Sarah Moawad @smoawad

Last month, Disney Channel teen star turned pop/country singer turned twerking “hip-hop artist” turned back into pop/country singer, Miley Cyrus, once...

“No one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land.” The oft-cited quote from Somali-British poet Warsan Shire’s “Home”...

At this point, chances are you’ve heard of Reza Aslan. You may know him as the guy who calmly and articulately took down a befuddled Fox News reporter who...

In a political climate that is growing increasingly hostile, foreboding, and dangerous for so many in the United States, we have seen some of the most striking...

In March 2016, Tel Aviv-based journalist Gregg Carlstrom wrote about Donald Trump’s relatively high approval ratings among Israeli Jews for Politico...

It was something I never thought I would see on the streets of a major American city. A crowd made up of thousands of mostly Muslim men, women and children;...

It’s done - Donald Trump is president of the United States. The moment so many of us dreaded, mocked, dismissed, scoffed at and, later, sobbed at; the...

In April of last year, I wrote about Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's transfer of sovereignty over two small islands in the Red Sea, Tiran and...

2016 continues to baffle and astound us. On December 23, the United States abstained from voting on a UN Security Council resolution condemning the...

One of the many consequences of Donald Trump's election has been an increasing fear among Muslim, Arab, and other minority communities about even greater...

On Sunday, December 11, a few short weeks before Christmas, at least twenty-five people were killed and dozens more wounded in a bombing at St. Peter and St....

On Wednesday, December 7, prominent women’s rights advocate and lawyer Azza Soliman was arrested in her Cairo home by Egyptian security forces. Soliman is...

Yesterday, Americans around the country celebrated Thanksgiving. Countless American children were undoubtedly told the story, repeated every year, about...

Last week, I wrote about how the United States has never been safe for black and brown people, and that a Trump presidency will only make the country “more...

So here we are, yet again, in 2016, tasked with the responsibility of responding to the unthinkable. A business tycoon turned reality TV star, a notorious...

"Five and a half years, 6.6 million people displaced inside Syria, 4.8 million people refugees. Nearly half a million dead.” This is how Muftah founder...

On Friday, October 14, 2016, Venida Browder, the New York Daily News reported, “died of a broken heart” at the age of sixty-three. The mother of Kalief...

On October 3rd, author, journalist, and longtime Israel critic, Max Blumenthal, published an article in AlterNet entitled “Inside the Shadowy PR Firm...

Dead are my people, gone are my people, but I exist yet, lamenting them in my solitude... My people and your people, my Syrian Brother, are dead ... What...

To be a writer, journalist, or artist in the Middle East requires a tremendous amount of courage these days. Sharing and publicizing controversial opinions in...

One of the largest refugee camps in Greece went up in flames earlier this week. Moria camp, on the island of Lesbos, was set ablaze on Monday, leaving up to...

"Someone needs to explain to me why wanting clean drinking water makes you an activist, and why proposing to destroy water with chemical warfare doesn't make a...

We have come to expect these stories: Israeli soldiers searching for terrorists “mistakenly” shoot/bomb/murder an innocent fifteen-year-old, or...

Kumail Rizvi was an architecture student in his final year of college at the University of Brighton when he read a report by a group of independent...

“All we see are dead people.” A twenty-something college student named Hassan tells journalist Belen Fernandez as they drive through the towns and...

By now, we have all heard about France’s “burkini ban,” a ban on full-body swimwear (including a swim cap covering the hair) typically worn by Muslim...

The prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba has been one of the greatest quagmires of Barack Obama’s presidency. In January 2009, shortly after being sworn in, Obama...

Google has been the subject of much scrutiny and controversy lately. This week, The Intercept published an article linking Pokemon Go founder John Hanke...

Egyptian-American Nobel Prize-winning scientist Ahmed Zewail passed away on Tuesday, August 2, at the age of seventy. Known as the “Father of...

