Fig & Olive

I’ve noticed a growing sentiment among young women, that is, their unsurety (and sometimes outright rejection) around getting married. They often fall into two categories: fear of the rights men have over women in marriage (ex: Do I have to obey him?), while others are happy with their life as is and look forward to the many adventures […]

The community survived after the Sheikh’s death, who was already old upon its inception. The remaining members who had been bright-eyed young adults —hippies looking for meaning, were now elders, and somehow still bright-eyed. Years ago we’d spent one of the last days of Ramadan there; my mom, two of my sisters, and myself. In […]

Sometimes I have to realize that being a black women privies me to different conversations and a different reality from fellow Muslim women (at least the dominant voices). While they find their footing in Feminism, question obeying their husbands, desire easier access to divorce, and assert their independence (But Khadijah Worked). In the black community, […]

“The age of consent to sexual relations is not firmly established in classical Islamic law…” What does consent look like in Islam? Many Muslims have wondered since the consent conversation began to gain ground on college campuses and increasingly in social media discourse. Within non-Muslim discourse the conversation on consent is ill-defined and ongoing —is […]

Modesty and faith come together. If one of the two is missing, so is the other. [Hadith] My dad used to repeat this Hadith a lot when I was growing up —especially as a teenager. It frustrated me because I didn’t want to believe it (I also just wanted to fit in and wear the […]

Hijab is Not Simply a Choice: It’s very difficult to have an honest conversation about Hijab. Muslims go into defense mode and non-Muslims go in to attack mode. The basic question that surrounds the tension -is hijab a choice or a form of oppression? As Muslims we’ve been trained to say of course it’s a […]

While Feminists have always painted themselves as a women’s movement they have in reality always represented a small segment of the population. They believe in and advocate a particular ideology that some women feel empowered by and other women feel oppressed by. It has always been a movement that represents some women and not all. […]

Since the success of the gay marriage debate by the LBGT, religious communities have turned inwards to focus on fighting against the influence and influx of this movement and its members on their communities. This is, in itself a noble fight but it has a nefarious past and until that is honestly reckoned with it […]

One of the most popular posts on this blog is ‘But, Khadija worked’, which examined -in part, the fallacy that Khadija ‘working’ should diminish men’s financial responsibility to their wives. In the post, I used the term “wage-slave” to describe women who were forced to work outside the home. That term is harsh but valuable […]

Of late, I’ve been reading a lot of Islamic works written by Muslim academics —bits and pieces to finalize an upcoming research paper and work on an upcoming lecture. What strikes me as off in all of these works is a confusing lack of Adab. Adab generally means good manners or a way of approaching […]