Latest Updates: women RSS

  • aziz 12:46 pm on March 1, 2010 | 12 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , women

    There was a “sit in” at a mosque in Washington DC – women sat to pray in the main hall. The mosque administrators called the police. What happened next? Read Asra Nomani’s article to find out.

    Its a touch and sensitive issue. I dont fully buy the civil rights analogy because there is no “right” to sit somewhere in a private building. The analogy to Rosa Parks is tempting, but do we want the government imposing rules on our practice of faith?

    Still, its hard not to be impressed. I would have been even more impressed if the women had followed through with the civil rights analogy in full… but thats spoiling the narrative. Go read it.

     

  • arif 2:04 pm on February 23, 2010 | 3 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , women

    Not sure if this has been posted here already or not. Note that it suggest this is a lone voice but it starts by saying it was a protest by women (plural).

    Muslim women staged a protest at a D.C. mosque Saturday to demand that mosque leaders remove a 7-foot partition behind which women pray separately from men.

    Fatima Thompson and other women staged a “stand-in” at the Islamic Center on Massachusetts Avenue in Northwest. “Every woman should be able to stand with the congregation. That’s the correct way,” said Thompson, who converted to Islam 18 years ago.

    snip–

    but Fatima Goodwin, a mosque employee who also worships there, said Thompson is acting alone. “Not a single woman that prays here has expressed disagreement with the partition,”

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/22/AR2010022204657.html

     

  • johnpi 11:18 pm on February 6, 2010 | 3 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , women, , ,

    Al Shabab launches new effort to drive girls out of schools in areas it controls.

    The Al-Shabab movement in Somalia has issued directives in schools located in areas under its control, in an effort to instill Islamist ideology in the younger generation.

    Islamist authorities in Merca, located some 70 kilometers (43 miles) southwest of the capital Mogadishu, have ordered that boys and girls learn in separate classrooms and that the Somali national flag be replaced with the movement’s flag in schools, according to the London-based A-Sharq Al-Awsat.

    Observers and human rights activists are concerned that the new directives will help the Islamists spread a radical ideology among impressionable schoolchildren.
    ….

    Analysts suspect the directives are a sign the movement is trying to push girls out of the school system in moves reminiscent of the Taliban’s attacks against girls’ schools in Pakistan, since imposing separate schooling for boys and girls is logistically and financially impossible.

    “Al-Shabab has already demonstrated its clear need to subjugate women, and the expulsion of girls from schools fits into this,” Roque said, “in the same way that the Taliban separated men and women, their roles, their rights, and their role in the public and private spheres.”

     

  • arif 11:20 pm on January 25, 2010 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , women

    The possible cause of ‘hyper-masculinised’ Muslim societies in the troubled lands. A very well written personal account, you might appreciate it more if you have an Asian subcontinent context.

     

  • johnpi 8:51 am on December 27, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , women, ,

    An article about a book published in 1898 by a Muslim scholar challenging interpretations of male supremacy over women.

    The ulema of Maulvi Mumtaz’s time ignored it, but its revolutionary thoughts are now warming the hearts of reformists in the community. “Quoting the Quran and Hadith, both Prophet Muhammad’s traditions, the maulvi convincingly explodes the myth of male supremacy and argues that the Quran is just to both sexes,” says Islamic reformist Asgar Ali Engineer who published Huququn Niswan (Rights of Women) a few months ago after he got a photocopy from a US library with an American scholar’s help.

    There are plans to publish the book in English, Hindi and Urdu.

     

  • johnpi 12:39 am on December 18, 2009 | 3 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , women

    For the first time in Lebanon, a woman has been allowed to open a bank account.

    The change in banking policy that now allows women to open accounts comes after an advocacy campaign led by the Institute of Progressive Women and other groups.

     

  • johnpi 8:41 pm on October 27, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , women

    First women-only bank opens in Iraq holy city.

    In one of Shi’ite Islam’s holiest cities, a bank has opened a branch only for women, hoping to tap a potentially large market and meet pent-up demand from Muslim women for financial services that meet their needs.

