Founder of Muslimah Media Watch. Content marketing nerd who likes figuring out how stuff works and writing about it. I learned everything about being an adult from The Golden Girls.
Also, my friend Thea Lim reminded me that my article “Scarfing it down,” appears in the eighth edition of Writing Arguments: A Rhetoric with Readings, which she’s using in her writing classes. It’s humbling to know that I’m part of a textbook that teaches university students critical thinking. Lots of MMW articles are used in university-level gender studies classes, and this article is just one more aspect of my work that I’m proud of.
Lots of exciting things are coming up in the next few months, so stay tuned for more!
With the start of the new year, I’ve decided to resign as Contributing Editor at AltMuslimah. Since I’m gearing up for some new projects in 2011, I knew I wouldn’t be able to give the site the time it deserves. Hopefully, I’ll be able to rejoin them in the future. I’m sorry to go, but I loved working with Asma Uddin, Shazia Kamal, and everyone else at AltMuslimah!
But there are exciting things on the horizon! Stay tuned for updates!
With the current ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, the threat of global terrorism, and the never-ending negotiations and hostilities between Israelis and Palestinians, it’s hard not to feel overwhelmed by all of the bad international news. That’s exactly how Jennifer Jajeh feels. And to make matters worse, Jennifer is Palestinian. Well, Palestinian American. Or more precisely: a single, Christian, first generation, Palestinian American woman who chooses to return to her parents’ hometown of Ramallah at the start of the Second Intifada.
Join her on American and Palestinian soil on auditions, bad dates, and across military checkpoints as she navigates the thorny terrain around Palestinian identity. Weaving together humor, slides, pop culture references and live theatre, Jajeh explores how she becomes Palestinian-ized, then politicized and eventually radicalized in a fresh, often funny, searingly honest way.
I really enjoyed the performance. Jennifer’s wit when talking about her Jewish cat Judah or preachy Palestinian audience members made the evening fly by. She’s a wonderful performer, and it showed in both the show’s comical aspects and its serious ones. Her performance and the show’s vivid audio brought her life in Ramallah into startling perspective.
It was comforting and refreshing to hear someone address the, “No, where are you really from?” question. Though I’m Iranian and Muslim, I related to so many of Jennifer’s experiences as a Christian Palestinian trying to figure out where she fit in America. She spoke about feeling confined and uncomfortable in the small Palestinian American community, but being completely alienated from Palestinians in Ramallah. She talked about her frustration with trying to find a place for herself within mainstream American life, sharing examples from elementary school and her attempts to find work as an actress. She spoke about making people uncomfortable just by virtue of who she was—wishing aloud that she could be “ethnic, but without the baggage.”
If you get a chance, you should definitely see the show. She’s currently doing a college tour and will be in Los Angeles early next year—watch for updates at her website!
I think it’s a bad idea, given that neither country had made demonstrable commitments to women’s and human rights.
Yes, Saudi Arabia has signed onto CEDAW, but how has it improved things for women in the country? And how could a place on the committee be anything more than fake feminist cred for Iran? It’d be like handing them a “get out of women’s rights jail free” card.
I would have given my left hand to be at this conference, but it wasn’t to be this time around. Here’s hoping I’ll be there in 2012!
If, like me, you’re not living it up Islamic-feminist-style in Spain, you can still see the entire conference, because it’s streaming live! It’s on both the Congress’ website and livestream.com.
Right now, I’m listening to Ziba Mir-Hosseini discussing the implications of the Islamic Revolution on women’s education in Iran. *nerding out hard-core*
Thank you for being a friend. Except you, Elisabeth Hasselbeck. Blaming Obama for Islamophobia? Really?
Bill O’Reilly was on The View for some reason yesterday, and he went out of his way to rile everyone up, like always.
I don’t want to focus on O’Reilly’s incendiary and hateful comments; you can watch the clip yourself. I want to focus on the The View’s response.
Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg walked off the set in protest of O’Reilly’s statements. I think it was a perfectly acceptable method of protest (and the one closest to my heart). If you don’t like what someone’s saying, don’t listen.
And while I don’t agree with Barbara Walters’ castigation of Behar and Goldberg for their protest, I agree with her when she said that, “We should be able to have discussions without washing our hands and screaming and walking offstage.” Which is exactly what she did.
This begs the question: how much discussion can you have with someone like O’Reilly, who makes a career out of spreading incendiary opinions? Discussion is an important way to make connections and change attitudes. Walters confronted O’Reilly about his Islamophobic statements, and his half-assed apology illustrates how uninterested he is in discussion.
However, I want to thank the ladies of The View for participating in this discussion and calling O’Reilly out on his effery. I’m a believer in the power of allies, and I feel that everyone who added something constructive to the discussion on that program (again, not talking about Hasselbeck) through their walk-outs or call-outs acted as an ally for Muslim Americans like myself.
So thank you for being a friend, ladies of The View. And know that you always have a friend in me.
Fatemeh Fakhraie 