Exasperated at seeing Muslim women portrayed as having no agency in their own narrative, author Dr. Seema Yasmin has “reframed” to write about everything Muslim women CAN do and the powerful, stereotype-shattering ways they are doing it in her new book Muslim Women Are Everything.
The book profiles more than 40 profiles of Muslim women with full-color illustrations by Fahmida Azim. According to the New York Times, the book “aims to tear down the tiresome tropes of what Muslim women are: what they look like, what they wear and what they do or don’t do.”
The book includes women who defy categorization, including:
– Tesnim Sayar from Denmark, a Muslim goth-punk who wears a red tartan mohawk on top of her hijab
– American superstar singer SZA
– Nura Afia, CoverGirl’s first hijabi ambassador
– Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, America’s first Muslim congresswomen
– Ilyana Insyirah, a hijaab-wearing scuba-diving midwife from Australia
Speaking about her book, author Dr. Yasmin comments, “I didn’t want there to be one idea of a Muslim woman. There are some Muslim women in this book who would probably disagree with the views of some of the other Muslim women in this book. And that’s great. We need to have that disagreement.”
