Friday Links | February 24, 2012

Afghan female MP Fawzia Koofi targets Afghan presidency, even though she receives death threats for openly pursuing this goal. Her response: “We die anyway“.

In Indonesia, children born either out of wedlock or out of unregistered marriages (such as temporary unions) can now claim legal ties to the father, which makes them eligible to inherit from the father and should improve the status of these children in society. Many Indonesian men enter polygamous marriages, without officially registering them, out of fear that the other wife/wives or the public will find out.

A rising trend in family violence in Kosovo worries experts, much of the violence can still be related to war trauma.

The daughter of the recently freed Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, Mrs. Nurul Izza Anwar, is mentioned a future prime minister of the country. In an interview with The Telegraph she says that Islam and democracy can co-exist.

The BBC features a picture report on the daily life of Somali samosa seller Faduma Aden Mohamud.

Two women are among the 14 presidential candidates in Senegal, but they are not viewed by many as likely candidates to win the elections.

In FATA (Federally Administrated Tribal Areas) in Pakistan, girls’ schools are still a casualty of war.

Angie Nasser, reporter and blogger at NOW Lebanon, says that after the new alterations in the domestic violence law, Lebanon is no country for women.

In a northwestern city in Tunisia, “salafists” have clashed with the police, after they assaulted two women who were promoting the opening of a store, wearing “inappropriate” clothing. According to an eyewitness, they are not real salafists, but people who want to bring the salafists a bad name, as true Muslims would never attack women…

Whether to wear or not to wear niqab is an endless debate in Yemen, as is the place of niqab in both tradition and religion is topic of debate.

In the Central African country of Malawi, nurses and midwives can now wear the hijab on the job. This decision comes after a long deliberation, and after the government decision that Muslim women can wear the hijab on passport pictures. Malawi has a significant Muslim minority, which makes up around 13 percent of the population.

The Express Tribune features the different faces of contemporary female Muslim royalty.

A new book in Indonesia, Seven Urban Women: A Note, shares the observations of seven Indonesian women residing in Jakarta.  In many of the stories, religion is an important topic. Unfortunately for now the book is only available in Bahasa Indonesia, not English or any other language.

Due to the violence in the area, Jos in Nigeria has a quite large population of women, who have become the “breadwinners” of their families as their husbands have passed away, and now struggle in order to be able to sustain their families.

Sheikh Fu’ad Mohamed Khalaf Shongole, a major Al-Shabaab speaker, urges parents to send their unmarried daughters to join the warfront against the Somali government. Currently Al-Shabaab has only employed (young) men; parents and girls are worried.

Bosniak victims, many of which female, protested in the snow against the draft law to scrap Bosnia’s state court and prosecutor’s office, fearing that they will never get justice at a Serb-run court.