Muslim Women and Islam

Islam is a major religion practiced by 2 billion people around the world, centered around the Qu’ran. Islam is often demonized based on false racist and xenophobic assumptions in the Western world.

This Is What Autocracy Looks Like: How Turkey’s Justice and Development Party Turned Its Back on Women and Girls

Over the years, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has deflected public discontent with his economic and social policies by pointing fingers at journalists and women’s rights defenders, among others.

Since a failed coup in 2016, the Turkish government has become “incrementally more repressive,” explains Asli Aydintaşbaş, a visiting fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe at the nonprofit Brookings Institution. The outcome of this year’s election “creates a bit of a breathing space in urban areas in terms of free speech issues, but there has not been an improvement on the Kurdish issue,” she says.

(This article originally appears in the Fall 2024 issue of Ms. Join the Ms. community today and you’ll get issues delivered straight to your mailbox! )

Lessons from Bosnia to Gaza and the Urgency for Change

As someone who lived in a war zone for over five years, north of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s capital, Sarajevo, I have borne witness to the horrors inflicted upon innocent souls women and children, my own community torn apart by violence and despair. Yet, in the face of such darkness, I have also seen the flicker of resilience, the unwavering spirit that refuses to be extinguished.

The failure of the international community to support a timely intervention in Bosnia has been well documented, but as I witness new conflicts across the globe in the three decades since, I see that we did not learn anything about protecting humanity. We cannot ignore the cries of innocent lives, including all the hostages caught in the crossfire of this conflict. Now is the time for decisive action; advocating to end relentless fighting and supporting urgent adequate delivery of humanitarian aid and medical assistance.

Taliban’s Afghanistan: A Country of Only Men

The human rights abuses of the Taliban and re-establishment of gender apartheid in Afghanistan have largely been met with silence by the international community. A trend of normalization of the regime has begun to emerge in the media and in international assessments. Recently, The Washington Post ran an article titled “Taliban vowed to change Kabul. The city may be starting to change the Taliban”, which described a Taliban enthralled with shopping, learning English, and studying abroad. A photo of Taliban enjoying a picnic accompanies the article, but neglects to mention that women are now forbidden from going to the park or anywhere else.

Taliban revels in its male-dominated society, while women languish under house arrest or in jail for daring to defy Taliban decrees. This normalization of the Taliban is devastating to the women and girls of Afghanistan, and portends danger to the rest of the world where attacks on women’s rights have intensified.

Why I Want to Build a Better Democracy

As a young girl in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Iran, I never expected to be fighting for democracy in the United States.

We are linguistic and ethnic strangers, yet we are family and are at home in the United States. And we are one among many here. That spirit of welcome is the spirit that should propel us toward the new democracy we want—and need. It’s what should animate us as we build a new democracy that we can all call home.

Two Years After the Taliban Takeover, an Afghan Girl Is Holding On to Hope: ‘I Am Young, But I Am Everything for My Family’

Last summer, almost one year after the Taliban takeover, I spoke to 17-year-old Farzana about her life in Kabul. Now, two years since the U.S. withdrew their troops, Farzana, 18, feels she has very little to live for.

“It has been two years and the future looks dark. It’s not being alive, and not being dead. We have permission for neither. … I had the hope to be a great athlete and leader in the world—a leader for Afghan women. These are still my hopes and my goals, and even in this hard situation, I am doing my best to get an opportunity to find a university outside of Afghanistan.”

‘Between Two Moons’: A Love Letter to Arab and Muslim Communities, by Aisha Abdel Gawad

Aisha Abdel Gawad calls her first novel, Between Two Moons, “a love letter to Arab and Muslim communities.” The story centers around the Brooklyn, New York-based Emam family, American-born twins Amira and Lina, their older brother Sami, and their parents, Mariam and Kareem. 

It’s an emotionally rich and revelatory portrait, set in a post 9-11 world that is still feeling the aftershocks of that unprecedented attack. But despite this grim overlay, humor and joy exist in the struggles Gawad documents.