Culture

Muslim American communities have undertaken many efforts to add nuance to the public’s impression of Muslims. The Brooklyn Arts Museum held their Muslim Voices series last summer, and Boston recently held a Muslim Film Festival, and Altmuslimah itself has established a regular photographic campaign. For good reason, much of the energy in these projects is used to show the beauty and diversity of Muslims; however, there is definitely room to show the messiness within the Muslim community, and Michael Muhammad Knight is one writer filling this gap.

One of the travesties of living in a colonized environment is that the inferior, or oppressed, aspire to win admittance to the Western world. There seems to be an emerging trend of this type of appeasement, where submission has replaced the revolution. The introduction to spectacles, like the breaking of a Guinness record for the largest plate of kanafeh and the search for a national beauty queen, are just two examples of how absurd practices are coming to be seen as normal in Palestinian cities.

For the 50th anniversary of the Barbie doll, Italian designer Eliana Lorena created over 500 Barbies for an auction hosted by Sotheby’s for Save the Children. The dolls were fashioned to represent women from all over the world; three are meant to be from Islamic cultures, and are covered to varying degrees – one wears hijab and full-body covering, while the other two wear face- and full-body covering (niqab and burqa).

Recently published for public consumption, The 500 Most Influential Muslims (PDF) is already causing a stir throughout the web. While many are satisfied with the list’s contents or happy to have made the cut, others are shocked by the absence of particular names. Generally, however, most people are simply confused by the peculiar selection of the list’s 500 names.

After the murder of Sitara Achakzai, I didn’t want her death to go unnoticed in the West. I contacted several media outlets to let them know I had an audio recording of Sitara telling her life story. After a radio piece aired on PRI’s “The World,” I used the audio as they had edited it and added still photos to create a multimedia feature titled, “The Life and Death of Sitara Achakzai.” In honor of Sitara’s memory, we now present this feature here on Altmuslimah.

I want my kids to be aware of what happens in society, where the dangers lie, what we expect of them, what Islam expects of them, and the fact that other families (both Muslim and not) might have different rules. I understand that this might mean resisting peer pressure, but when has that been a bad thing? It builds character and strength.

Unlike The Vagina Monologues, which brought private subject matter into public discourse, Hijabi Monologues is actually taking the hijab from the public news and media discourse back into women’s personal lives. Even further, the play seeks to re-capture the voices and identities of Muslim American women for themselves. Regarded as an experience that will challenge both outsider and insider understandings of a distinctly American Muslim community, HM takes the viewer on an emotional roller coaster with issues rarely discussed in public space.

In two recent reviews of an interview with Seryan Ates about her book, “Islam Needs a Sexual Revolution,”one reviewer found Ates’ suggestion that the Muslim world could mimic the West’s sexual revolution both inaccurate and implausible. The other felt that Ates should fall back on more than just her personal experiences when trying to persuade the reader of the imminence and importance of a sexual revolution.