    The manager of the Najaf branch of the private Babel bank is, however, a man. He must make an appointment before making a visit and enter the premises through a back door.

    “Through this bank they (women customers) can unveil and exercise complete freedom in dealing with the employees,” said Mazen Abdul-Razzaq, Babel’s deputy director.

    A study by The Boston Consulting Group, which included Iraq, found that women worldwide were particularly dissatisfied when it came to financial services.

    Iraqi women interviewed at the women-only bank in Najaf say they felt uncomfortable dealing with male bank clerks in regular banks and felt much more relaxed in the new branch.

     

  • johnpi 11:18 am on October 15, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , women,

    God furious if women governors: Iran cleric.

    Grand Ayatollah Lotfollah Safi Golpayghani said the appointment of women in such top jobs was against sharia (Islamic) law.

    “They come to Qom, the centre of Shiite Islam, and announce that they will appoint women as governors of some provinces. Do you want to fight with the Quran and the Prophet with such talks that go against sharia?” he asked.

    Is it any wonder that shariah gets a bad name wit interpretations like this…can somebody point me to what part of the Quran says women can’t be governors?

     

  • willow 11:52 pm on October 3, 2009 | 7 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , women

    I just passed my orange belt test in kajukenbo. The school where I train is women-only, and one of my classmates is a Real Actual Ninjabi, ie a munaqaba who knows kung fu. Pretty awesome.

    The test was a two-and-a-half hour nonstop workout-slash-pummeling. I don’t remember ever being this tired.

     

  • johnpi 7:18 pm on August 19, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , women

    Kenyan women set up “to hell with men” village.

    Tired of abuse and suppression a group of women in Kenya have joined forces to establish a female only village in Kenya, where the motto seems to be “to hell with men.”

    The village, based 350 kilometers west of the capital of Nairobi, was started by a group of 14 women who decided to escape the dominance of men and live according to their own rules, Germany’s Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA) reported on Wednesday.

    Called Umoja, or unity in Swahili, the village has become a safe-haven for women escaping arranged marriages, female genital mutilation (FGM) or rape and abuse.
    ….

    Despite the fact that women in the village live on their own, men from neighboring villages continue to harass them and throw stones at them.

    “Get out of here. You are cursed,” they yell at them, prompting the women to build a barbed wire fence around the village to protect themselves.

     

  • aziz 8:10 am on August 3, 2009 | 4 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , women

    The Ideal Husband: it’s G. Willow Wilson vs Asra Nomani at City of Brass.

     

  • johnpi 6:55 pm on August 2, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , women

    Remember this clarion call for (especially Western) silence and indifference in the name of privacy and respect toward the martyr Neda, and against those who would appropriate her as a “sign,” a symbol?

    Here’s Neda’s mother in a BBC interview thanking the world for its attention:

    I don’t want people to forget her. People – Iranians – have all been very supportive. They come to me and congratulate me for having had such a brave daughter.

    And now I want you to do something for me. I want you, on my behalf, to thank everyone around the world, Iranians and non Iranians, people from every country and culture, people who in their own way, their own tradition, have mourned my child… everyone who lit a candle for her – every musician, who wrote songs for her, who wrote poems about her… you know, Neda loved the arts and music. I want to thank all of them.

    I want to thank politicians and leaders, from every country, at all levels, who remembered my child.

    Her death has been so painful – words can never describe my true feelings. But knowing that the world cried for her… that has comforted me.

    I am proud of her. The world sees her as a symbol, and that makes me happy.

    Muslims ‘not of the West’ need as much protection from Western Muslims who will colonize them as they do from any other oppressor.

    Who among us will rush in and do the patroniz…err…protecting? ;-)

     

  • johnpi 6:16 pm on August 1, 2009 | 31 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Canadian Muslims, , , , , , , , Sublime Quran, , women

    ISNA has banned the first-ever translation of the Quran by a woman from its bookstore, according to Tarek Fatah. Fatah seems to be pretty fast and loose with the word “Islamist,” which prompts suspicion for me as ISNA has been the target of extremist smears for awhile.

