- A new study says that pregnant women shouldn’t fast. More from The Huffington Post.
- Yasmin Sajid Sheikh of India aspires to be a policewoman and a role model for “progressive Muslim women.”
- Campaigning against stoning is still necessary.
- This is a much better way to address matches with the Iranian women’s soccer team. Take note, Daily Mail!
- Al-Ahram Weekly asks whether the ban on the wearing of the face veil in Syrian schools and universities is motivated by support for secularism or by fear of the influence of Islamist trends. Syria Today also weighs in.
- The Kyiv Post highlights Muslim women in the Ukraine.
- Muslim women in India “have had enough of mullah interference.”
- Statistics show that more Afghan women are attempting suicide.
- On the “new Scheherazades.”
- ILLUME discusses Aisha’s Time cover. Alternet weighs in about war victims and how their images are used. And Colorlines discusses how the cover obscures the horror of war. Aisha was in the U.S. this week to have reconstructive surgery on her nose.
- An Egyptian woman has gone public with a rare television interview alleging that police raped her after she stopped to ask for directions in a rural part of the country. May Allah give her justice.
- NATO forces kill 39 women and children in Afghanistan. May Allah give them peace and justice.
- A Lebanese composer and a singer have released a track that parodies popular Arabic songs considered by some to be patriarchal and demeaning to women.
- The Guardian has an exclusive interview with Sakineh Ashtiani. She has aired a “confession” on state television, which many believe to be forced.
- India’s largest and most influential madrasa recently issued a fatwa declaring that appointing a woman as a judge is near haram. More here.
- Bikya Masr reports that violence against women in Egypt is on the rise.
- Saudi females working as cashiers at Azizia Panda supermarkets have expressed delight over their new jobs and encouraging comments from customers.
- A study published last month by the Fund for the Prevention and Treatment of Addiction and Abuse revealed that drug addition increases the sexual exploitation of girls in Egypt.
- The head of a religious TV network in Saudi Arabia claims that female scholars are not willing to appear on television.
- Electronic Intifada interviews Suheir Hammad about the role she plays in the Salt of This Sea movie.
- Maktoob discusses the wealth of Saudi women. Via elan.
- France’s interior minister called for immigrants who practice polygamy or female genital mutilation to have their citizenship withdrawn.
- Iraq has a “disastrously high number of widows.”
If there’s any news about Muslim women from this week that we missed, feel free to post links in the comments!
As-Salaamu ‘alaikum,
The “televised confession” is a standard tactic of despotic regimes – one remembers the affair of the British men the Saudis tried to frame for terrorism (claiming it was rival alcohol cartels rather than OBL-influenced dissidents) and they put one guy up with a confession that had been written for him. The guy deliberately over-emphasised the grammatical errors, e.g. “he is a British nationality” so British viewers could tell it wasn’t written by him.
Regarding the first link, do we actually need a study to advise pregnant women not to fast in Ramadhan?
Pregnant women come up pretty high in the list of “Those exempted from fasting”, and I would have thought most Muslims knew this.
As regards the study itself, there have been studies done in the past which have not come to a similar conclusion.
Additionally, one irritating thing about most news sites is that they mention studies but don’t quote when the ‘study’ was done and what paper it was published in. I was interested in reading the study myself to get more details, but disappointingly, the article carried no link to the original article nor did it cite the authors or publication. Any ideas on tracing it down?