Friday Links — December 14, 2007

Salaam, loyal readers! I hope you’ve gotten your votes in and confirmed for the Brass Crescent Awards; they end today! Also, the newest issue of Bitch magazine is out; be sure to pick up a copy so you can read one of MMW’s earlier posts, featured in the Love It/Shove It section.

• A young Canadian girl is allegedly murdered by her father because she did not want to wear hejab. May Allah grant her peace.

• In the wake of what happened to the girl mentioned above, a woman from the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community of Toronto insists that hejab is not actually mandatory.

• Baroness Warsi, a Muslim member of the U.K. Conservative party, fights against the idea that voting and education for women are un-Islamic.

• Saudi Arabia will no longer allow women under 45 from making hajj unless the women are accompanied by a close male relative (mahram). Between this and Saudi Arabia’s proposed closure of the interior of the Haram Masjid to women a few years ago, I don’t think I like the way things are heading for female hajjis.

• An Indonesian woman wishes her husband would take a second wife.

• Muslim groups in Manipur, India, want to ban school girls from wearing skirts.

• A Muslim women’s soccer team in Alberta, Canada, faces a temporary ban from the field because some of them wear hejabs. Booo! Enough already!

• Midwives and same-sex doctors accommodate Muslim women’s needs during birthing.

• The Arab News takes a look at societal factors related to abuse of women in Saudi Arabia.

• Ali Eteraz looks at how Muslims are overcoming stereotypes, despite the fact that mainstream media organizations ignore all our efforts.

• Sisters get hooked up at hajj.

• Jackie Salloum’s film Slingshot Hip Hop will be shown at this year’s Sundance Film Festival; she was one of 64 chosen out of over three thousand submissions. Barikallah!

• An alternative swimsuit to the burkini, the Mustaqim swimsuit, goes into production.

• Montreal wants to ban judges and teachers from wearing hejab.

• Dr. Rakhsana Ismail argues in the Yemen Times that women need a quota of parliament seats.

• Confessions of a Gambler is running at the Dubai film festival; it tells the story of a Muslim woman who struggles with her community and her gambling addiction.

• Joy Abdulhadi for the Kuwait Times argues that there are more important things than hejab.

• Moscow opens a medical clinic that will specifically treat the needs of Muslim men and women.