Sailan Muslimah

  Women have led Muslim congregations in China for generations, but their tradition’s success may be its own undoing   Imam Guo Dong Ping, center, prays at a mosque in the village of Sangpo, Henan province. The women of Sangpo know well they are the guardians of a 300-year-old custom that sets them apart in Islam and they are increasingly …

The scholarship offers Rawan Yaghi a life-changing opportunity Rawan Yaghi is a bookish 19 year old who, appropriately for a student of literature, arrives to meet me in Gaza with a text tucked under her arm. It is a well-thumbed copy of Catch 22, Joseph Heller's classic satirical novel on the absurdities of war; not an inappropriate choice for somebody …

  You’d think after watching BBC Three’s Make me a Muslim documentary, being a female convert to Islam is so riddled with fault lines. Not really. My recent interviews with Muslim converts offered a rare glimpse into the lives of three women who would flatly reject such comparisons. And they’re all buzzing with spiritual ecstasy, retelling what caused them to …

The head scarf was the only hindrance in the way for the oldest woman in the world to enter the so-called Guinness World Records.   124-year-old Palestinian Maryam Hamdan Ammash, her sons and grandsons refused to meet the condition of the Guinness team for the aged woman to take off her head scarf and appear on TV.   Maryam's family …