Latest Updates: Women’s Rights in Islam RSS

  • abunoor 1:53 pm on February 25, 2010 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Marriage contract, , , , Women's Rights in Islam

    Ayesha Nasir publishes a piece (for Slate’s XX) about being discouraged from reading or discussing her marriage contract before her marriage in Pakistan. I was happy to learn more about problems around the culture of marriage in Pakistan, and I hope people will work for solutions. I don’t know Ms. Nasir’s background, but she makes some statements about Islamic law that I think are confused and although in general she makes it clear she is talking about her own experience and culture in Pakistan at times she seems to be making claims about Islamic practice that are not true universally.

    It’s safe to say that although there are many deep problems with Muslim marriage in the United States, the problems are generally different than those in Muslim cultures although I’m sure among some recent immigrants there must be more overlap.

     

  • johnpi 11:18 pm on February 6, 2010 | 3 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , Women's Rights in Islam

    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.”

     

  • johnpi 8:15 am on November 3, 2009 | 22 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Women's Rights in Islam

    Chechen leader champions ‘tradition,’ makes Sufi Islamism the state religion to counter influence of Salafi Islamism.

    Kadyrov, 33, was once a separatist but switched sides, recasting himself as an Islamic leader who is also loyal to Moscow.

    At first, his injection of national pride along with lots of money from the central government in Moscow soothed war-weary Chechens.

    And at first, the process of Islamization was voluntary. Any female student who wore a headscarf initially earned a prize of $1,000. Now all females, regardless of their religious convictions, must cover their heads in schools and government offices.

    Kadyrov has banned the sale of European-style wedding dresses in the republic’s bridal salons. Polygamy is increasing. Members of the team around Kadyrov openly have several wives. Kadyrov has also supported honor killings.

    Lipkhan Bazaeva, who runs a nongovernmental organization promoting women’s rights, says Chechnya is going back to the Middle Ages.

    “Yes, we are a traditional, conservative society, with our own values, but the government has gone overboard, declaring unacceptable limits on women — that they should sit at home, they should obey their husbands,” she says. “As an individual, she has no rights even if her husband beats her, despite Russian laws to the contrary.”

     

  • johnpi 8:22 pm on October 29, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , Women's Rights in Islam

    Death toll in Peshawar market blast rises to 117.

    Juan Cole identifies those responsible:

    Muslim extremists in Darra Adam Khel appear to have planned and carried out the attack, done by remote-controlled car bomb. They had threatened the markets with retribution if they did not forbid women to shop there. Pakistani extremists often preach ‘char divari’ or the immuring of women– keeping them within the four walls of their homes and forbidding them to go out at all. This idea, typical of Taliban sorts of thinking, is not Islamic and is contradicted by what we know of early Muslim history, in which women played an active and public role.

    In any case, the extremists then bombed the area around these markets, since Kochi is a women’s market. At least 70 of the victims were women and children.

    Darra Adam Khel is an Afridi Pashtun village in the North-West Frontier Province between Peshawar and the Federally Administered Tribal Area of Kohat (which itself witnessed a big bombing last week).

     

  • johnpi 7:31 am on October 26, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , Women's Rights in Islam

    One of Kuwait’s four new women lawmakers wants to rescind a 2005 electoral law requiring women to comply with Shariah.

    Rola Dashti, who was elected to parliament in May, submitted a proposal to the court last week to remove a 2005 electoral law requirement that women must comply with Islamic Shariah law. The law doesn’t specify what that entails or which women it applies to.

    Last week, the government’s Fatwa Department complicated the matter when it ruled that under Shariah law, Muslim women are required to wear hijab. Conservative lawmakers say that fatwa must apply to parliament’s four female members (two of whom wear hijab, two of whom two do not), the U.A.E. newspaper The National reports. But Dashti has dismissed the fatwa as non-binding and has said that including Shariah regulations in the electoral law is a breach of the constitution.

    Dashti does not wear hijab.

     

  • johnpi 8:47 pm on October 11, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , Women's Rights in Islam,

    Feminists from the Arab World: Women’s issues and feminist movements are discussed by scholar-activists from Saudi Arabia and Egypt at the first-ever conference, “Arab Feminisms: A Critical Perspective” – organized by the Lebanese Association of Women Researchers, Bahithat.

    Excerpt of an interview with Professor Hatoon Ajwad Al Fassi from Saudi Arabia:

    Can you explain briefly what you talked about in your presentation – about how feminism in Saudi Arabia – or the non-existence of it, as you question – developed over the last decades, and what kinds of historical contexts shaped the feminism in question?

    Al Fassi: I don’t think there is a political movement called feminism in Saudi Arabia, there isn’t such a thing. My definition of [a feminist] is someone who has an awareness of her being as a woman, who has rights. I consider this as a feminist consciousness. That is a kind of feminism if you like. This happens on different levels: a level that is very leftist, very liberal that has extreme demands and others that are to the right – Muslims or Islamists who have extreme demands from our point of view…

    So when it comes to practical issues, extreme Islamist feminists think that personal status laws are untouchable because they have to do with the Islamic faith?

    Al Fassi: Yes… Or they would say that these laws are the right ones in Islam and that nobody should question them. But the question is their application. And this is something that we agree on… But they go into more details that we disagree with, such as [the fact] that they believe that women should not go to work unless they are very needy, that the priority should be to stay at home and that the man should always provide for the woman.

     

  • johnpi 8:06 pm on September 22, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , Women's Rights in Islam

    Burqas disappear from a Pakistani city.

    In Mingora, the main city of Swat Valley:

    “When the Taliban fled, our burqas went with them,” said Shahin Begum, 40, an elementary school teacher, who returned to work on Aug. 1.

    Women were the main targets of the Taliban’s morals police, and once that rigid rule was imposed their lives froze. They were barred from going to traditional women’s shopping areas, and anyone who worked in a public place, including hospitals, was required to wear a burqa, a sacklike, head-to-toe garment with netting over the eyes.

    The burqa is traditional for many women in tribal, conservative western Pakistan. But here in the Swat Valley and its ethnically mixed hill towns north of the capital, Islamabad, women are relatively more open, and for many the outfit felt clumsy and confining.

    “I felt like I was out of air,” said Zaida Bibi, a maid in a green shawl with flowers.

    Now, she said, it still feels like a delicious act of revenge to walk into Cheena Market, a maze of glittering glass stalls full of cosmetics, dresses and shoes that was forbidden under the Taliban, where she was shopping Sunday.

    “It’s a free, light feeling,” she said as she chose gifts for Id al-Fitr, a major Muslim holiday, which was celebrated this week.

     

  • johnpi 11:48 pm on June 26, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , Women's Rights in Islam

    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.

     

  • abunoor 12:53 pm on May 26, 2009 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , Women's Rights in Islam,

    Over at Muslim Matters, Shaykh Yasir Qadhi gives an “insider’s” perspective on participating in the Doha Debates.

    Shaykh Yasir debated, among others, Asra Nomani, on the motion ‘This house believes that Muslim women should be free to marry anyone they choose’.

    The debate itself will be aired June 6 and 7.

     

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