![]() ALLAHABAD: In a judgment with far-reaching implications, the Allahabad high court has ruled that a non-Muslim bride must convert to Islam to marry a Muslim. Failing that, the matrimony with a Muslim man would be void as it would contradict Islamic dicta and tenets of the Quran, the court said.
The ruling on Monday by a division bench comprising Justices Vinod Prasad and Rajesh Chandra, came on a writ petition filed by Dilbar Habib Siddiqui. The petitioner had sought quashing of an FIR registered against him on March 17 under sections 323, 366 and 363 of IPC with Naini PS, Allahabad and prayed the court not interfere in his peaceful matrimonial life with Khushboo Jaiswal. The judges directed a speedy probe into the marriage of Siddiqui and ordered the cops to separate Khushboo Jaiswal, who was lodged in Nari Niketan, and hand her over to her parents.
The primary question for adjudication was on whether the FIR could be quashed or not. A perusal of the contents of the FIR indicated that Khushboo Jaiswal was alleged to have been abducted by the petitioner three months prior to its lodging. However, the petitioner had succeeded in preventing the FIR from being registered. The FIR was filed by the girl's mother, Sunita Jaiswal, who alleged that the petitioner had abducted her daughter. She contended that Khushboo never converted to Islam and there was also no documentary evidence to suggest so.
"In our above conclusion we are fortified by the fact that in the affidavit filed by Khusboo herself subsequent to her alleged contract marriage, she has described herself as Khushboo and not by any Islamic name. As Khushboo, she could not have contracted marriage according to Muslim customs. In those documents she has addressed herself as Khushboo Jaiswal," the verdict said.
"Thus, what is conspicuously clear is that Khushboo Jaiswal never converted and embraced Islam and therefore her marital tie with the petitioner Dilbar Habib Siddiqui is a void marriage since the same is contrary to Islamic dicta and tenets of Holy Quran," the court ruled. Source: The Times Of India
 Sabine Durrant
JOUMANA Haddad, the Lebanese poet, author and critic, recently had a tattoo of a tulip imprinted on the lowest section of her back. She pulls down her waistband to indicate the area in question. ''My kids and my partner, they are not shocked that I have a tattoo, but by the fact that the guy tattooed my arse.'' She roars with laughter. Controversy is not something Haddad is afraid of. She is a figure of some repute in Lebanon, through her own writing as well as her roles as the cultural editor of An-Nahar, the main newspaper in Beirut, and the head of IPAF, the Arabic equivalent of the Booker prize. And now she has launched a magazine called The Body. Its subject matter - serious articles on masturbation, transsexuality and battered women, as well as riffs on ''my first time'' - has caused not just eyebrows but hackles to rise. Haddad's website has been hacked into on numerous occasions and she receives regular hate mail. Hezbollah tried to close her stand at the Beirut Book Fair, and the head of the Lebanese Council of Women has called for the magazine, which is sold in sealed plastic in Lebanon and by mail order in other parts of the Arab world, to be banned. It is this last denouncement that angers and upsets her most. ''Obviously, I acknowledge that some people are not going to like it. But that intellectuals have attacked me - and a women's association at that - I find that stupid and insulting. I launched the magazine because I felt that the body is a long-neglected, crucial part of the Arabic unconscious that needs to be re-explored. I felt it was unfair that the Arabic language had become castrated of an important part of its vocabulary - that the physical has become taboo,'' she says. ''Some of the things written in Arabic a long time ago would make the Marquis de Sade blush.
