An Egyptian fatwa gives neighbors the right to divorce a couple. I posit that this is a terrible idea:

The adage says that when you marry someone, you marry their family, too. It doesn’t say anything about neighbors. Despite the old saying, a marriage is between two people, no matter what others may think. Opening up a private relationship to public debate (a neighbor or family member can bring his/her case for the couple’s divorce to court) is intrusive and will not solve a couple’s problems.

My latest is up at Religion Dispatches. I discuss the best strategy for breaking down gender barriers in the mosque:

Elghobashy’s method is to work within the system to achieve her aims: earn the same qualifications as male imams and Islamic scholars, go through the same schooling and training as they did. Nomani’s method is to go from 0 to 60: Gawad describes Nomani shocking her small community in Virginia when she prayed in the men’s section of her local mosque.

My newest piece is up at ReligionDispatches. It discusses Rep. Keith Ellison’s support for a bill to keep bi-national LGBT families together in the U.S.:

The bill sends a message to those in LGBT communities (including LGBT Muslim communities) that their non-citizen partners are welcome in the U.S. And when a Muslim representative sponsors a bill to allow gay and lesbian immigrants to stay in the U.S. with their families (I can almost hear conservative heads exploding), it sends a message that America truly has what it takes to be the egalitarian democracy it aims to be.

This is a different version of the AmericanEast review that appeared on altmuslimah: it’s shorter, more informal, and has more focus on race.

The movie centers on Mustafa, an Egyptian immigrant who owns a café in a heavily Middle Eastern part of Los Angeles. His life, and the lives of several close to him, is one problem or tragedy after another: at one point during the movie, I asked myself whether anything good was ever going to happen to anyone.

I write about Uzbekistan’s attempt to push the nation’s women into traditional clothes at The Devil’s Advocate:

A news report this week confirms my suspicions that Uzbek officials and imams may not have women’s choices at heart. Uzbek officials reportedly devoted 25 minutes of television airtime to educating female viewers about fashion. But this wasn’t the Uzbek version of the Style network: the program stated that “traditional attire” was in, hijabs were out, and Western clothing was undesirable.

My latest is up at The Devil’s Advocate: I write on the mischaracterization of Aasiya Hassan’s murder as an ‘honor killing’:

But while Rihanna’s and Laci Peterson’s stories have not been connected to their ethnicities or their religions, Aasiya’s has. News reports dubbing her gruesome murder an “honor killing” are all over the news, and there are many who are quick to blame Islam or Pakistani culture for what her husband has allegedly done, despite the fact that he has not used Islam to justify his deeds, and no Muslim organization, scholar, or imam has condoned her murder.