BACKGROUND

Altmuslimah.com grew out of a grassroots effort within the Princeton, NJ community that was focused initially on gender-related discourse through a book club. One of the book club’s early meetings discussed Living Islam Out Loud, a collection of essays by Muslim American women, and the club had the pleasure of hosting the book’s editor, Saleemah Abdul Ghafur, at its meeting. The conversation that ensued that day was eyeopening in that it revealed the deep-seated frustrations of Muslim American women, ages 18-45, and their need for a forum to discuss and find solutions for their concerns.

As a direct result of the meeting, Asma Uddin approached Shahed Amanullah, the founder and editor of Altmuslim.com, to launch a site akin to Altmuslim.com, a social and political news magazine, but with a focus on gender issues within the Muslim community. Altmuslim.com at that time had been in existence for almost a decade and had a wide, vibrant audience, numbering in the millions. Soon after Asma approached Shahed, the Muslim community was rocked by news of the tragic beheading of Asiya Zubair Hasan, the co-founder of Bridges TV, by her husband (also the co-founder of Bridges). Just as the community was struggling to make sense of the tragedy and respond to media inquiries, on March 8, 2009, International Women’s Day, Asma launched AltMuslimah.com.

Today, AltMuslimah has become a unique space for compelling commentary on gender-in-Islam from both the male and female, Muslim and non-Muslim, perspectives. Within the first three months, AltMuslimah grew to 40,000 viewers per month, and today, that number has tripled. In addition to a large and ever-growing readership, AltMuslimah has received numerous invitations from prestigious universities, think tanks, and mainstream media to speak publicly at various forums, partner on gender-related programming, and, perhaps most notably, to share content with the likes of the Washington Post.



WHY GENDER?

The issue of gender is central to:

(1) The development of intra-community Muslim discourse on gender rights (women’s space in the mosque, relations between the genders, the marriage crisis facing young Muslim American women, etc.).

(2) Enhancing non-Muslims’ understanding of Muslims and Islam, as it is precisely these sorts of issues (women’s rights, burqas, headscarves, honor killings, polygamy, harems, etc.) that capture the imagination of non-Muslims and inspire their distrust of Islam. The tragic story of Asiya Zubair Hasan is one clear example, while European burqa bans raise broader questions of Muslim women, modernity, and religious freedom.

(3) Domestic and international counter-terrorism strategy. Religious narratives of masculinity often lure Muslim youth who fall prey to radicalization. Research has also revealed that these Muslim youth are often estranged from their fathers. It behooves us to study both the role of fatherhood in radicalization and the attendant role of mothers, and women generally, as moderating forces for extremism.

(4) Women as political change-makers. The political uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa have put tremendous media attention on the public role of women in the revolution and their struggle to maintain that presence in post-revolutionary reform efforts.

AltMuslimah.com is the only media platform in existence that devotes itself entirely to addressing these key topics for a wide audience, and it does so with nuance and complexity.

The mode of exploration is a combination of analysis and personal stories. The editors at Altmuslimah are firm believers in the power of narratives to help explain social phenomena. By uncovering the stories of a wide cross-section of men and women in the community, Altmuslimah helps bring into sharper focus the gender issues that affect both men and women.

To learn more about Altmuslimah, please check out our introductory article.

Find out about our photographic campaign here.