I have always loved the month of Ramadan. It was always my springboard for the rest of the year, and I used it as a time to pause and reflect. I found the actual fasting hard, and so I devoured books around the virtues abstaining from food and drink for…
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March has become exhausting. A month that is supposed to be dedicated to women has now every women’s issue crammed in. We have no time to celebrate. We just have more to explain than ever. Last year for International Women’s Day, I issued an invitation to the AltMuslimah readers on…
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When people ask me why I created Across Red Lines, my natural response has been to share my mind’s truth: that over a professional lifetime spent in war zones, I witnessed and experienced first-hand the crippling legacy of the fractured relationship between women’s sexuality and the modern practice of Islam….
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Over the last five years I have delved into the power of joy and pleasure to positively transform communities. I have developed a curriculum based on a multidirectional approach – combining Eastern and Western traditions, along with scientific and spiritual approaches. And like all people who stumble across their passion…
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Clue/Pssst: The secret is hidden in a woman’s body This is our month. March goes beyond International Women’s Day on March 8th. It includes for the rest of the world both the celebration of spring and Mother’s Day. It is a time for celebration of the beginning of life, and…
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When I arrived for Eid-ul-Adha prayers at Noor Cultural Center in Toronto, my hopes were not high. I have been, over the years, to dozens of mosques, in half a dozen countries, on four continents. Sometimes, I’ve been looking for a mosque to call home, a source of intellectual and spiritual…
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As the #MeToo movement gains traction, and each week brings bombshell accusations against celebrities, it is important to think about how each of us can work to bring about the long term societal change needed to attack the root of sexual violence. Last month, it was Louis CK. This month…
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There is currently a conversation raging in the American Muslim community about female genital mutilation (FGM). First there were the arrests of Bohra Muslim doctors in Michigan accused of performing this procedure on young girls. Then came the public lecture, and online video of said lecture, of an imam talking…
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Many people have seen the photograph of 18-year-old Arshad Khan, the Afghan Pashtun* worker at an Islamabad tea stand whose photo has gone viral globally. When the image of this tea vendor who had neither a name nor a story attached to him appeared on my social media timeline, I immediately…
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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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