Loading ...How This 23-year-old is Busting Negative Myths About Arab and Muslim Women and Dominating the Internet
“Dude, hurry up and come over,” Amani Al-Khatahtbeh texted me. I wanted to say no, but no is never an answer for the 23-year-old founder of MuslimGirl.net, the number one online publication for Muslim women in the United States. Amani wanted me to join her on a humid summer night to produce a vlog for her site, and I was a bit too concerned with the way my face would look on camera. But if Amani wants something, she’ll get it. And it’s exactly that moxie that has driven her to successfully forge a powerful media presence for an underrepresented group.
Muslim women lead diverse lifestyles and have vastly different experiences, yet we live in a society with too few positive examples and too many caricatures of Muslim women in the mainstream media. Although female Muslim journalists often write critically-acclaimed takes on current events related to their faith, the mainstream news rarely includes their voices on the issues that affect them the most. Amani sees this blind spot, and, rather than accept it, has decided to do something about it. Her successes include taking on Pamela Geller, who organized the now infamous Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest, with a viral video that garnered a mention on Time magazine’s website, and a frank article on the Lebanese adult film actress Mia Khalifa, which received enough attention to crash MuslimGirl’s server.
Amani and MuslimGirl have been on the forefront of our society’s missing discussion on the intersection of Islam and Muslim women’s feminist identities. The site is not afraid to hit the strongest voices of the anti-Islam movement; as MuslimGirl.net’s tagline boasts: “Muslim Women Talk Back.” So here’s Amani, in her own words, talking back about anti-Islam sentiment and the stellar growth of her website.
Source: www.teenvogue.com