“Everywhere in the world they hurt little girls.” Sadly this statement by a character on the popular television show Game of Thrones is as true in the Muslim World as anywhere else. Although it is an injustice when any woman is hurt without cause, it is especially appalling when it…
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I knew in the very first moment of my interview with Sandra El-Amin that I had happened upon a treasure. Delightful was the anticipation of presenting her voice to the world. “A woman can pursue any career she likes,” Sandra told me. “She can be a Supreme Court justice….
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“And of His signs is that He created for you from yourselves mates that you may find tranquility in them; and He placed between you affection and mercy. Indeed in that are signs for a people who give thought” – Quran 30:21.
The video of Baltimore Ravens player Ray Rice punching Janay Palmer, his then girlfriend and now wife, has practically been on loop for the past few days. It is a horrifying clip, one that I accidentally saw on some sports network my husband was watching.
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Today we remember the life of an extraordinary individual who strove for the accurate representation of Muslim women, Tayyibah Taylor. Ms. Taylor inspired people from all walks of life, leaving her legacy with the award-winning publication, Azizah Magazine. She was a trailblazer and shining example, committed to a better, more informed world. In an interview from the archives, Ms. Taylor discusses gender, Islam, the magazine’s vision, and violence against women in the Muslim community with staffer Sarah Farrukh.
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I’m not one for humid, oppressively hot weather, but there I was standing on the grassy knoll opposite the White House, squinting into the noon-day sun. And I wasn’t alone. Roughly 10,000 people–give or take a few hundred—milled around me on Lafayette Square, spilling onto Pennsylvania Avenue.
Read More“She made me do it.” I hear this phrase all too often, and each time I hear it my heart bleeds.
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Dr. Aslam Abdullah is the Imam for the Islamic Society of Nevada (ISON) in Las Vegas. He discussed his experiences with and perspective on domestic violence within the Muslim American community with altmuslimah editor Najiyah Khan.
The first time I worked on Mother’s Day, I saw the day through a different lens. My patient’s mother usually came in every morning after her night shift job and passed out on the hospital sleeper chair for a few hours. But that morning, she arrived wearing her Sunday best and her finest pearls. In her hand was a camera, and a satin dress for the baby. She wanted a picture with her daughter, and asked if we could do everything possible to make her look less like a patient and more like a “normal” child.
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Giving birth is, in so many ways, an act of faith. It involves a kind of radical trust in our bodies that I equate with tawakkul, trust in Allah, the One who made our bodies. For me, being a doula is also an act of faith. A doula is someone who supports and comforts a mother in childbirth, building a relationship with her over the weeks leading up to the delivery and sometimes continuing to support a new mother in the weeks that follow.
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