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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Asma T. Uddin Washington, D.C.
Asma T. Uddin is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of altmuslimah.com. She is also an attorney, with several years of experience practicing commercial litigation at prestigious national law firms. Currently, she works on international religious freedom matters with The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a non-profit, non-partisan, public interest law firm based in Washington, D.C. As an editor, Asma has worked with Dr. Umar F. Abd-Allah on a number of articles for scholarly journals on Islamic Law. She also helped edit the entire manuscript of Dr. Abd-Allah's A Muslim in Victorian America, which was published in 2007 by Oxford University Press. As Associate Editor and legal columnist for Islamica Magazine, Asma focused her writings on how American Muslims can rethink their social position within the American legal framework. Asma's writing has appeared in Muslim Girl Magazine, altmuslim, beliefnet, and in the Guardian's Comment is Free. She is also an expert panelist for the Washington Post/Newsweek blog, On Faith. Her more scholarly work has been published in the Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion and The Review of Faith & International Affairs. Asma, selected in 2009 as a "Muslim Leader of Tomorrow", has traveled throughout Europe and to various Muslim countries to meet with Muslim and other minority groups as well as politicians, journalists, and anti-discrimination organizations. Asma is a 2005 graduate of The University of Chicago Law School, where she was a member The University of Chicago Law Review. Contact: asma.uddin(at)altmuslimah.com |
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 | | Muslim-Jewish Reflections Zuleikha in the Qur’an and in the Bible By Asma T. Uddin, Homayra Ziad, Rachel Barenblat, and Marion Lev-Cohen, October 30, 2009 In August, four scholars and a small group of Jewish and Muslim emerging religious leaders met to discuss the story of Joseph in the Qur’an and in the Bible. Here are four reflections, by two Muslim women and two Jewish women, about the significance of Zuleikha in the story and in their respective traditions. ( 12 comments) |
 | | Author Carolyn Baugh “Fiction based on a landscape of reality” By Asma T. Uddin and Sarah Rashid, October 21, 2009 Carolyn Baugh, a native of Indiana who is in her fourth year of the Ph.D. program in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania, writes in her new book The View from Garden City (Macmillan) about an unnamed American woman studying at the American University in Cairo who engages with several of Cairo's women, learning more about their heartbreaking, fascinating and inspiring stories. ( No comments) |
 | | Book "Sisters in War" Love, family, and survival in the new Iraq By Asma T. Uddin and Rahilla Zafar, October 2, 2009 Journalist Christina Asquith's new book Sisters in War: A Story of Love, Family, and Survival in the New Iraq tells the story of four women, their internal growth and external accomplishments, all of which give the reader a balanced, multifaceted look into the realities of post-war Iraq, including the failures, incompetency, oversights, and hubris involved but also the small successes and the opening of new opportunities. ( 1 comment) |
 | | Gender The focal point of cross-cultural dialogue By Asma T. Uddin, September 25, 2009 In the years since 9/11, Muslim men and women have responded to nativist hate mongering by working within the American legal framework. Muslim women have made the hijab a civil rights issue; similarly, the fight for the human rights of detainees has been going strong for some time. An additional response – one that is more nuanced to the gendered aspects of the problem – is to use gender and Muslim notions of femininity and masculinity as the focal point of cross-cultural dialogue. ( 11 comments) |
 | | Stereotypes Mad magazine: Marie Claire’s bias against Muslim women By Asma T. Uddin, September 7, 2009 There are multiple levels of victimization expressed in Marie Claire’s coverage of Muslim women, ranging from self-victimization (Islam as the answer for desperate, lost souls and only those souls), to falling prey to female weaknesses (Islam as attractive to only stupid, career-barren women), to being the inevitable victim of the ominous Islam of one’s family, society, and government. All of this adds up to Marie Claire’s distorted view of Muslim women. ( 14 comments) |
 | | Book "Honour Killing: Stories of Men Who Killed" A disturbing look into a killer’s psyche By Asma T. Uddin, June 24, 2009 As Ayse Onal's intensely disturbing book Honour Killing: Stories of Men Who Killed shows, honor killings are not merely a feminist issue. They reflect a larger problem with human social values, where men and women collude to defend a family’s honor. And through her interviews, Onal finds that the killer is often just as much a victim as the female he killed. ( 3 comments) |
 | | Book "Love in a Headscarf" Love of God, husband, and self By Asma T. Uddin, April 20, 2009 Like Divine Love, love for your spouse requires some extent of extinguishment of your “self”. Indeed, the very search for a husband teaches Shelina Zahra Janmohamed in her new book, Love in a Headscarf, her smallness in the larger landscape of the world. Love - with a lower-case “l” - happens when you just know that your partner is the person who completes you. ( 16 comments) |
