Before the spread of Islam, first-born baby girls were buried alive and women were abused and deprived of any deserved rights. When Islam began to spread, and after the Prophet and his followers were pushed from city to city, the men who took up the new religion were enthusiastic of the changes and adaptations made …
Continue reading Islamic History and the Women You Never Hear About: Umm Salama
This is kind of a terrifying misconception. Children steal. The poor steal. Greedy, rich jackasses steal. Of course, only the first two will suffer from this misconception, which makes clearing it up pretty damn important*. The misconception comes from this translated verse: The male thief, and the female thief, you shall cut off the hands …
Continue reading Lost in Translation: Cutting off the Hands of Thieves
A message to Muslim men: Shut the fuck up. That is the shortest entry you will ever see here on Islamic studies. This is because there is nothing to study or analyze. There is absolutely no question that my body is none of your business. And I will not apologize for my tone. See the …
Continue reading Islam, headscarves… and men (who need to see their way out)
I'm going to be blunt: I have really beautiful hair. But I didn't always think so. For many women, hair is a visual marker of race. I don't know if this is true for me; I suspect mine is a little more visually ambiguous, which would be a good thing, because I really don't identify …
A quick, overdue post. When I was in high school I learned to be very hesitant to reveal to others the structure of my family because they would promptly discredit valuable parts of my identity: "Oh you don’t have a father--no wonder you’re a feminist!" or, if I had made the mistake of explaining more …
Yeah, I know. Nothing like sex talk from someone who's never experienced it. A friend of mine once told me of a woman he knew who was divorced the day she was married because she confessed to her husband that she had been molested as a child. The man left her immediately to save his …
Continue reading Muslims, feminism, consent, and the virginity myth
Remember me? Yes, I'm back. I've been somewhat dormant. And I've decided to start fresh, on an entirely different note. My last few spaces, the ones I'd been consistently building up and tearing down from domain to domain since 2003, were concerned with creative work. I'd noticed for a few months now that the writing …
the fatal feminist 