It began as a project for MTVDesi in 2013: comedienne Radhika Vaz and writer/performer Nadia Manzoor debuted the humorous musings of two hijabi Brooklyn implants, Shagufta and Fatima, in a show called “Shugs & Fats.” The project is now a web-based series highlighting their “quest to reconcile their long held…
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The recent Twitter conversation #HijabAndMihrab about women’s complicated relationships with mosques triggered a host of feelings for me. I have a complicated and difficult relationship with my local mosque. While I benefit from praying in a congregation, I can’t deny that as a woman and a convert, I often feel…
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INTRODUCTION Muslims in the West face a barrage of negative images in the media as a result of Islamophobia, xenophobia, and anti-Black, anti-Arab, and/or anti-South Asian racism. After the shooting in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Muslims across the country are grieving the murders of Deah Shaddy Barakat, his wife Yusor…
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“Honey, don’t get me wrong, but maybe it’s better if you remove these Arabic words from above your door for a while,” my 70-year-old neighbor softly advised me as she was leaving my house. I must have given her a puzzled look because she explained, “Crazy things are happening in…
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Often, when we talk about the history of Islam in America, we focus on the great men and their big ideas. This month, in looking at the BlackLivesMatter Movement through the life and legacy of Malcolm X, I thought of the many women who were also part of our nation’s…
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Editorial Note: After an investigation lasting more than two months, the former president of the Institute for Islamic Education in Elgin, Ill, Mohammad Abdullah Saleem, has been charged with criminal sexual abuse for an incident involving a 23-year-old women, which occurred in April 2014. Saleem, 75, is in custody. The…
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[title maintitle=”” subtitle=”As Salaamu Alaikum, peace, to any and all reading.”] Last Tuesday, three Arab-American Muslim students, two of them newlyweds, were murdered execution style in their own Chapel Hill, NC apartment. The murders, and subsequent lack of media coverage, sparked widespread outrage among the Muslim community, which expressed its…
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In a letter to American Muslims, Maria Khwaja Bazi reflects on rising Islamophobia and the murders of Deah, Yusor and Razan in Chapel Hill. Dear MSA kids, I was 17 on September 11, 2001. It was fall of my senior year of high school, and I was worried about a US…
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The Women’s Mosque of America, founded by M. Hasna Maznavi and Sana Muttalib, held its very first Friday prayer a little over a week ago on January 30. Edina Lekovic, from the Muslim Public Affairs Council, gave the khutbah, or Friday sermon and its theme centered on “spiritual nourishment.” Lekovic…
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altMuslimah (“altM”) will be celebrating its 6th birthday this March, on International Women’s Day. For six years, we’ve been providing cutting edge commentary on a variety of issues pertinent to gender-and-Islam, starting and normalizing discussions the community was previously afraid to broach. As we begin our 7th year, we…
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