Muslim Women Are Everything

Stereotype-Shattering Stories of Courage, Inspiration, and Adventure

By: Seema Yasmin

Narrated by: Seema Yasmin

A collection of riveting, inspiring, and stereotype-shattering stories that reveal the beauty, diversity, and strength of Muslim women both past and present.

Tired of seeing Muslim women portrayed as weak, sheltered, and limited, journalist Seema Yasmin reframes how the world sees them, to reveal everything they can do and the incredible, stereotype-shattering ways they are doing it.

Muslim Women Are Everything is a celebration of the ways in which past and present Muslim women from around the world are singing, dancing, reading, writing, laughing, experimenting, driving, and rocking their way into the history books.

Forget subservient, oppressed damsels - say hello to women who are breaking down barriers using their art, their voices, and their activism, including:

• Tesnim Sayar from Denmark, a Muslim goth-punk who wears a red tartan mohawk on top of her hijab
• American superstar singer SZA, who sings alongside Rihanna and writes songs for Beyoncé
• Nura Afia, CoverGirl’s first hijabi ambassador
• Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, America's first Muslim congresswomen
• Ilyana Insyirah, a hijab-wearing, scuba-diving midwife from Australia

Showcasing women who defy categorization, Muslim Women Are Everything proves that to be Muslim and a woman is to be many things: strong, vulnerable, trans, disabled, funny, entrepreneurial, burqa- or bikini-clad, and so much more.

©2020 Seema Yasmin and Fahmida Azim (P)2020 HarperAudio

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I purchased this book for my teen, but then I absorbed the book within one day bc I loved it! We particularly loved the story about the woman in Morocco that won a gold medal.

Anyway- I recommend this book for teens or tweens but perhaps bc my intention in purchasing this was to reinforce my parental stance that wearing hijab is actually an asset sometimes. It was my sneaky way of coaxing her into it.

Even though for our family this book was perfect, I suspect there would be some more conservative parents that wouldn’t love it, those “haram-police” types, but will actually be recommending this book regardless within my community BECAUSE of how it touches on things like the Muslim LGBTQ+ community and tbh I feel like that’s how we connect our youth, who deeply care about social issues. We need to show them that Islam does align with what they care about and that even though people haven’t already done something, doesn’t mean they can’t. There is a lot of space for the first Muslima (full in the blank with your kids dream).

The only thing that would make me like this book a big better would be to have in the chapter index, then list of names of the women (bc we were googling them as we listened and want to refer back to some of their stories), and a small attempt to tie more of the deen to the text. Islam is a way of life for sure but also a religion so I would have liked a little pinch of that added.