Following the lead of the always reliable Daily Mail, Jezebel recently published a post declaring how awful it is to call your child “Jihad,” suggesting that this is tantamount to naming a child “Hitler.” Cassie Murdoch starts by drawing a parallel to the story of a New Jersey couple that named two of their children Adolf Hitler Campbell and JoceLynn Aryan National Campbell. Murdoch links this case and with a Daily Mail story about a woman who named her baby... Read more
Libya’s new interim government, which was announced on November 22, has been tasked with preparing for elections scheduled for next June, when voters will select an assembly to write the new constitution. As expected, given the challenges of rebuilding the country after four decades of dictatorship and nine months of war, the choice of ministers has come under scrutiny. International media coverage took an angle that suggested some fears had been allayed, noting that Prime Minister Abdulrahman Keib’s cabinet seems to... Read more
Is there something like Islamic fashion? This question has kept Turkey occupied for the last four months, after a major magazine catering to observing Muslim women featured a model in hijab on the cover. 50.50 features an interesting article on the rise of female Islamic leadership. Muslim women in Sarawak, Malaysia do not have to worry, they will not be banned to compete in beauty contests. Moroccan women on the other hand will be encouraged to participate, as veiled contestants will... Read more
Editor’s note: When Azra forwarded us this article, everyone had something to say. Below are thoughts from several MMW contributors. Azra: I saw this post from The Atlantic come up in my twitter feed, and was intrigued. And then I saw the video and read Max Fisher’s thoughts. My intrigue turned to disappointment. [See the bottom of this post for a transcript of the video.] Amnesty UK’s video paints the entire country in one broad stroke, with a vaguely Middle... Read more
Look at pictures of real live white women wearing hijab! All the exclamation marks in existence could not hide that these are the usual soundbites in a story that gets repeated more often then Home Alone at Christmastime. The problem with these statements being that not only do they erase the experiences of convert from other ethnicities, they also have a “A white person choosing to be Muslim, the horror!” undertone to them. So while these statements are linked... Read more
One of the main criticisms of TLC’s All American Muslim was that the show’s characters were representative of only a small part of the American Muslim community. If you felt that way, then a great antidote is “Me, the Muslim Next Door,” a web documentary produced for Radio Canada International. Filmed in Montreal and Toronto in both English and French, “Me the Muslim Next Door” is over two hours of audio, video, and still photography, broken up into 4-6 minute... Read more
On the morning of June 30, 2009 a quadruple-murder case rocked the city of Kingston in Ontario, Canada. Four women were found dead, submerged in the Rideau Canal, in their Nissan Sentra. At first it seemed as though boaters had come across a teenage prank gone awry or the victims of a horrific car accident. However, as the bodies were identified as Zainab Shafia, age 19, Sahar Shafia, age 17, Geeti Shafia, age 13, and Rona Amir Mohammad, age 50,... Read more
In Afghanistan a widow and her daughter were stoned and shot to death, because they were accused of ‘moral deviation and adultery’. May Allah grant them both justice. Rape cases are soaring in refugee camps in Somalia. Conflicting statements on women’s issues, such as single mothers, make one wonder what the future really will be for Tunisian women. Divorce initiated by the woman (khula’) on the rise in Egypt. Also in Egypt, there is fear that cases involving sexual assault... Read more
Although Muslim women are often portrayed in the media as wearing nothing but black abbayas, black hijabs and, often times, burkas and niqabs, Muslim women are claiming a place within the fashion industry. On one hand, some Muslim women have become visible as models; on the other, some are working to change things for those looking for stylish clothes that meet their standards for modesty. Nonetheless, this does not come without challenges. In the aftermath of 9/11 and the after-effects... Read more
In a short interview in The New Yorker this past September, American photographer Lynsey Addario, who has covered the Middle East and South Asia for over a decade, talks about her experience photographing Muslim women: “The more I photographed Muslim women, the more I was able to metaphorically strip away the burqas and hijabs, and start chipping away at the profound misconceptions that existed in other parts of the world about these women and their culture.” The language used here... Read more
Muslimah Media Watch
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