    Until 2007, only men had translated the Koran and interpreted it. That’s because the very idea of a woman translating the holy book offends Islamists. Consider, for example, the reaction to the first-ever translation by a woman — Laleh Bakhtiar’s The Sublime Quran — two years ago.

    Mohammad Ashraf of the Canadian branch of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) — the same gentleman who this week told the CBC that there was no provision for honour killings in Islam — told The Toronto Star that he would not permit The Sublime Quran to be sold in the ISNA bookstore. “Our bookstore would not allow this kind of translation,” he said. “I will consider banning it … This woman-friendly translation will be out of line and will not fly too far.”

    What had Laleh Bakhtiar done to deserve the punishment of having her translation of the Koran banned from ISNA’s Islamic bookstores? Her fault, in the eyes of Islamists, is that she believes the Koran does not condone spousal abuse, as claimed by Islamists.

    I checked the Toronto Star article, and Ashraf did indeed say what he is quoted as saying. Ashraf also said his objection was not that she was a female scholar, but that “she was not trained at an academic institution accredited in the Muslim world.” This is a catch-22 though as Bakhtiar would likely never have been admitted into programs that would allow her to be recognized as a scholar in the first place, so I conclude that Fatah’s criticism above is justified. I would still not use the word “Islamist” to describe the organization in America – but perhaps the Canadian branch is a little more “out there.”

     

  • johnpi 9:26 am on August 1, 2009 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , women

    Unique among immigrant-bashing nativist movements, writes Sara at Orcinus, the Minutemen militias seem to let women take leadership roles. Since movement members racism is often only exceeded by their sexism, “There’s a good argument to be made that authoritarianism is, at its core, a fetishization of all things “masculine,” which means it generally can’t exist without the reflexive subjugation of all things feminine.”

    So it’s unusual that you can find three women in right-wing leadership roles: Laine Lawless, Shawna Forde, and Brandi Baron.

    The Seattle Weekly has a new article on Ford, who has apparently had a difficult life: foster care, shoplifting, prostitution arrests, repeated marriages and name changes. Ford, who told her followers that she saw brown-skinned immigrants as filthy, lowly lawbreakers, was recently charged for the double murder of a Mexican man and his 9-year-old daughter.

    Sara writes:

    It would not surprise any of us, I think, to find out that Brandi Baron and Laine Lawless had similarly troubled biographies — as do almost all of the men who commit acts of far-right extremist violence.

    When feminism promised to give us all the same opportunities men had, I’m pretty sure this is not what the movement’s foremothers had in mind.

    I guess this means we’ve finally arrived. It doesn’t feel much like victory, though.

    Laine Lawless is the former high priestess of Sisterhood of the Moon, a lesbian pagan organization, and got into trouble in 2006 for sending a letter to a neo-Nazi leader asking if some of his “warriors” would be willing to engage in a terror campaign that would include beatings, stealing non-white peoples’ paychecks and “Discouraging Spanish-speaking children from going to school. Be creative.”

    And here’s video of Brandi Baron demanding to ‘Kill any man, woman or child who comes across the border illegally.’

     

  • aziz 6:56 pm on July 18, 2009 | 3 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , women

    Dilshad Ali is in Kuala Lumpur for the Women’s Islamic Initiative in Equality and Spirituality Conference (WISE).

     

  • plimfix 4:28 am on July 15, 2009 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , women

    The UK-based Quilliam Foundation, “the world’s first counter-extremism think tank” founded by ex-Islamists Maajid Nawaz, Ed Husain and Rashad Ali, have published a report on Muslim women and unemployment, which is discussed by Andrew Brown on his Guardian blog.

     

  • johnpi 7:05 am on July 11, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , women

    Muslim women lead protests in restive west China.

    …the incident was one of many examples of how Muslim women have been taking bold leadership roles following the deadliest communal violence in decades in the Xinjiang region. As the communist government launches a sweeping security crackdown, the women have faced down troops, led protests and risked arrest by speaking out against police tactics they believe are excessive.

    It seems many of the men have been rounded up and jailed. Whole neighborhoods have been cleared of adult men.