Now even the word 'breast' in Arabic would be shocking in certain circles. It is your right to approve of that if you want to and, if you do, don't buy the magazine. Ignore it. But, equally, it is my right to publish it, just as it is my right to walk naked if I want to.'' She shakes her cascading hair in a gesture that conveys both sensuality and determination. ''It is this crazy society. In Beirut you will see a woman with a skirt so short you can see her pants, walking beside a woman whose eyes are the only things you can see. That is Beirut. So long as the woman in the short skirt respects the other woman's right and the woman in the veil respects her, it's good. But it is not like that. The woman in the miniskirt feels claustrophobic and the other woman is appalled. More at The Age It is hard to be objective. Our country is a puzzle.'' Haddad, 39, is herself a bit of a puzzle. To watch she is kittenish, flirtatious, her dark-rimmed hazel eyes beneath their extraordinarily long lashes coy one minute, direct the next. She moves her hands all the time - flashing turquoise stones, jangling gold. Her words tumble over themselves - her musings on politics and her candid personal disclosures competing for space. She says she believes in ''the art of the schizophrenic''; that this is how she survived the suicide of her beloved maternal grandmother, life in a city at war, the personal criticisms levelled at her. She is an incredibly busy woman, combining her myriad commitments with her studies for a PhD in comparative literature at the Sorbonne in Paris. And she's incredibly accomplished. She speaks seven languages and claims that each one brings out another personality. ''All these people inside of me are different Joumanas,'' she says. (In Armenian she feels close to her grandmother; in Arabic, the language in which she writes, a poet; in English she is ''cooler, more relaxed''.) HADDAD repeatedly refers to herself as if she were someone else, a habit that denotes a certain self-confidence. ''I have an image of Joumana as a child, climbing in her father's library, to reach the forbidden books: Kafka, the Marquis de Sade.'' She lives in Beirut, by the sea, which is important to her not as a place to swim, but as a horizon. ''It is a very important part of my identity. It represents Joumana. All this unknown, outgoing, the need to see the other side.'' Haddad was brought up a strict Catholic by protective parents. ''I couldn't even go to the movies without my brother, or to a friend's house without my mother waiting there for me - even when I was 17.'' Top of the class at her convent, she was encouraged by her father to be highly competitive - ''I am never satisfied'' - and went to university at 16, two years early. ''In Lebanon, if you are clever, you become one of two things, a doctor or an engineer, so I went to medical school, even though I wanted to write.'' She wasn't happy and after two years found a way to establish her own independence. ''I got married. It wasn't a passionate act. It was my only way out.'' She transmuted her medical training into a degree in biology, then worked for a lingerie company to support her husband, who was still a student. ''Freedom for me happened like this: my head was liberated through books as a child, then expression through writing, and then physically through marriage.'' The marriage lasted 10 years; in that time Haddad gave birth to two children, learnt more languages (Italian, Spanish, German) and found work as a translator for An-Nahar newspaper. In 2005 she became the head of the cultural section. The editor is sympathetic to her other commitments. ''When I am travelling I edit the page in my hotel room in the morning; my laptop is my office.'' Her drive to succeed is exhausting, she admits. ''Because it is your nature, you cannot turn it off. It becomes something that is eating you.'' She is writing a book on Arab women, and the cliches that surround them, and would like to expand The Body, which has sold well, into other areas, namely ''a physical space: a small art gallery, a library, a coffee shop. But I don't dream. I usually plan.'' Her sons, Mounir, 17, and Ounsi, 11, are looked after by Haddad's mother, who lives nearby. ''I am an awful practical mother. I am just there for love.'' Her father is also supportive. ''I always say if my father had imagined when I was a child that I was going to write these things and do these things maybe he would have killed himself. But now he is proud. You do change your parents as well.'' Also part of Haddad's daily life is her ''life partner'', the French Lebanese poet Akl Awit, whom she met at the newspaper in 1998. They married three years ago, for technical reasons, and see each other every day, but sleep in separate houses. ''We like our spaces.'' With Awit, Haddad has found another form of freedom. ''It has been a journey with my own body on many levels. As an adolescent I used to love eating, but my mother used to forbid me, so I ate in secret. I hated my body. It all stopped when I got married. I found an inner equilibrium. But on the sexual level, I was a virgin when I was married, and it wasn't very satisfactory with my first husband. I was a late bloomer. But now, apart from the wrinkles, which I am starting to think about, I feel so good about myself. I mean, if I had to choose it would be the best time for me. From 35 until now!'' Did Awit back her plans for The Body? ''I mentioned it to him and he said I was crazy. He said: 'It isn't the time; it isn't the place.' Hell, I said, we have to invent the time. Invent the place." ''People often ask me why I still live in Beirut, why I have lived here through the war and why I have never written about it. I say, Why do you look for the knife? Look for the scars. ''The scars are this woman who is writing this stuff, doing these things. The war has given me a great deal of