Friday Links | May 17, 2013

Reports about Syrian refugee women getting sold in marriage in Jordan remain rampant, especially young girls are considered to be desirable. In Egypt too, Syrian refugee women are often singled out by Egyptian men with propositions of marriage.

Last weekend were the elections in Pakistan, for some women it was the first time in half a century that they were able to vote, but even days after the elections agreements by political parties emerged that barred women from voting.

A glimmer of hope in Bangladesh last week, when Reshma Begum was found alive under the rubble of Rana Plaza after surviving for 17 days. The majority of the thousand victims are women, but those who have survived have horrible stories to tell about the conditions in which they had to work.

Bride kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan is, contrary to popular belief, not just a rural phenomenon; especially rural migrants in the cities see bride kidnapping as the best (read: cheapest) option to get married.

Many young women and girls attending school in Sana’a, Yemen, can expect a crowd of young men whenever they are entering and leaving the school premises, to a point that many parents now decide to pick up the girls themselves, in order to safeguard them from the harassment.

Shi’a Muslim scholars and student organizations suggest that the practice of temporary marriage, or nikah mut’ah, is on the rise in the British Shi’a community.

The Swiss Federal Court has decided that a 14-year-old Muslim girl has to participate in all-female swimming lessons; the parents and the girl objected because there would be a male life guard present.

Now that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, better known as the PKK, is withdrawing its fighters from Turkey, many Kurdish mothers are desperate to be reunited with their sons and daughters.

A Saudi court has sentenced a Lebanese man to six years in prison and 300 lashes after convicting him of encouraging a Saudi woman to convert to Christianity.

A constitutional body in Iran has issued a ruling that forbids women from running for the post of president during the upcoming June 14 elections.

As the conflict in Mali is continuing, Mali’s displaced women are preparing for a long stay away from home.

Two Minnesota women of Somali descent are convicted of conspiring to send money to Al Shabab and sentenced to prison.

Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamic group that is outlawed in Kyrgyzstan, is said to increasingly recruit women, predominantly those who are fairly young, unemployed and with several children.

Seven French men have been accused of an online scheme where Muslim men are encouraged to marry underage Muslim converts over the phone, after a 15-year-old girl ran away from her home to live with an older Muslim man.

The women-only trains that served the Jakarta, Indonesia area for about six months now, are being cancelled due to the fact that they are often empty. The trains were introduced after complaints about sexual harassment.

Around 14,000 villagers from 20 communities in Niger have vowed to end the practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) during a ceremony.

In Kuwait, women are now part of the country’s paramedics teams.

Qantara.de speaks to Tunisian theatre director Meriam Bousselmi about her new critical play Sabra, and her fear to perform in her home country.

Nigeria’s Boko Haram has released a hostage video, in which they state they have abducted women, teenage girls and children and will not release them until their wives and children are released by the security forces.

Azerbaijan’s population of just short of ten million has spent an estimated 203 million US dollar on fortune telling, astrologers and so on in 2012 alone; most clients are young women, who often worry about love and marriage.

In Gaza’s only all-female prison, the vast majority of the inmates are sentenced with so-call “moral” crimes.

The Dutch police has allegedly helped two underage Muslims to get married, so that the bride would not be sent to her family in Pakistan to marry her cousin.

Female Muslim students in the public school system in Nigeria’s Lagos state, will not be allowed to wear their hijab in school, except for prayer and other religious activities.

A paraplegic centre in northern Pakistan helps paraplegic women to reclaim their lives through learning new skills and regaining their physical strength.