Barry University law professor Khaled Beydoun wrote an article for Al-Jazeera English this week entitled “Muslim Voters Between Hillary Clinton and a Hard...

Amid the torrent of global tragedies that have dominated headlines in recent months, a particularly tragic and important anniversary seems to have gone...

This week, the UK saw its first female prime minister since Margaret Thatcher take the reigns. Accepting an invite from Queen Elizabeth II, the Conservative...

This week, Muslims around the world celebrated Eid Al-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan, a month of fasting, prayer, and introspection. It is typically a...

Politics is the family at breakfast. Who is there and who is absent and why. Who misses whom when the coffee is poured into the waiting cups. Can you, for...

In the fall of 2011, I worked as a research intern for the nonprofit organization Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). Initially assigned to the Colleagues At...

I have written before about the familiar cycle of violence, tragedy, and bigotry that has become so normalized in the United States, a country that is home to...

Last week, heavyweight boxing champion and one of the world’s most revered and beloved athletes, Muhammad Ali, passed away after a long battle with...

This week, the Boston chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a national Jewish social justice organization that works to end the Israeli occupation of...

Autopilot is an amazing thing - that human ability to keep going, to keep existing, numbly, to move on and forget, despite the madness and the chaos unfurling...

Amidst an ailing economy, an increasingly repressive security state, and a general climate of fear and despair, many Egyptians have been left to question and...

This week, a series of fires broke out in multiple cities throughout Egypt, destroying millions of Egyptian pounds worth of property and causing a number of...

In Egypt, April 25 is Sinai Liberation Day, the day when, in 1982, the last Israeli soldier left the Sinai Peninsula after a fifteen-year occupation. This...

In a December 2015 article in The Nation, ACLU senior writer Matthew Harwood wrote about the excesses and abuses of U.S. law enforcement and the “debate"...

On my way into downtown Cairo last week, seated in the backseat of an Uber, I noticed Saudi flags waving from atop every other lamppost, alternating with...

Within two days of being in Egypt, I got a marriage proposal. From a taxi driver. He instantly recognized, thanks to my not-quite-native Arabic accent...

Last week marked the one-year anniversary of the war in Yemen. To mark the event, AJ+ released a harrowing video highlighting the devastating impact the...

Here we go again. In the past few weeks, terrorism has hit Paris, Beirut, Ankara, Istanbul, Brussels, Baghdad, and across Libya and Yemen. Facebook feeds...

There is an expression in Egyptian Arabic that I heard often while growing up: Emshy gamb el-heit. It literally translates to "walk next to the wall," and...

I recently met with an experienced, senior level journalist from a liberal media outlet. As we chatted and tossed around ideas for possible stories, he...

When it comes to American politics, louder and bolder is apparently better, regardless of truthfulness or accuracy. No one exemplifies this reality better than...

Apparently terrorism, like everything else, can be explained through sex and the policing of women’s bodies. At least according to the United States...

On October 20, 2015, I attended an event at Harvard Law School entitled “The Palestine Exception to Free Speech: A Movement Under Attack.” It was organized...

Hoda Katebi is a twenty-year-old college student at the University of Chicago with a penchant for photography, a witty sense of humor, and a fierce love of...

On June 4, 2009, a newly inaugurated President Barack Obama delivered a speech at Cairo University addressing the Muslim World. Co-hosted by Al-Azhar...

It looks like fear-mongering and xenophobia during election cycles are not solely the domain of American politics. A new report by Israeli right-wing political...

The fifth anniversary of the 2011 Egyptian revolutionary uprising, or as the Egyptian government is referring to it, "Police Day," is only a few days away, on...

The French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, which was the subject of an attack that left twelve staff members and two police officers dead in January 2015,...

In an increasingly interconnected world, with technology and media making knowledge of other peoples and places accessible at the click of a button, it...

2011 was the year that put the figure of “the protester” - the student, the worker, the ordinary citizen taking the fight for basic rights and dignity into...

