Friday Links | January 6, 2012

Last updated on: January 5, 2012 at 6:53 pm By anneke

We didn’t have our usual links last week, so this week’s list is extra long, and covers both weeks. Enjoy! Pakistan has passed the “Prevention of Anti-Women Practices” bill, but the fight is far from over, according to activists and legal professionals. The Deutsche Welle features an interview with female politician Sitara Ayaz, who highlights some of the problems that Pakistani women and girls are facing. A Muslim woman from Georgia, USA, was shot dead by police, after she attacked... Read more

From Iranian Women to Egyptian Women?

Last updated on: January 3, 2012 at 11:16 pm By emanhashim

Shortly after the results of the first stage of the Egyptian parliament elections, everyone started to freak out. After the majority win of Islamist parties Al-Nahda party in Tunisia and the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) in Egypt, memories from Sudan in 1989, Gaza in 2006, and, most importantly, Iran in 1979 came to mind. Iranian women’s rights activists have been sending warning messages to women from both countries, including seminars dedicated to the topic. Dr. Susan Rakhsh, an Iranian... Read more

Circumstance: Gender, Sexuality and the Power of Men in “Fundamentalist” Iran

Last updated on: January 3, 2012 at 10:44 pm By eren

After reading a couple of reviews (on FilmJabber and Afterellen.com) about Circumstance, a recent film by Maryam Keshavarz, I decided to give the film a shot. Circumstance is a drama set in Iran, where gender and sexuality are heavily controlled by the political regime. The film depicts the story of Atafeh and Shireen, two sixteen-year-old friends, whose friendship extends to the sexual and romantic in an environment of underground adventure in contemporary Iran. The story is also complex due to... Read more

All-American Muslim Roundup

Last updated on: January 3, 2012 at 10:25 pm By Azra

Since its debut in November, TLC’s All-American Muslim has received a lot of coverage (to say the least). Among the highlights, the show has been talked about for its novelty of portraying American Muslims on television, critiques of the portrayal of a singular American Muslim community, critiques from everyone regarding the portrayal of hijab on the show, and the controversy surrounding Lowe’s decision to pull their advertising from the show. In one of my earlier posts on the show, I... Read more

Had You Been A Muslim: Joumana Haddad and the Liberated Arab Woman

Last updated on: August 31, 2013 at 9:14 am By tasnim

When Lebanese writer and poet Joumana Haddad’s I Killed Scheherazade: Confessions of An Angry Arab Woman was published in 2010, it was described as a bold treatise, intentionally designed to be revolutionary, written in manifesto style. Recently, a revived interest has situated it in more superficial terms as “a provocative new book which “lifts the veil” on what the “Arab Spring” really means for women,” with Haddad as the liberated Arab woman telling all about her unliberated sisters. In fact, this... Read more

MMW 2011 Year in Review: Head Coverings and Head-Shaking

Last updated on: December 30, 2011 at 12:19 am By Krista

As 2011 draws to a close, we at MMW are looking back at our year of posts. For those who missed posts earlier in the year, or for those who want to look back through some of the things we wrote about, we’ll be going through some of those through the rest of this week. On Wednesday, we started off with an overview of some of the news stories that we talked about in 2011; yesterday, we looked at books,... Read more

MMW 2011 Year in Review: Arts and Entertainment

Last updated on: December 29, 2011 at 10:16 am By Krista

As 2011 draws to a close, we at MMW are looking back at our year of posts. For those who missed posts earlier in the year, or for those who want to look back through some of the things we wrote about, we’ll be going through some of those through the rest of this week. Yesterday, we started off with an overview of some of the news highlights that we talked about in 2011; today, we look at books, movies,... Read more

MMW 2011 Year in Review: News

Last updated on: December 28, 2011 at 1:27 am By Krista

As 2011 draws to a close, we at MMW are looking back at our year of posts. For those who missed posts earlier in the year, or for those who want to look back through some of the things we wrote about, we’ll be going through some of those through the rest of this week. Today, we’re starting off with an overview of some of the news highlights that we talked about in 2011; tomorrow will look at books, movies,... Read more

The Faux Phallic Fatwa

Last updated on: December 26, 2011 at 2:33 pm By sana

On December 6th, a headline hit Facebook and Twitter feeds that an unnamed Islamic cleric – a Salafi cleric at that – residing in an unnamed European country declared that women were forbidden from touching and eating fruits and vegetables that were phallic shaped unless accompanied by (“preferably”) a male relative who would then have to cut the demon shaped foods into small pieces. The reasoning behind such a fatwa was that these fruits and vegetables would invoke thoughts of... Read more

Women in the 2011 Revolutions: Tawakul Karman

Last updated on: December 24, 2011 at 5:38 pm By Guest Contributor

This post was written by guest contributor Summar Shammakhi. For a long time, negative impressions have dominated world’s opinion of women in the Middle East and North Africa region. Media depictions of women as second-class citizens often deemphasises the root causes of the problem, which include the repressive, dictatorship-led countries of this region who sought to exploit many aspects of society, including religion. This past year has witnessed a dramatic turn of events due to the uprisings. One woman who... Read more