war, and have nowhere else to go. A Filipino newspaper published a picture last week of a woman in “burqa” shaking hands with the president of the island nation. The caption read: “Security Risk?” The newspaper has since apologised for this rather insensitive captioning. Egyptian... Read more

Book Review: The Good Muslim

Last updated on: May 16, 2012 at 2:39 pm By Guest Contributor

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 enjoy literature that confirms their worst suspicions about Muslims. Its premise, a young woman’s struggle to find meaning in a post-war, newly-independent Bangladesh that had... Read more

Maria Toor Pakay vs. the World

Last updated on: May 15, 2012 at 12:15 am By merium

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 they want to do. They get married when they are 12, 14; they are not allowed to get an education. They are not allowed to... Read more

Isabelle Eberhardt: Swiss Explorer, Sufi Adventurer

Last updated on: May 13, 2012 at 4:50 pm By tasnim

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 earlier performance here. The New York Times review describes the work as ”Crackling Vignettes From an Adventurer’s Life”: a 19th-century Swiss adventuress who blazed a... Read more

Friday Links | May 11, 2012

Last updated on: May 11, 2012 at 7:30 am By anneke

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 figures in 2010 and 2011, but it is unclear where he gets his figures from. An article on tunisialive tries to deconstruct virginity in Tunisian... Read more

Dead Muslim Women As Opportunities

Last updated on: May 9, 2012 at 4:30 pm By sana

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 some religious convictions, the use of “honor killing” continued and served, also, most poignantly as a source for protest against even attempted popular normalization of... Read more

Book Review: Rughum & Najda by Samar Habib

Last updated on: May 8, 2012 at 10:14 am By nicole

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 have Bathal, who because a woman of high rank and property when one of her male admirers bought her freedom; Qureisha, who lives with... Read more