power. To survive in a city like Beirut, in this world, you have to keep on fighting.'' More at The Age It is hard to be objective. Our country is a puzzle.'' Haddad, 39, is herself a bit of a puzzle. To watch she is kittenish, flirtatious, her dark-rimmed hazel eyes beneath their extraordinarily long lashes coy one minute, direct the next. She moves her hands all the time - flashing turquoise stones, jangling gold. Her words tumble over themselves - her musings on politics and her candid personal disclosures competing for space. She says she believes in ''the art of the schizophrenic''; that this is how she survived the suicide of her beloved maternal grandmother, life in a city at war, the personal criticisms levelled at her. She is an incredibly busy woman, combining her myriad commitments with her studies for a PhD in comparative literature at the Sorbonne in Paris. And she's incredibly accomplished. She speaks seven languages and claims that each one brings out another personality. ''All these people inside of me are different Joumanas,'' she says. (In Armenian she feels close to her grandmother; in Arabic, the language in which she writes, a poet; in English she is ''cooler, more relaxed''.) HADDAD repeatedly refers to herself as if she were someone else, a habit that denotes a certain self-confidence. ''I have an image of Joumana as a child, climbing in her father's library, to reach the forbidden books: Kafka, the Marquis de Sade.'' She lives in Beirut, by the sea, which is important to her not as a place to swim, but as a horizon. ''It is a very important part of my identity. It represents Joumana. All this unknown, outgoing, the need to see the other side.'' Haddad was brought up a strict Catholic by protective parents. ''I couldn't even go to the movies without my brother, or to a friend's house without my mother waiting there for me - even when I was 17.'' Top of the class at her convent, she was encouraged by her father to be highly competitive - ''I am never satisfied'' - and went to university at 16, two years early. ''In Lebanon, if you are clever, you become one of two things, a doctor or an engineer, so I went to medical school, even though I wanted to write.'' She wasn't happy and after two years found a way to establish her own independence. ''I got married. It wasn't a passionate act. It was my only way out.'' She transmuted her medical training into a degree in biology, then worked for a lingerie company to support her husband, who was still a student. ''Freedom for me happened like this: my head was liberated through books as a child, then expression through writing, and then physically through marriage.'' The marriage lasted 10 years; in that time Haddad gave birth to two children, learnt more languages (Italian, Spanish, German) and found work as a translator for An-Nahar newspaper. In 2005 she became the head of the cultural section. The editor is sympathetic to her other commitments. ''When I am travelling I edit the page in my hotel room in the morning; my laptop is my office.'' Her drive to succeed is exhausting, she admits. ''Because it is your nature, you cannot turn it off. It becomes something that is eating you.'' She is writing a book on Arab women, and the cliches that surround them, and would like to expand The Body, which has sold well, into other areas, namely ''a physical space: a small art gallery, a library, a coffee shop. But I don't dream. I usually plan.'' Her sons, Mounir, 17, and Ounsi, 11, are looked after by Haddad's mother, who lives nearby. ''I am an awful practical mother. I am just there for love.'' Her father is also supportive. ''I always say if my father had imagined when I was a child that I was going to write these things and do these things maybe he would have killed himself. But now he is proud. You do change your parents as well.'' Also part of Haddad's daily life is her ''life partner'', the French Lebanese poet Akl Awit, whom she met at the newspaper in 1998. They married three years ago, for technical reasons, and see each other every day, but sleep in separate houses. ''We like our spaces.'' With Awit, Haddad has found another form of freedom. ''It has been a journey with my own body on many levels. As an adolescent I used to love eating, but my mother used to forbid me, so I ate in secret. I hated my body. It all stopped when I got married. I found an inner equilibrium. But on the sexual level, I was a virgin when I was married, and it wasn't very satisfactory with my first husband. I was a late bloomer. But now, apart from the wrinkles, which I am starting to think about, I feel so good about myself. I mean, if I had to choose it would be the best time for me. From 35 until now!'' Did Awit back her plans for The Body? ''I mentioned it to him and he said I was crazy. He said: 'It isn't the time; it isn't the place.' Hell, I said, we have to invent the time. Invent the place." ''People often ask me why I still live in Beirut, why I have lived here through the war and why I have never written about it. I say, Why do you look for the knife? Look for the scars. ''The scars are this woman who is writing this stuff, doing these things. The war has given me a great deal of power. To survive in a city like Beirut, in this world, you have to keep on fighting.'' More at The Age
 Introduction In May 2009, four women were elected to the Kuwaiti parliament, for the first time in this country's history. Two of these women – Dr. Asil Al-'Awadi and Dr. Rola Dashti – do not wear the veil, and since their election, Islamists in the country have been demanding that they be required to wear it. MP Muhammad Hayef appealed to the Minister of Endowments and Minister of Justice, Rashed Al-Hammad, with a demand to give a formal expression to the Kuwaiti law which states that "a condition for women to vote and be elected is to abide by the rules and terms of shari'a law."
