An attack by a female suicide bomber in Volgograd, Russia has left 16 dead and many more injured. Several sources have identified the woman as Turkmenistan national Oksana Aslanova. A newly issued fatwa in Kashmir allows women with husbands missing for over four years to remarry, though many so-called half widows indicate that this is not their priority. Afghan authorities have annulled a marriage for money, involving a 7-year-old girl; the father of the girl is said to be a... Read more
As the debate on Quebec’s Charter of Secularism (formally the unaptly named Charter of Values) rages on, two Montreal professors wore the hijab to demonstrate their solidarity with Muslim women. In short, the Charter of Values in Quebec is a proposed law that bans the visibility of religious symbols – hijabs, kippa, crosses, turbans – in public spaces. Effectively, if the law passes, anyone employed by and paid through the public purse may be disallowed from wearing anything that could... Read more
In Iraq, much of the sex trade has now shifted to social media, where female pimps are offering prostitution services all over the country. Egyptian campaigners against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) say that the number of cases of female circumcision/cutting in Egypt is on the decline, but completely rooting out this age old tradition will take a lot of persistence and time. Domestic abuse is on the rise in Afghanistan; high unemployment rates, rampant drug abuse and impunity are all... Read more
On the 18th of December, the Syrian Trojan Women project staged a production of Euripides’ tragedy The Trojan Women with a cast of Syrian refugee actors and crew in Amman. Their reinterpretation of this 2000-year-old play traces the parallels between the fates of the women of Troy and contemporary Syrian women refugees fleeing the violence in their country. As the project is described on the website: “Euripides’ The Trojan Women is set at the fall of Troy. It is about... Read more
Born into a family where art is a compulsion, Isha Farha started learning dance at the age of three from her mother, Kalamandalam Haseena. She is now adept in various Indian dance forms, including Bharathnatayam , Mohiniyattam, and Kuchipudi. She won the title of Kalathilakam in 2008 for excellence in the field of Bharathnatyam, Mohiniyattam, Kuchipudy, folkdance, one-act play and storytelling. She is the founder of the dance teaching institute Bharatha Bharathi. An engineer by profession, Isha Farha, made her... Read more
The news that some Muslim organisations in British universities organise gender-segregated events, where women are at times not even allowed to speak up, has sparked outrage in the UK. Al Jazeera features the story of a “forgotten” 12-year-old rape survivor in India, who 16 months after she was gang-raped in her village in Rajastan, has undergone 19 surgeries in attempt to restore her injuries. Internally displaced women in Darfur, Sudan camps experience violence daily, a Darfur camp spokesperson has said.... Read more
Last week I was invited to the Dutch embassy to celebrate the launching of the Nobel Women’s Initiative’s report on sexual violence against women in Sudan. The report is titled “Survivors Speak Out: Sexual Violence in Sudan,” and it is meant to address the situation of “mass rape” and other forms of sexual violence against Sudanese women of all religious, ethnic and cultural backgrounds. As a Masters student interested in issues of gender and gendered violence, I was quite excited... Read more
A young woman who reported rape in Somalia has been sentenced to be confined to her home for six months, and the journalists who reported her story have been sentenced to a time in jail, or to pay a fine. This is the second time this year that a Somali woman has been sentenced for reporting rape, and it exemplifies how dangerous it is to report rape in Somalia. Last Saturday, the pro-Morsi female supporters were freed in Egypt after... Read more
If Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world, the fastest growing religion in African countries may be Christianity. In Nigeria, it is so rare to see or hear news of women converting to any religion other than Christianity that when it does happen, the initial assumption is that the conversion must have been forced. Interestingly I did a simple search on conversions to Islam in Nigeria, on scanning the first couple of pages a trend became clear. Where... Read more
I wrote part of this piece when Dr Laury Silvers asked me for a few words she could read in her khutbah at El Tawhid Unity Mosque in Toronto. She wanted to open with words from a South African, and I am grateful to her and the congregation for the oppurtunity to express these words on the passing of our beloved Comrade, President, Tata Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, who returned to his creator on Thursday night, December 5 at the age... Read more
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