How gorgeous is this book cover? Thank you Unbounders for gifting me with this copy of Cut from the Same Cloth? : Muslim Women on Life in Britain, edited by Sabeena Akhtar. I remember one of its contributors, my friend Sofia Rehman @sofia_reading talking about it as far back as 2018 when I first met her, so it’s been 3 years of me waiting to read it! If you enjoyed It’s Not About the Burqa you’ll enjoy this anthology too.

Cut from the Same Cloth? contains a collection of essays written by British Muslim women from a variety of ethnicities, professions, and walks of life, writing on what matters to them. Essay subjects range from being Muslim and disabled, motherhood, the struggle of modesty in today’s world, Islamophobia, racism, and more. There are some very important essays in here from black Muslim women on the discrimination and racism faced by black Muslims within the community, and I’m really glad that they’re in this anthology.

I whizzed through the book and favourites included Ruqaiya Haris’ essay The Quest for Modesty in the Digital Age, Fatha Hassan’s So I Can Talk to Guys Now? and Sumaya Kassim’s Riot, Write, Rest. Then there was Sofia Rehman’s essay The Gift of Second Sight that really embodied everything I believe as a Muslim woman today. I love the word play in the title - a reminder that as Muslim women we are indeed linked by our faith, and some of us may wear the hijab, but it doesn’t mean we are one cookie cutter shaped Muslim woman - we can have different outlooks and views on life. I learned so much from this anthology; it got me thinking about my own writing and how I should not feel as a Muslim female writer that I need to only write about my hijab, or write to break any stereotypes, or answer daft questions.