Islam, Women and Me

Islam, Women and Me

"Best documentary on television this week." The Observer

"I wouldnt patronise Ms Baig by saying shes a great spokesperson for her generation of Muslims or for her gender, but she did ask the right questions, interview the right people, and get some of the right answers to her dilemmas. She is a strong independent woman, and no power on earth, or above it, is going to change that."  Independent

"Illuminating documentary." i Newspaper

 

As a 28-year-old British Muslim woman Mehreen Baig finds that everyone seems to have an opinion about how she should live her life: the clothes she should wear, where she should go out, who she should marry. Half the time she's told she's being held back by her religion; the other half that she isn't religious enough. Sometimes it feels like she just can't win. As she faces the prospect of marriage and finally moving out from her parents' house, she wants to know whether it's possible to be a strong, independent woman and a good Muslim in modern Britain.

In Islam, Women and Me, Mehreen encounters the women on the front line of this debate. She meets the young women who claim Islam is a feminist religion that empowers them, and a woman who's rejected the religion because she believes it's inherently sexist.  She uses a specialist Muslim dating app to date a selection of young Muslim men, finding out what they really want from a wife, and attends a Sharia Council to witness women petitioning to divorce their husbands. Along the way, Mehreen discovers what the Islamic texts really say about women's rights, and discovers how widely women's experiences vary across different Muslim communities.