muslim

Breaking Silence

Today altMuslimah speaks to filmmaker and journalist Nadya Ali about her upcoming documentary “Breaking Silence.” The film will be the first of its kind in documenting Muslim American women’s stories of sexual abuse, how they coped and how they came out to their families and friends. The film will follow…

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The new fake beard trend. What the Muslim dudes think.

If you’ve seen the newest season of America’s Next Top Model, you’ll know that there is a new type of “TyOver” (read: a Tyra Banks makeover) in town for male contestants: Lace Front Beards. Yeah, you read that right. Fake beards. It’s an interesting concept in it’s own way. I…

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Parenting’s wilderness

The fall of my senior year in high school, my mother drove me up and down the state of California for college campus tours with little complaint. It wasn’t until my scheduled tour of UC Berkeley that Mama snapped. We’d made it to Telegraph Avenue. On one corner, dreadlocked men…

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A Muslim feminist’s FEMEN confession

A journalist writing an article about Muslim feminism recently asked me what I thought about secular Egyptian Aliaa Magda Elmahdy and her performance art, which involved menstruating and defecating on an ISIS flag, and the broader tactics of FEMEN, whose mostly non-Muslim members have bared their breasts to protest the…

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Muslim American women are the new normal

Most insults aimed at Muslims are far from subtle. It is easy to recognize the affront, for example, when someone says she is tired of people saying Islam is a religion of peace, or sponsors ads in subway stations implying Muslims are “savages.” But sometimes the bigotry is subtle. Sometimes it comes from people who have been lovely to you, hosting you, feeding you fancy pastries and asking for your signature.

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The Grinch lives on

Recently I logged into my email to find a photo of a relative’s baby posing with a furry little bunny looking back at me. The baby was beautiful and the bunny was…well, cute as a bunny. But the photo disturbed me because the baby sat smiling next to the Easter Bunny. The baby is Muslim and the Easter Bunny, well, not so much. But the Easter picture was a drop in the bucket compared to the ire Christmas brings to my heart.

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The complexity of Muslim identity, 10 years after 9/11

With the tenth anniversary of 9/11, Muslims and non-Muslims alike are reflecting on what we, as Americans, have achieved since that fateful day — and all that is still left for us to do. For Muslims, this conversation is happening at multiple levels, as we struggle to make sense of not just the socio-political issues facing our faith community, but also the deeply personal, spiritual questions 9/11 has posed for us as individuals.

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Bridging the communication divide

In laying the groundwork for productive discussion on dating, it is essential to pay close attention to how we communicate with one another. Four panelists kick start a discussion on the communication divide between Muslim men and women, and how it must change on both the individual and communal level (Anas Coburn’s recent article also takes an in-depth look at this issue). This is the beginning of a complex and multi-faceted conversation that will expand throughout the Dialogues, and so we encourage readers to sustain it by sharing their own perspectives and questions.

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