    And from the same article, a description of Uighur religious practice, women’s roles in society and the economy, mixed with a description of women’s clothing norms:

    Most Muslim Uighurs practice a moderate form of Sunni Islam or follow the mystical Sufism tradition. The women often work and lead an active social life outside the home. Many wear brightly colored head scarves but the custom is not strongly enforced. Young Uighur women often wear jeans, formfitting tops and dresses.

    In the journalistic tradition of ’showing’ rather than labeling, I think the purpose of this paragraph is to make a long-winded expression that Uighur women are moderate, liberated and deserving of sympathy (the writers know they are writing for a Western audience that likely fears conservative Islam).

     

  • johnpi 5:22 am on July 9, 2009 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , women

    The dos and don’t of defending Muslim women: Fatemeh Fakhraie expands on several earlier pieces she wrote about well-intentioned but misguided efforts to help Muslim women by non-Muslim feminists.

    Not just a negative report, she has affirmative advice for helping Muslim women – most importantly, only when asked.

    Changing arrogance and co-option of voice

    If I ask you to speak for me because I am unable to speak for myself, make sure you’re doing it right: keep my concerns in mind, keep my circumstances in mind, and reflect that. Don’t reflect what you think is best for me.

    If a Muslim woman doesn’t ask you to be her voice or speak for her, don’t. If you wish to help a Muslim woman you feel is voiceless, help her get a voice. Never assume you have the right to speak on someone else’s behalf.

     

  • johnpi 4:31 pm on July 8, 2009 | 18 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , women

    The invasion of Afghanistan in the name of women’s rights is not going well.

    Report: More young girls face rape in Afghanistan.

    Rapes targeting girls as young as seven are on the increase in Afghanistan where conditions for women are little better than under the Taliban, the U.N. and rights groups say.

    In its annual report on human rights, the U.N. warned conditions were deteriorating in the war-ravaged country despite U.S.-led efforts after the 2001 removal from power of the hardline militia.

    “Violence is tolerated or condoned within the family and community, within traditional and religious leadership circles, as well as the formal and informal justice system,” said Navi Pillay, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights.

     

  • johnpi 7:19 pm on July 7, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , women

    ‘Slut shaming’ and the victimology of rape.

    In the UK Telegraph, an article claims new research shows provocatively dressed women are more likely to get raped. The “scientists” in question are actually a dissertation student, who said her unpublished research would not support the conclusion reached by the newspaper.

    Furthermore, as blogged by Natasha Chart, actual research on this specific question (who gets targeted for rape) has been published:

    Conventional wisdom holds that women who dress provocatively draw attention and put themselves at risk of sexual assault. But studies show that it is women with passive, submissive personalities who are most likely to be raped-and that they tend to wear body-concealing clothing, such as high necklines, long pants and sleeves, and multiple layers. Predatory men can accurately identify submissive women just by their style of dress and other aspects of appearance. The hallmarks of submissive body language, such as downward gaze and slumped posture, may even be misinterpreted by rapists as flirtation. …

    Chart concludes, “A rape culture that blames women who step out of line as ‘asking for’ rape would in fact create more victims by this sort of evaluation. It would create more women whose body language suggests that they’re afraid of being looked at, whose posture is fearful and cringing, who are afraid of the negative judgment, keep their heads down and shuffle meekly along.”

    So what would a culture look like that “instilled such confidence in young women that they would legitimately be less likely to be attacked?” Chart asks. It might look like the Amish:

    (More …)

     

  • johnpi 5:17 pm on July 2, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , women

    Israel and American military planners foiled by Western media images of Muslim women (and men).

    NEW YORK — In the weeks since moderate Iranians threw down the gauntlet to the conservative clerics who run their lives, Israel has watched the unfolding drama with trepidation….

    …As long as the vacant stare of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Hilterian rants of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad embodied “Iran,” Israel could avoid thinking too seriously about what military types call “collateral damage.” Many suspected Iranian nuclear facilities were located in busy suburbs, some beneath busy cities.

    Now, however, Iran has donned a very different face — not just that of Neda, the young protester whose tragic death has been watched by millions on YouTube. The new face Iran has turned to the world is a composite. Yes, the mullah and Ahmadinnerjacket are still in there, but so are hundreds of thousands of people risking their skin to repudiate them.