Algeria’s struggle for independence from the French would have looked very different without the involvement and participation of women. Some of the most...

As I wrote in an article for Muftah a few months ago, it is no secret that American media outlets have often struggled to provide nuanced, contextualized...

This year has been filled to the brim with tragedy - from rampant gun violence, police brutality and senseless mass shootings to the Paris attacks, ISIS, and...

“Today, I’m going to talk about land,” Malek Rasamny began his talk at this year’s Harvard Arab Weekend. "I’m going to talk about the way land is...

As I follow the as-of-yet developing story of the shooting in San Bernardino (it is Thursday afternoon at the time of this writing), I recognize the all too...

Over the summer, Muftah published a story about the Virtual Iftar Project, in honor of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The initiative is an offshoot of the...

While media outlets have been focused on the geopolitical and ideological aspects of the Syrian war and resulting refugee crisis, a more silent war has been...

I never write about Saudi Arabia. Even though it is the closest thing I have ever had to a "home," the place I have lived the longest, the locus of my earliest...

How does a couple from Brazil travel the world and end up in Cairo, where they shoot a music video with a leading Egyptian rock band for a song written by a...

It seems that, recently, every day we wake up to news of more violence in Israel and Palestine, more images and videos of young lives lost - a...

Dear Readers, From ISIS to Sisi, masculinity in the Arab world is being performed and negotiated in a number of ways. But what does it mean to be a man in...

I recently visited the office of the radio show where I was an intern several years ago. The day’s show had already been recorded, the staff meeting was...

The vilification and racist stereotyping of Muslims and people of Middle Eastern descent in movies, television shows, and pop culture has a long history. As...

Israeli journalist Amira Hass penned an impassioned op-ed in Haaretz this week that is garnering a slew of both positive and negative reactions. Referring to...

These days it is nearly impossible to watch mainstream news or scroll through a newsfeed without hearing about the refugee crisis and the humanitarian disaster...

 Zoning laws and building restrictions are the kind of things you never really think about until they are absent. And replaced with an utter disregard for...

As we continue to watch violence escalate in Syria and Iraq, lamenting the loss of life and displacement of millions, we must remember the conflict that has...

I remember when the Israeli embassy in Cairo was stormed by protesters in September 2011. Eight months after the start of the uprising that ousted former...

As useful as social media is in instantaneously disseminating information and fostering unprecedented levels of connectedness between people, organizations,...

In recent years, the proliferation of street art has become something of a burgeoning social movement in war-torn and politically tumultuous parts of the...

At a time when the world seems increasingly dominated by conflict, contention, and intolerance, it can be difficult to imagine a moment in history when this...

It is becoming increasingly difficult to make sense of what is happening in Egypt. Amidst stories of unprecedented repression, fear, and lost hopes amongst...

It is not surprising that gaining a glimpse into a foreign culture shrouded in mystery and riddled with negative stereotypes can quite drastically alter...

These days, there is no shortage in news coverage, stories, narratives, stereotypes, and caricatures about Muslims. They are archetypes in movies,...

The USA PATRIOT Act (or parts of it), a notorious, draconian piece of legislation that has facilitated the unfettered surveillance of millions of Americans...

On Monday, June 29, only one day before the second anniversary of the June 30th mass protests that led to the military-mandated ouster of President Mohamed...

This week, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had a hearing in a federal courtroom, where he was officially sentenced to death and given an opportunity...

"Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn’t matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your...

The rise of ISIS, the unraveling of Iraq after the toppling of Saddam Hussein, the implosion of Syria, the post-“Arab Spring" fall of long-time dictators in...

My friends and I often joke about the bizarre and seemingly haphazard process of finding one’s way around Egypt. Unlike many places, where a map or a decent...

Recently, at an obscure little hair salon in midtown Manhattan, I had my hair cut by an old Greek man who has been doing hair for forty-five years. I learned...

