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.

A teacher is still haunted by what he did in Iraq. A macabre ritual traumatizes a high school student. Still haunted by Iraq, Tim Ross finds solace teaching high school in Wyoming. His quiet is shattered by a freshman who reveals a macabre initiation held at the gun range by the football team. When Tim asks about the strange ritual involving an old crime and phantom sightings of a murdered girl, the frightened teen´s only response is, ´´Do you believe in ghosts?´´ ´´He hit her in the chest with the rifle´s muzzle once more as she screamed and thrust what had been her baby at him.´´ Tim does his best to write off the strange incident until that same student leads him to the remains of a girl the entire county had been looking for. Still trying to believe there is a logical explanation; Tim scours the dark forests and lonely homesteads of The Uinta Mountains to find the killer who has stalked their community for decades. Closing in on his target, Tim´s suspect strikes back forcing him to confront the horror of what he did to an Iraqi civilian or lose the only chance he has at overcoming his past and saving the life of the strange boy who has helped him realize there is life after death and hope after war. ´´What if you could take back the worst day of your life?´´

Invisible Burqa: Barbara Douglass

Burqa Affair Across Europe:Between Public and Private Space

Burqa Affair Across Europe:Between Public and Private Space

The burqa and the miniskirt:The suicide terrorists Fertility power and progress Angelo Bertolo

Invisible Burqa: Barbara Douglass

Secrets behind the Burqa: Rosemary Sookhdeo

Behind the Burqa:Our Life in Afghanistan and How We Escaped to Freedom Wiley. 1. Auflage Batya Swift Yasgur