Hena Khan has written a series of colorful, inspiring books that connect with children across the world and share the stories of Muslim characters. altM’s Asma Uddin spoke with Hena about her writing journey and what she’s learned from it all. Also check out altM’s previous interview with Hena. Asma:…
Read More“Don’t judge Islam by the actions of a few. For Islam is perfect while Muslims are not.” What this advice fails to address is that people generally don’t care what you believe, only how you behave. Armed with this insight, American Muslims are shifting from expending precious time and resources…
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The past few weeks have been disheartening for a lot of people, and particularly Muslim Americans. The Muslim Ban and the ratcheting policies targeting Islam and Muslims have constructed a narrative of “us versus them”. Muslims are rapidly becoming “the other.” However, all the protests since the Inauguration have given…
Read MoreWe landed at JFK Airport on a sweltering August day twenty-seven years ago. Me, my two younger brothers, and my parents – arriving to stay with a relative in Staten Island until my engineer dad could find a job. From Pakistan my parents had migrated to Saudi Arabia, and at…
Read MoreI find that writing helps me connect with other amazing Muslim women and women of colour. It also allows me to detangle the contradictions of being an indigenous Muslim woman living in Canada. Who are you? My name is Eren Cervantes-Altamirano. I was born and raised in Mexico City, but…
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As increasing number of women around the world choose to dress in ways that express their religious beliefs and cultures, Professor Reina Lewis of London College of Fashion, UAL joins with altMuslimah.com and the Princeton Muslim Life Program to explore the pleasures and pitfalls of ‘modest’ fashion as community and…
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Ever since I began trying to understand life, one of the crippling realizations about the Muslim communities I reached was this: we tend to bury our problems in a dark hole, dismiss them and hope they will never come back to haunt us. But they often do. We overlook many…
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Hijabi. The word stumbles about my tongue in an ungainly fashion instead of rolling off gracefully. When it escapes my mouth, it falls flat. I realize then that I hate it. This word confines me within a box, reducing who I am as a human being to a dress code…
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altMuslimah’s Firdaus Arastu recently sat down with Zarqa Nawaz to discuss her memoir, Laughing All the Way to the Mosque. An excerpt from the book follows the interview. How would you summarize the book to an American audience? I would say this is a funny, happy, uplifting story about growing…
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Parents today are justifiably concerned about raising their kids in the Islamophobic and anti-Arab climate that seems to prevail in much of the Western world. Now is a good time to look at the potential silver linings and strategies we can use to make our children and youth stronger from…
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