    This is not a minor issue for Israel, nor for American military planners who might have harbored hopes of reviving the idea of a preemptive strike on Iranian nuclear sites.

    Heard it here first.

     

  • johnpi 8:32 pm on June 30, 2009 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , women

    A pejorative comment about ‘what Western media manipulation has done’ to Neda:

    Her image is no longer that of a woman in death but rather a sign of Iran’s oppressive regime.

    Some facts about who has acted to make Neda a sign of Iran’s repressive regime, and some facts about who has acted vigorously in defense of Neda’s ‘privacy.’ From Wikipedia:

    * After being pronounced dead at Shariati hospital, Agha-Soltan was buried at the Behesht-e Zahra cemetery in southern Tehran; she was denied a proper funeral by government authorities.

    * On June 23, it was reported that government authorities directed Agha-Soltan’s family to remove the black mourning banners that were hanging outside their residence in the Tehran neighborhood of Tehranpars in order to prevent the home from becoming a place of pilgrimage.

    * On June 24, The Guardian reported the results of interviews of neighbours who claimed that Agha-Soltan’s family was forced to vacate their apartment some days after her death.

    * The Iranian government has issued a ban on collective prayers in mosques for Agha-Soltan in the aftermath of the incident.

    * Soona Samsami, the executive director of the Women’s Freedom Forum, who has been relaying information about the protests inside Iran to the international media, told the foreign press that Agha-Soltan’s immediate family were threatened by authorities if they permitted a gathering to mourn her. Samsami stated, “They were threatened that if people wanted to gather there the family would be charged and punished.”

    * On June 22, Iranian riot police dispersed a crowd of between 200 and 1,000 protesters with live ammunition and tear gas who had gathered in Tehran’s Haft-e Tir Square after online calls for protesters to pay tribute to Agha-Soltan and others killed during the demonstrations.

    * On that same day, about 70 mourners gathered outside Niloufar mosque in Abbas Abad, where the Agha-Soltan family attended services. A leaflet posted on the mosque’s door read, “There is no commemoration here for Neda Agha Soltan.” Many in the crowd wore black. Some recited poems. After about ten minutes, 20 Basij paramilitary arrived on motorcycles and dispersed the attendees.

    Embedded in these various bullets points are reports of lots and lots of non-Western Muslims – real people, with real feelings and real rights trying to take control of their own destinies and identities, but some Western Muslims clearly seek to diminish or ignore them. Therefore ‘Muslim sources’ and ‘feminist sources’ should be deconstructed of the license these labels give them to speak with authority about non-Western and female perspectives.

     

  • johnpi 8:28 pm on June 30, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , women

    Silence and invisibility for the sake of Neda:

    Her image is no longer that of a woman in death but rather a sign of Iran’s oppressive regime. Neda’s agency is denied, and in her passing we cannot afford her privacy but continually reproduce an image of her death which to me resembles a Warhol pop art print. Neva Mwiti writes a really strong analysis of Stolen and the controversy surrounding it. She asks whether or not “film producers, brand gurus and marketers from the West will realise and respect that the third world is not fodder for their notoriety, but actually made up real people, with real feelings and real rights over their own destinies and identities.” I think her comments can be applied to the majority (if not all) representations of women like Faitim and Neda. When will these women be given the respect they deserve?

    Neda’s agency is denied by limiting the scope of her possible desires to one – “privacy,” a state of silence and invisibility.

    Next we should examine what we know about Neda’s thoughts on the political behavior she was engaged in and was killed for. From Wikipedia:

    * Her music teacher, Hamid Panahi, who was accompanying Agha-Soltan during the protest, told the media: “She couldn’t stand the injustice of it… All she wanted was the proper vote of the people to be counted. She wanted to show with her presence that, ‘I’m here, I also voted, and my vote wasn’t counted’. It was a very peaceful act of protest, without any violence.”

    * Caspian Makan (Agha-Soltan’s fiancé) told BBC: “Neda had said that even if she lost her life and got a bullet in her heart, she would carry on”.

