I’m updating all this week on what others in the Muslim community are putting forth about this at Muslimah Media Watch. My contributors and I will have a roundtable discussion on it next week.
I’m also part of a group advocating for swift action against domestic violence by spreading the word to imams, community members, etc. This Friday, we’re pushing to get all local imams to speak on domestic violence at Friday prayers.
May Allah guide us.
I caution against thinking that legal codes automatically equal problems solved for Muslim women on today’s RD Blog:
Balchin makes some great points about the fact that many family laws just aren’t cutting it for Muslim women around the globe. The statistics she gives are heartening, mentioning that several predominately Muslim countries are updating their family codes to reflect pushes for equality and fairness. But this assumes that it’s the laws that lag behind society, which just isn’t always true.
My article “Scarfing it down” has been republished in a textbook. About writing arguments!
I review a new magazine for Middle Eastern Americans at Racialicious, and published an extended review at Muslimah Media Watch.
This week on The Devil’s Advocate, I aim to get my head around an Uzbek imam’s address to the Muslim women of the nation:
Polygyny is in the news again, this time in Canada, where a defense lawyer says that allowing gay marriage will pave the way for allowing polygamy to be legalized. I try to look on the bright side of polygamy legalization:
Polygyny is often associated with the exploitation of women partly because its illegal status allows for abuses to go unreported. With legalization comes regulation: if we legalize and regulate polygamous marriage like we do other forms of marriage, those in polygamous marriages will no longer be in legal limbo.
I wrote up a profile of MMW for the Women of Color Resource Center. Check it out.
Here’s the other interview I gave while I was at the FagFestival in Denmark. The interview was conducted by Martin Ramsgård and features shots from my conference presentation.
UPDATE:
Here’s the YouTube version:
At The Devil’s Advocate, I talk about the astoundingly offensive statements made by a Portuguese cardinal warning Catholic women against Muslim men.
This is the most offensive utterance of interreligious hate I’ve heard since the Pope’s Orientalist insult to Muslims last year. Painting Muslim men as always foreign, brutally patriarchal, and “trouble” is a nicely-bundled mess of Islamophobia, xenophobia, racism, and sexism.
Fatemeh Fakhraie 