Rahilla Zafar, a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania's Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership, helps develop content and feature stories for altmuslimah as well as mentors young writers. She is a regular contributor to online journals such as Knowledge@Wharton and INSEAD Knowledge, specializing in stories focusing on environmental issues and social policy, and has reported from Colombia, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Rahilla holds degrees from DePaul University and the London School of Economics.
Skateistan, a skateboarding school in Kabul that takes youth off the streets, offers some normalcy to Afghan children who more often than not experience no real childhood and are forced to find work to help support their families. (No comments)
While many foreign correspondents based across the Muslim world are under pressure to file stories that will make headline news, Jack had the opportunity to go in-depth and focus on the day-to-day lives of everyday people across the Muslim world. (No comments)
News briefs for week of August 23, 2010 - This week, A Bangladesh court ruled that people cannot be forced to wear religious clothing, a youth organization in Massachusetts urges officials for more comprehensive cultural sensitivity training of teachers, Emirati women frequent hair salons less during the month of Ramadan, and the Christian Science Monitor describes the pro-women's rights stance of one of the leaders behind the proposed Islamic center near ground zero. (August 24, 2010) (0 comments)
News briefs for week of August 16, 2010 - This week, the government of Afghanistan releases statistics on alarmingly high suicide attempt rates by Afghan women, and an Islamic theologian recounts his experience on a nudist beach that led to his conversion to Islam. (August 17, 2010) (0 comments)
Ramadan: A wife’s perspective (and a husband’s) - When my husband finally makes his way down the stairs, my frustration abates and he and I sit across from each other and share our early morning meal. We speak intermittently and keep one eye trained on the clock to ensure we finish our food by the time dawn prayers begin. Despite the sparse conversation and the hurried meal, I enjoy the feeling that we are both beginning our obligatory fasts together, as a unit. (August 13, 2010) (1 comment)
News briefs for week of August 9, 2010 - This week in the news, why pregnant women exempt from fasting still fast, Taliban responds to TIME's cover story on Aisha, Satirist claims he is not joking about his plans to open an Islamic gay bar next to Cordoba Mosque, and a young American Muslim man abstains from alcohol and dating for the month of Ramadan. (August 10, 2010) (0 comments)
News briefs for week of August 2, 2010 - Brazil offers asylum to Iranian women sentenced to death by stoning, veiled women pass through Canadian airport checkpoint without being checked, Malaysian reality show crowns its champion imam, and a few British gay Muslims find support from their local imams. (August 3, 2010) (0 comments)
News Briefs for the week of July 24, 2010 - This week, Saudi clerics seek more Muslim maids and say its okay for women to uncover their faces in the presence of burqa bans. Two French women in burqinis were refused entry into a pool, and two Muslim women in England are not allowed onto a public bus. (July 27, 2010) (0 comments)