In response, the Religious Endowments Ministry issued a fatwa stipulating that the MPs must wear a veil like all other Muslim women. The fatwa stated that "when appearing in front of men not related to her, a Muslim woman must abide by the shari'a requirement to wear a veil hiding her entire body, except for the face and hands. [Furthermore], the veil must not be sheer so as to reveal any part of the body, must not be narrow so as to reveal her figure, and must not attract men's looks in any way."[1] Islamist MPs treated the fatwa as binding, stating that "the veil is [both] a legal and a religious duty."[2] Liberals, on the other hand, including the women MPs themselves, argued that the fatwa contravenes Kuwait's democratic character, and that fatwas like these threaten to turn Kuwait into a Taliban state. They also pointed out that the fatwa is at odds with Kuwait's constitution, which upholds individual freedoms, and therefore cannot be binding, since the constitution is the supreme legal source of authority.[3] On October 11, 2009, woman MP Dr. Rola Dashti proposed abolishing the clause in the Election Law requiring parliamentary candidates to abide by shari'a.[4] On October 28, 2009, the Constitution Court rejected a lawsuit filed by attorney Hamad Al-Nashi against the two women MPs who do not don the veil, in which he demanded to revoke their membership in the parliament for violating the shari'a.
The court ruled that "the laws of the Islamic shari'a do not have a binding force like the basic laws [of the state], unless the legislator has intervened and so stipulated... The Kuwaiti constitution does not stipulate that the shari'a – that is, Islamic law – is the sole source of legislation, nor does it preclude the legislator from utilizing other sources [of legislation], out of consideration for the people's [needs]. Moreover, the constitution guarantees complete religious and personal freedom and forbids discrimination... based on [an individual's] religion or gender."[5] MP Asil Al-'Awadi welcomed the court's ruling, stating that it represents a triumph for Kuwait's constitution and will end the debate on the veil which has been taking up parliament's time.
MP Rola Dashti said: "We four women MPs will continue to represent the Kuwaiti people in the best possible manner... This is not a triumph [only] for two women MPs or [even] for the Kuwaiti woman – it's a triumph for democracy."
She explained that even though the parliament is not a holy place or a house of worship, the women MPs would be careful to dress modestly and elegantly. She added that the court's ruling put an end to the attempts of "those who wish to bring Kuwait back [to an earlier era]." [6] MP Muhammad Hayef, for his part, said that he planned to appeal again to the Constitutional Court in this matter, and called on MPs Dashti and 'Awadi to "abide by Allah's law... in order to turn over a new leaf and quell this storm that has pitched the country into a crisis [caused by] disobedience to Allah's laws."[7] The Endowment Ministry's fatwa and the court ruling reignited the debate between two prominent camps in Kuwait, that is, the Islamists and the liberals, over the character of the Kuwaiti state and over which is the ultimate source of authority – shari'a law or the statutory laws. More at MEMRI 
 An update on this story. The court decided to uphold the constitution, despite pressure to ignore it in favor of Sharia (which sure seems to be happening in a lot of places lately). Not that this will stop Islamist legislators from harping on the issue in the future. "Court rules hijab optional for MPs," by James Calderwood for The National, October 29: KUWAIT CITY: Kuwait's female MPs will not be forced to wear a hijab or have their parliamentary membership invalidated after the Constitutional Court, the country's highest legal authority, rejected a case by a Kuwaiti man who said they broke rules relating to Islamic dress. The man, identified as Hamad al Nashi, urged the court to cancel the membership of the two female MPs - Aseel al Awadhi and Rola Dashti - who did not wear the hijab, thereby violating an article of the election law that states:
"A condition for women to vote and be elected is to abide by the rules and terms of Sharia law". Islamists say the Sharia clearly states that women must wear the hijab. In its ruling, the court said the article of the election law was not specific and therefore could be interpreted in different ways. It said Sharia could apply to many things, including beliefs, morals and actions, and comes from many sources such as the Quran, the Sunna, and other traditions and customs. That was the point: To use the lack of limitations on Sharia's scope to keep women legislators in line, or force them out of office. If the court had ruled that the women were in violation of the election law when they were elected, their membership in parliament could have been cancelled, legal experts said.
"I'm very happy it's been rejected," Ms al Awadhi, one of Kuwait's four female MPs, said after receiving the news of the court's decision. "So we're not going to wear the hijab in the Majlis," Ms al Awadhi said, using the first word of Majlis al Umma, the Arabic name for Kuwait's national assembly....
