When the act of writing becomes too traumatic, I like to recall that arch feminist Scheherazade who knew all about the power of the narrative and used tales to educate, entertain, to subvert, to seduce and to survive.  She was a woman who suffered from the politics of control—her villainous husband and despotic lord… a pumped up patriarchal prig who was given to saying: 

"By Allah, I won’t slay her until I hear some more of her wonderful tales…."  

Well in the end, Scheherazade outlived her lord and master. 

Today her story is shedding its orientalist trappings and is being rediscovered by a new generation of women who are tired of being encircled by religion, poverty and patriarchy and tired of being invisible.

My Mate Huck Finn
I believe Mark Twain. That’s the voice I hear in Huckleberry Finn. And while children all around the world enjoy reading about their good friend Huck, for adults, the book takes on a deeper meaning...
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Muslim Fatigue, or Aren't You Tired of The 'M' Word Too? (video)
Hanifa Deen is fed up with writing about Muslims, reading about Muslims, defending Muslims and obsessing about Muslims in general but is having trouble getting off the ‘Muslim merry-go-round’....
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Australia Has Not Escaped Its Racist Past  (video)
As part of the IQ2 Debate series, Hanifa Deen argues that Australia has not escaped its racist past. She talks about how we borrowed our White Australia test from South Africa, vilified Chinese and Afghans throughout our history and continue to build “desert gulags” for “queue jumpers”...
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On Reinventing Oneself
Ten years ago I was in the warm embrace of a comfortable high profile career as a well-paid senior public servant—a world of personal assistants, business class, Qantas Club, and government cars. I participated in international conferences, sat on advisory bodies to the Prime Minister, worked side by side with like-minded people and I told myself that I was an agency for social change...
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Courage in All Its Different Guises
We are living in a time of crisis and in times of crisis women everywhere resort to a kind of strength you never dreamed you owned. Like the women who find themselves with the physical strength to lift their child trapped under a heavy car...
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The Unveiling of Taslima
The Crescent and the PEN: the strange journey of Taslima Nasreen was a book eight years in the making. During this time it changed titles four times: it went from ‘The Unveiling of Taslima to ‘Taslima’s Carousel’, then for a few months it became...
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