Fig & Olive

As Muslims, we’ve needed to talk about the internet for a long time. It’s a conversation that is grossly overdue. We joke about ‘Sheikh Google’ but seldom interrogate our relationship and dependence on the search engine. Often when we inquire about the downside of our relationship with the internet it’s limited to social media –perhaps […]

For some people, the issue of homosexuality is completely irrelevant. There is no point of discussion on the topic because their stance is clear based on their respective religion and/or worldview. For others, homosexuality is a non-issue because it is understood as yet another category of identity to be checked off on a list — […]

The failings of ‘choice Feminism’ There are two reasons why choice Feminism doesn’t work as a philosophy for anyone whose goal is improving the lives of women; all choices are not equal and all choices are made within larger contexts (contexts in which endless choice is impossible). The first story I came across that illustrated […]

I came across a random YouTube short where the man said, “Don’t play hard to get, there’s a ton of women on my feed” or something to that effect. The idea is a common one, choices these days are endless. But, of course, it doesn’t take much to realize that that is an illusion. There […]

I was surprised to find myself agreeing with the sentiment that women today don’t need men. I usually subscribe to the notion that men are providers and protectors but as time passes that idea seems increasingly outdated. Most women today work and make their own money, and society —at least in the West, is safe enough for […]

A few years ago, the New York Times published an article on black fatherhood. It felt like an exercise in gaslighting and propaganda. While the article didn’t lie in any technical sense, it did pervert the truth for its own interests. According to data from the Center for Disease Control; black fathers who don’t live […]

Naively I thought the crisis of black marriage would be solved if only we could get people married. If we could convince black people of marriage’s benefits, we could solve our marriage crisis. It’s not that I thought such a cultural shift would be easy but at the very least it would give us a […]

If you’ve never read Animal Farm by George Orwell, you will likely have a hard time following this post. Here’s a quick summary of the book’s characters that you may want to read before reading the post.  It’s the final act of horror. Shear dread as one animal streaks at the site of it. It […]

As the story goes, a woman’s husband comes to her stating his desire to marry a widow —wanting her husband to herself and her family as is, she refuses and he does not go through with the marriage. Time passes, her husband dies, and she becomes a widow. A married man offers to marry her […]

For so long women have begged to be in men’s spaces —we demanded more women at work, more women CEOs, more women in college. Day after day we pounded on the “boys-only” clubs demanding they let us in. Screaming foul and hurling accusations of injustice when there was any space left with only men. By […]