I met Lameece Issaq over some mana’eesh, the beloved Levantine dish of baked dough topped with cheese, zaatar (thyme), or ground meat. It seemed like a brush...

By now the Internet is abuzz with news about renowned investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s alternative version of events surrounding Osama Bin Laden's...

Over ten years, hundreds of cases, and trillions of dollars later, the “War on Terror” has become a ubiquitous reality that is rarely questioned or...

“The only time I hear people talk about nonviolence is when black people move to defend themselves against white people. Black people cut themselves every...

As stories circulate in the media suggesting that Muslims reject imagery and artistic depictions of religious subject matter, it can be difficult to remember...

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. ― Ray Bradbury Bradbury’s 1953 novel...

Sometimes, attempting to unveil and address a systematic ill, a social taboo, collective prejudice, some sort of internal tension, within one’s society or...

The Internet is abuzz this week with the story of a Gaza man who was “duped” into selling the last remaining door from his destroyed home - the canvas for...

Muftah is putting together a Special Collection of creative pieces by young American Muslim writers. We are seeking artistic, well-written submissions of...

Australian comedian Aamer Rahman, of the political comedy duo Fear of a Brown Planet, performs a routine on “reverse racism” that has gone viral over the...

'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' And yet the past, though of its nature...

In a climate of growing censorship and state control, often times art is the only way to address the reality on the ground and speak truth to power. Angela...

The mention of armed resistance in Gaza often conjures up images of Hamas rockets and masked militants reciting religious slogans. One certainly does not think...

The problem with academia? It is not the endless, sleepless nights at the library, the rat race toward tenure, the crippling insecurity and cutthroat...

I still maintain that one of the best ways to get to know a city - its ebbs and flows, its history, its sociological phenomena, its identity - is to speak to...

We are victims. We are perpetrators. We are accused. We are suspect. We are blamed. We are wronged. We are headlines. We are fine print. We are afterthoughts....

One of the most insidious effects of colonialism is the way in which it alters and reconfigures collective memory and notions of belonging. This erasure of the...

This week, three Egyptian activists - Ahmed Maher, Ahmed Douma, and Mohamed Adel - lost their final appeal against prison sentences handed down to them last...

This piece is rather experimental, and does not follow a traditional story line or plot, is fragmented and choppy, jumping ahead and behind in chronology. It...

Since the beginning of the revolution in 2011, Alaa Abd El-Fattah has become one of the most well-known, and oft-detained, political activists in Egypt. This...

As articles continue to pop up in every major and minor publication, and people are still struggling to piece together meaningful reactions, I am at a loss....

“What’s your name, Miss? How come we’ve never seen you here before?” Six little girls surrounded me, excitedly talking over each other and competing...

Egypt is creative chaos. It is orderly disorder. It is men selling tamarind juice out of giant silver jugs on their backs, roasted corn on the cob, and lovers...

We have seen him unify voices and uplift public morale during some of Egypt's darkest days, appear scarred yet defiant in the first oscar-nominated Egyptian...

On Saturday, November 29th, an Egyptian court dropped all charges against former president Hosni Mubarak, who had been accused of ordering and overseeing the...

Reggie Bush instagrams a picture comparing the Palestinian struggle to Ferguson. Palestine solidarity groups collaborate with the St. Louis-based Organization...

A chicken shawarma, fattoush salad, order of maftoul, and a harissa cake with some $1 sage tea. We quickly made our order, willingly braving the frigid...

Last weekend marked Harvard University’s eighth annual Harvard Arab Weekend (HAW), the largest pan-Arab conference in North America, bringing together...

From anti-war to civil rights movements, Tianenmen to Tahrir, student activism has been, and continues to be, a cornerstone of many resistance movements around...

“There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle, because we do not live single-issue lives.” - Audre Lorde Last weekend, the fourth annual National...

Has classism become Egypt’s newest battleground? This week, the country’s judicial system came under fresh scrutiny after refusing to reinstate 138 state...