Living Islam Out Loud presents the first generation of American Muslim women who have always identified as both American and Muslim. These pioneers have forged new identities for themselves and for future generations, and they speak out about the hijab, relationships, sex and sexuality, activism, spirituality, and much more. Contributors: Su'ad Abdul-Khabeer, Sham-e-Ali al-Jamil, Samina Ali, Sarah Eltantawi, Yousra Y. Fazili, Suheir Hammad, Mohja Kahf, Precious Rasheeda Muhammad, Asra Q. Nomani, Manal Omar, Khalida Saed, Asia Sharif-Clark, Khadijah Sharif-Drinkard, Aroosha Zoq Rana, Inas Younis

Muslim women have mostly been discussed and studied as passive victims who have no agency. Muslim Women Speak seeks to correct this by traversing an expansive canvas of dreams, aspirations, memory and everyday lives of both the ‘researcher’ and the ‘researched’ in an extensive study conducted in several states of India. Through a presentation and analysis of Indian Muslim women’s narratives about their own situation, the book challenges the image of Muslim women as historic victims of Islam and Muslim men. The book includes insights on the agency of young Muslim women and the impact of violence on their everyday lives after a violent ‘event’ or ‘episode’ passes into history and memory. It brings forth not only the ‘voices’ that have long been considered ‘silent’ but also dwells upon the epistemological and socio-political concerns of this ‘silencing’. In doing so, this book confronts the fault lines within the Indian feminist sisterhood and offers a considered critique of the women’s movement in India from within. The book will be mandatory reading for activists, government departments, policy planners, and students and scholars of gender studies and sociology.

In the wake of September 11th. Muslim women in the West found themselves more marginalized than ever by a panicked discourse that did little to promote a true understanding of Islam or the Islamic world. Here. in this ambitious volume that includes essays. poetry, fiction, memoir, plays, and artwork, Muslim women speak for themselves, revealing a complexity of experience and thought that escapes most Western portrayals. Islam is, as editor Fawzia Afzal-Khan puts it only "one spoke in the wheel of our lives." In Shattering the Stereotypes. essays by such writers as Ayesha Jalal, the Pakistani-American historian, poems by award-winning poets including Sucheir Hammad and Nathalie Handal, and a selection of short fiction and plays that are not just ethnically but attitudinally diverse, together make a more rounded portrait of what it is to be a Muslim woman in the 21st century.

Muslim Women Speak challenges western stereotypes of Muslim women and their roles in family and community. Through this rich tapestry, the voices of Muslim women reveal the variety and complexity of life often covered by the veil.

Forty women under the age of 40, born and raised in the United States, dismantle stereotypes of what it means to be a Muslim woman in America.

When was the last time you heard a Muslim woman speak for herself without a filter? It’s Not About the Burqa started life when Mariam Khan read about the conversation in which David Cameron linked the radicalization of Muslim men to the ‘traditional submissiveness’ of Muslim women. Mariam felt pretty sure she didn’t know a single Muslim woman who would describe herself that way. Why was she hearing about Muslim women from people who were demonstrably neither Muslim nor female? Taking one of the most politicized and misused words associated with Muslim women and Islamophobia, It’s Not About the Burqa has something to say: twenty Muslim women speaking up for themselves. Here are essays about the hijab and wavering faith, about love and divorce, about queer identity, about sex, about the twin threats of a disapproving community and a racist country, and about how Islam and feminism go hand in hand. Funny, warm, sometimes sad, and often angry, each of these essays is a passionate declaration, and each essay is calling time on the oppression, the lazy stereotyping, the misogyny and the Islamophobia. It’s Not About the Burqa doesn’t claim to speak for a faith or a group of people, because it’s time the world realized that Muslim women are not a monolith. It’s time the world listened to them.