Dear readers, The world has been blessed with yet another Ramadhan so that, hopefully, we may all look inside ourselves and ask ourselves what needs improvement in our own selves as well as in the things around us. May this month be a source of inspiration, light, and justice for us all, aameen! May we all have a feminist Ramadhan – i.e., one in which we recognize and stand up […]
I had the beautiful opportunity to attend the Annual Conference on Islamophobia at UC Berkeley this year–where I presented a paper on the Islamophobia of misogyny in Muslim communities, arguing that misogyny in the Muslim community is a form of Islamophobia–and I’m so deeply inspired. I don’t know if I just got lucky by having had a great audience, or what, but the conversations, not just post my presentation but […]
The article below was published first on MuslimGirl.Net and is titled “Why Are Muslim Guys Responding to the ‘Short Shorts’ Article?” The title I’m using in this blog refers to the last line of the Hussain Makke article I’m critiquing below, since it completely contradicts his entire premise even though he’s giving the advice to the rest of us. I love it, though: In your worship, be free. It’s beautiful. […]
This is a response to Yasir Qadhi’s statement on his Facebook page where he shows fake support for the women’s mosque. The saddest part is that he probably meant well; he was probably expecting a pat on the back, a nice, humble thank-you from Muslim women because he’s basically saying that “Hey, Muslim men! If y’all stop disrespecting women in the mosques, maybe they won’t go around taking matters into […]
A Note to Islamophobes excited to find something they can present as proof of a Muslim woman’s “oppression” because of Islam: This post is not an attack on Islam (I’m a Muslim and always will be; you can’t take that away from me. I also love my religion, and you can’t take that away from me, either. And I have much respect for my Prophet and his wives – again, […]
Apparently, February 1st is “World Hijab Day.” I don’t support the campaign for many reasons, although I feel it incumbent upon me to say that I fully respect hijabi women and the hijab (and I wear the hijab myself, too, whenever I feel like it); I recognize the struggles that Muslim women–not just hijabis but non-hijabis too–face and these struggles, and Islamophobia more generally, definitely need to be recognized more […]
If you are a member of this FB group I’m talking about below, I urge you to re-think your values. If you have ever used the word “hojabi” to refer to a woman whose hijab style you don’t approve of, with the excuse that it’s “un-Islamic,” I urge you, too, to re-think your values and re-evaluate your relationship with the divine and with fellow humans. You’re doing harm to yourself […]
Amusingly patriarchal things happened before, during, and after the CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) banquet in San Diego this past November. Generally speaking–and very, very generally speaking–I can only say that the Muslim community and Muslim leaders have a distressing amount of progress to make in terms of acknowledging women’s voices and concerns. And leadership! You see, The Fatal Feminist (Nahida) and I decided that since we were already in […]
Next time someone dares to tell you that Islam doesn’t recognize the existence of multiple genders and that it’s unnatural for people to behave in a way that everyone else in their gender group seems to behave in, at least in public. A story related in Qushayri’s Risala (trans. Knysh, pg 154): It is related on the authority of Abd al-Wahhab b. Abd al-Majid al-Thaqafi that he said: “Once I […]
I have been a feminist ever since I began to engage with patriarchy as a conscious human being. That was also the same time when I realized that I was not the only woman struggling for space to breathe in a misogynistic world that strives to suck out every spirit of being from women, from people of color, from “minorities.” This started in my late teenage years when I began […]
Freedom from the Forbidden 