I have long argued that there is an inherent tension between the ideals of the Enlightenment and spirituality. This ruling from the European Court of Justice (the EU equivalent of the US Supreme Court) is a case study for that tension: Companies may ban staff from wearing Islamic headscarves and other visible religious symbols under…

It’s fundamentally problematic for a man to weigh in on hijab. That hasn’t stopped me from wading into the topic before (see: The Burka and the Bikini), but the only conversation of substance that can happen on the topic is between Muslim women, particularly those who wear it and those who don’t. Any discussion about…

The following rant was posted on Facebook by a friend of mine, and I have her permission to reproduce it in its entirety. Systems of patriarchy are sometimes so entrenched, we just accept them as part of normal daily interactions. Popular discourse often maintains that it’s men who do such and such to women–thereby reinforcing…

Zainab Jamali is a teenaged Muslim American girl in Los Angeles. As a member of the Dawoodi Bohra community, she recently took her misaq (an oath marking the symbolic passage to adulthood) on the hand of the community’s spiritual leader, the 53rd Dai ul-Mutlaq, His Holiness Syedna (Mola) Mufaddal Saifuddin (TUS). After misaq, it is…

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