Will justice end Fida’s pain? ‘Not long ago you were beside me. Where did you go? Your place became vacant and now I am alone waiting for nobody. No one will visit me; it’s a very hard feeling.’ This is…

Women’s accounts of life and death in Gaza.   Fida by Samah Sokar  ‘Not long ago you were beside me. Where did you go? Your place became vacant and now I am alone waiting for nobody. No one will visit me;…

Many Eid moon-phases ago, I was a new Muslim convert. I have gone to several Eid events during those lunar phases. And like the moon changes, time has changed some of my views on such joyous events. I still attend…

Pashtun women receive an inferior education and no share in a family’s inheritance. Marriage contracts do not entitle them to any money. Women must depend upon men. Men must do everything: a man provides all the shopping and household goods,…

For more than 10 years now, I’ve been pretty much obsessed with what I consider to be the ‘half-adult status of women in Jordan’. I wrote this post with a lot of anger and passion! I feel I need to re-stress…

In a prayer room at an Islamic Centre in Downtown Manhattan, 20 women sit in a circle. They’re a mix of housewives, high school teachers, graduate students, mothers. Some wear headscarves and some don’t. Some are recent converts; others were…

I just got back from speaking at a prestigious event organised by one of the most powerful organisations in the world. They invited me to talk to students as a role model for young people and a change-maker in my…

This isn’t an article about Islam. It’s about Good Morning America in the 1980s. It’s about perceptions. It’s about the media. It’s about time. It’s about space. It’s about my mother. Joan Lunden and David Hartman were the co-hosts of…

I was born outside my original village. Because of ‘ethnic cleansing’, I have never smelled the rain on the shore. I have never seen our house. I have never tasted the bread that my grandma used to bake every sunrise;…