 | | Introducing Altmuslimah Exploring both sides of the gender divide By Asma T. Uddin, March 8, 2009 The editors at Altmuslimah.com, a partner site to altmuslim.com, have embarked on an ambitious project: providing a space for compelling comment on gender in Islam, and building a platform for intra- and inter-community dialogue on a wide variety of gender-related issues ( 6 comments) |
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Editors' blog
Conceptions of sexuality among American Muslim women - Ten AltMuslimah members/readers gathered on Sunday, February 21, 2010, with the goal of discussing the nature of Muslim women’s sexuality, and how American Muslim women’s social needs may be different. Whether formal or casual, the group agreed in the value of women’s support networks, especially considering the rising prevalence of domestic violence in our communities. A quick brainstorm of ideas brought up the possibility of periodic casual women’s nights, which are actually common in more active American Muslim communities. (March 1, 2010) ( 1 comment) |
News briefs for week of March 1, 2010 - This week Washington, D.C. women storm the men’s section of a local mosque, a women in hijab is fired from her retail position in California, a women’s terrorist group is said to be uncovered in Egypt, Malaysia looks to hold a conference on women’s caning, Pakistani women’s clothing is highlighted, and Iran’s first female Olympic skier is profiled. (March 1, 2010) ( 0 comments) |
News briefs for week of February 22, 2010 - Saudi religious police crackdown on Valentine's Day merchandise, Three Malaysian women are caned for extramarital sex, Saudi to permit female lawyers to argue cases, New Jersey Muslim man throws baby over a bridge, and Baltimore sixth-graders go on a field trip to an Islamic center. (February 22, 2010) ( 0 comments) |
News briefs for week of February 15, 2010 - This week, death threats for dehijabing in Spain, a ballet showcasing Muslim women’s historical accomplishments, France continues the burqa ban debate, a Pakistani woman is recognized in California, Muslim scholars question full-body scanning and Obama names an envoy to the Muslim world. (February 15, 2010) ( 0 comments) |
News briefs for week of February 8, 2010 - This week, a study finds that abstinence-focused sex education in American schools can persuade youth to delay sexual activity, sixteen-year-old Turkish girl buried alive for talking to boys, French authorities deny citizenship to man who forces his wife to wear a full veil, and female government leaders have done little to advance women's rights in Southeast and South Asia. (February 8, 2010) ( 2 comments) |
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Readers' blog
Will you be my (halal) Valentine? - Why does Valentine’s Day spark such contentious debate among American Muslims across blogs and social networking sites? What underlying emotional buttons does this commercialized cultural holiday push among American Muslims? While other holidays, such as Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, generate a few tired and tepid discussions centered around the idea that “everyday should be Mother’s and Father’s Day,” Valentine’s Day, like the very concept of romantic love it celebrates, generates much more passionate responses. These debates touch on many topics including what love means or should mean to Muslims, the relationship between culture and religion, and the current state of romantic relationships among Muslims. (February 22, 2010) ( 1 comment) |
Living up to the legacy - By historical account, being a Muslim female meant being virtuous, loving, knowledgeable, and empowered by her faith. Well it’s centuries later and although we cite to the legacy of Islam, we fail to live up to it or keep the legacy alive. (February 4, 2010) ( 1 comment) |
Bridging literacy and cultural gaps in Pakistan - In addition to bridging cultural and socioeconomic gaps, the American International School System in Pakistan acts as an experimental model and incubator by incorporating some of the education reform principles advocated by grassroots organizations, education specialists and writers, and governmental agencies like the Ministry of Education. (January 3, 2010) ( 1 comment) |
Islam and manhood - The infamy of Islamist terrorism over the past decade has created an image of the Muslim man as intrinsically prone to violent behavior, even if directed toward the self rather than the other. The image of the angry, flag-burning, chanting Muslim man has come to symbolize male violence. However the photos fail to explain that, firstly, the anger, in many instances, is justified, secondly, that the chants rarely spill over into to physical violence, and thirdly that violence is not exclusive to Muslim men. (December 25, 2009) ( 5 comments) |
It’s not about the niqab, it’s about credibility - The question, which we all should consider now is why Al-Azhar scholars are not obeyed by the public any more? The simple and direct answer to this very complicated question is because Al-Azhar lost its credibility in the eyes of Egyptians. (October 17, 2009) ( 4 comments) |
One woman’s journey toward pleasing Allah - Understanding the purpose and reasoning behind abaya is not something a Muslim girl learns the day she is born. For many, like myself, it was a slow and steady journey; one that required much research and reflection. (September 25, 2009) ( 4 comments) |
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