From Images of Piety to the Arab Spring and Anonymous Women in Burkas

Last updated on: March 25, 2012 at 9:58 pm By eren

The World Press Photo contest is a competition where the best professional photographers have a chance to showcase their work. The contest focuses on photojournalism and features photographers from all over the world. Last year the controversial photo of Bibi Aisha, taken by Jodi Bieber and featured in Time Magazine (which MMW covered here), won first prize in the Portraits/Singles category. This year’s contest featured over 5000 photographers and more than 100,000 photos. Due to the number of political issues... Read more

FundaMattel: Sub-Satrapi Bollocks Masquerading as Art

Last updated on: March 25, 2012 at 8:45 pm By Lara Alamad

Burqa, burqa, burqa. Will we ever reach the stage where there is nothing more to say on the subject? Sometimes I think we’ve covered every angle of critique, but then there comes yet idiocy to be challenged. Worse still, this is idiocy in the name of art. Witness artist Rachel Joy’s latest work. Here we go: “FundaMattel: If Barbie Wore A Burqua explores fundamentalism (in its many guises), materialism and constructions of femininity. Mattel is the home of Barbie, an... Read more

Friday Links | March 23, 2012

Last updated on: March 22, 2012 at 8:53 pm By anneke

Several of hundreds of activists have been protesting against the Moroccan “rape law“, after Amina Filali’s death on March 10. At the same time, the force behind the marriage of Amina and her rapist, Amina’s mother, says that she regrets the marriage, but that she did not really have a choice. A British Muslim juror has been excused from sitting on a case, after she refused to take off her niqab. The chairman of the Islamic Human Rights Commission said that the... Read more

Book Review: Miroirs et Mirages by Monia Mazigh

Last updated on: March 21, 2012 at 8:25 am By Guest Contributor

This post was written by Chelby Marie Daigle and originally published at The Woyingi Blog. Miroirs et mirages is the first novel by Tunisian Canadian Monia Mazigh, who is better known for her work as a human rights activist. Mazigh came to Canada in 1991 to study Finance in Montreal. She subsequently met and married her husband, Syrian-Canadian Maher Arar, started a family, and moved to Ottawa. When her husband was wrongfully rendered to Syria in the hysteria that followed 9/11, she... Read more

Sarabah Reviewed: Sister Fa and FGM in Senegal

Last updated on: March 20, 2012 at 4:35 pm By Azra

Sarabah follows the life of Senegalese rapper Fatou Mandiang Diatta, better known as Sister Fa, and her quest to address female genital mutilation (FGM)* in her village in Senegal. After releasing her first album and marrying a German PhD student, she found herself in Germany working on her music and wanting to commit to raising awareness of FGM in Senegal, as she herself had undergone the procedure as a child. Sister Fa’s organization, Education Sans Excision, works with the NGO... Read more

Saudi Female Students Spark a Revolution

Last updated on: March 18, 2012 at 8:47 pm By samya

On a quiet Saturday morning, while browsing the web for the day’s news, a story from Saudi Arabia caught my attention: thousands of female university students at the King Khalid University in the southern city of Abha were reported protesting against against poor on-campus sanitary services. According to Emirati newspaper Al Bayan, one of the students said: “The University has to take extra care of us. They can’t just leave the trash for three days on campus. There was a... Read more

Hayv Kahraman: ”Telling Tales of Horror with a Demure Grace”

Last updated on: March 19, 2012 at 8:46 am By tasnim

Hayv Kahraman is an Iraqi artist whose work reflects on issues of gender, looking at the victimization of women during war, and the effects of practices such as honor killings and genital mutilation, as well as alienation, marginalization, and displacement. Kahraman addresses these contemporary issues through paintings which have a classical and timeless feel to them, her delicate and elegant work in tension with the complex issues and painful real-world realities which she often takes as her subject. As the... Read more

Friday Links | March 16, 2012

Last updated on: March 15, 2012 at 7:16 pm By anneke

Syrian women play a central role in the revolution; the BBC features the stories and experiences of several of these activist women. Egyptian anthropologist Hania Sholkamy asks whether there will be a place in Egypt for women’s human rights in the near future. Iranian women activists say “no to war”. They fear that war will aggravate violence and discrimination against women. Nisreen Karim, a Lebanese mother of four, married to a Palestinian refugee, died on the road travelling in between hospitals, as... Read more

The Poverty of Marriage

Last updated on: March 13, 2012 at 11:07 pm By sana

The burdens of poverty affect most, if not all aspects, of social relations. Most prominently (and unsurprisingly), women carry the greatest burden of the social predicaments that arise from a dire lack of economic security. Women in groups hit hardest by financial strain easily become seen as sources of further strain on their families. Education is often either inaccessible or seen as an unnecessary part of a young girl’s growth and life. This is not always necessarily the case, as... Read more

Updates from Elsewhere

Last updated on: March 13, 2012 at 11:12 pm By Krista

We’re sharing some excerpts today from a few different stories that relate to things we’ve covered recently on MMW. Enjoy! The editors of Love, InshAllah, which Merium reviewed in February, wrote an article for International Women’s Day about the importance of listening to Muslim women’s diverse stories: There is no denying that there is subjugation and oppression of women committed by Muslims, in the name of Islam, the world over — just as we know there is injustice occurring everyday... Read more