    She was engaged in an act of expression when she died, in a public place for all to know and see. She stepped out of anything that was part of her normal regular life to be public and to be heard. To then say that the highest respect we can pay her is “privacy” is to steal the agency – the meaning that she ascribed to the last few minutes of her life.

    Speaking of non-Western perspectives, this commenter at Racialicious was fairly bursting with respect for them:

    If I am not mistaken…it is the Iranian dissidents who are pimping Neda Soltani’s blood-ridden face all over the Internet. It is a certain political group of Iranians who are dying for attention from the Western corporate media.

    Paraphrased thusly: “I just hate non-Westerners who won’t get with my program and let me colonize them…”

     

  • johnpi 4:00 pm on June 30, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , women

    It only seems like women are playing a central role in the Iranian election protests because of Western media manipulation – not.

    Reports have surfaced that there is no more space left for women in Tehran’s official prisons. Human rights’ activists report on unsanitary and inappropriate conditions for imprisoned women protesters in Iran’s overcrowded jails. At least 60 of imprisoned women are in the public wards and have only been given a blanket and are forced to sleep in corridors.

     

  • johnpi 8:13 pm on June 28, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , women

    More women in the streets of Iran.

    According to a contact in Tehran, women police are now out in force. Not that the women protesters were free from being attacked, but now there is a special female force solely designed for them.

     

  • plimfix 3:58 am on June 28, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , women

    The hijab debate: ‘I don’t want to be judged on my looks’, c/o Independent on Sunday. Ten British women explain why to varying degrees they choose to cover up.

     

  • johnpi 9:53 pm on June 27, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , women

    The Iranian post-election conflict has become a gendered narrative, with an oppressive male state and male actors being challenged by (most prominently) women activists. This caught my eye:

    Today a group of people including women’s rights activists assembled in Laleh Park to light candles in memory of Neda and other martyrs. The protesters were dispersed by the police and plainclothesmen using violent tactics. There were also many policewomen. Many people were arrested and hauled away.

    The participation of women in the crackdown is getting lost in the narrative.

    The presumption that there is any commonality or good intentions among those who are recognizable as, or self-identified as, “Iranian,” “woman,” “Muslim,” “feminist,” or any other descriptor should be aggressively challenged.

     

  • johnpi 8:08 pm on June 27, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , women

    From an American feminist, more on the images of Iranian women in the protests there:

    In general, the images of Iranian women — young and old, clad in chadors and scant designer scarves — have been a valuable emotional bridge for men and women alike. They’re more sympathetic figures not only because, of course, many consider them to be the fairer sex, but also because of the way the Islamic regime has tirelessly targeted women.

    (More …)

     

  • thabet 1:33 am on June 27, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , women

    French cosmetics company guilty of racism:

    L’Oréal, the French cosmetics giant, whose advertising campaigns proclaim “because you’re worth it”, was found guilty of racial discrimination for considering black, Arab and Asian women unworthy of selling its shampoo.

     

  • johnpi 11:48 pm on June 26, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , women, ,

    An article on the presence of beautiful Iranian women in the coverage of the Iranian elections in the West, from Women’s News Network.

    The article concludes, “the visual narrative may emphasize clothing and beauty, but we should not be so distracted by images that we miss the message underneath the make-up,” that message being:

    This particular election, however, brought remarkable voter turnout as the women of Iran made a decision to take their dissatisfaction to the ballot boxes. In an earlier piece for Jezebel, Carpentier lays out “10 Reasons Why You Should Be Following the Iranian Elections,” parsing out the key themes that are fueling the political fires. Most of them trace back to women’s rights. Women’s rights activists have been jailed for protesting the changes the Ahmadinejad administration ushered in, including allowing the growth of employment discrimination, legislation that attacks women’s financial freedom and renaming the Center for Women’s Participation as the Center for Women and Families (and the goal of the newly named agency would be to promote women returning to more traditional roles).

    The article ends with a 4-minute video montage of images reportedly of Iranian women being accosted and ticketed by policemen and policewomen “wearing full-length black chadors” enforcing dress codes.

     

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