 AN IRAQI bank has opened a branch entirely dedicated to and operated by women in the holy Shi'ite Muslim city of Najaf, its chief, who admitted even he could not enter, told AFP overnight. Abdel Razzaq Mansur, the chief executive of Babylon Bank, said the branch which opened on Sunday had so far worked with 50 clients and expected to be dealing with about 200 within a year. "In Najaf, there are many women who are business women, and they have companies in many different lines of work," he said, noting the branch's 25-strong staff were composed entirely of women. The only men working for the branch were special security guards stationed outside the bank on the street, Mansur said. It will provide loans, investments, deposits and savings in both Iraqi dinars and US dollars. Asked whether any men would be allowed to enter the branch, he replied, while laughing: "I am the boss, but I can only ask them to come here (to Baghdad) -- I can't go there." Mansur added that while he hoped to expand the concept to Baghdad, Babylon Bank would not extend it beyond Najaf for now. Najaf, located 150km south of Baghdad, is home to the mausoleum of Imam Ali, the son-in-law and cousin of the Prophet Mohammed, which attracts Shi'ites from around the world, particularly neighbouring Iran. Source: The Australian
 By Tal Pavel In recent years, the Internet has become a swift and accessible means of communication, thanks in part to the proliferation of personal blogs and, even more recently, micro-blogs (through “Twitter”). Users are now able to transmit short announcements and updates via mobile phones connected to the Internet. Groups and individuals formerly marginalized or ignored by mainstream media, and in what are generally conservative and tradition-heavy societies, now possess unprecedented means by which to disseminate their views. This is especially true with regard to women. All over the Middle East, women are active on the Internet, writing in Arabic, Persian, Turkish and English, telling their personal stories and discussing societal matters, taking advantage of the relative anonymity that the Internet offers. Some women have no problem with enabling all interested parties to read their Twitter blogs and feeds. Others, especially concerned with protecting their anonymity, e.g. in Saudi Arabia, insure that only people with their prior permission may do so. Read more ...Source: Middle East Internet Monitor
 Frank Gaffney, Jr. Starting last Friday, theaters across the country gave Americans a vivid, dramatic and most timely insight into the struggle now playing out in Iran. More importantly, the extraordinary new film, The Stoning of Soraya M., offers each of us a way to help the the Iranian people – and most especially the women – to free themselves from the theocratic repression with which they have been afflicted for the past 30 years. The Stoning unflinchingly depicts an act of unimaginable brutality: a small Iranian town's collective execution of a woman who became inconvenient to her faithless husband. Soraya M., however, is not just a victim of Shariah – the theo-political-legal program of authoritative Islam that makes a capital offense of adultery, the charge falsely leveled at this mother of four. No, Soraya truly is an Everywoman under the misogynistic, Shariah-adherent Islamic Republic of Iran. Of course, not all of Iran's females are stoned to death. But each of them must live every day with the knowledge that they can be abused and perhaps killed by their own men-folk or by the authorities for behavior deemed un-Islamic or otherwise proscribed. Read more ...Source: FSM
 By Bill Siegel In his powerful election night acceptance speech, President Barack Obama announced, “[I]t’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.” And this notion of “change” as something that occurs by a mere election sells easily to his adoring devotees. It readily fits modern American intolerance for delayed gratification. Unfortunately, real “change” is not magical. It typically takes long periods of hard work, suffering, setbacks, step by step advancement until some “tipping point” opens up. And this “change” is what we are seeing manifest in the streets of Tehran today. Following the Iranian presidential election in which the large margin cited for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over apparent victor Mir Hossein Mousavi suspiciously suggested fraud, protests began to flare up. While many Iranian dissident sympathizers held out great hopes for the opening the Islamic Republic regime had seemed to create, most of the American liberal press had made up its mind that it was too difficult to mount any credible opposition to the overwhelming power the regime has secured for itself. Rigged elections were a staple for Iran – mostly through restricting the candidates in the first place but, if need be, through voter count. Read more ...Source: FSM
Revolution cannot be successful if sacrifice brings more Islamic repression and degradation with another face and a new set of Ayatollahs.By Ruth King When the French résistance was fighting the Nazis in 1940, the British and the Americans encouraged them with oratory but withheld any material help. This led the French to say “the British will fight the Nazis to the last drop of French blood.” I hesitate to encourage the women to resist to the last drop of their blood, but I am dismayed by a number of stylish, well coiffed, décolleté and manicured “feminists” in America, including Iranian expatriates, who urge the courageous women of Iran to continue their bloody struggle against the regime in Iran without naming the real enemy….Sharia. It is like telling them to die in vain. Read more ... Source: FSM
 By Maureen Callahan To the iconography of revolution -- the man in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square, young people ripping shards off the Berlin Wall -- we can now add this: the red nail polish, black eyeliner and side-swept bangs of young Iranian women. So conservative by American standards, yet revolutionary by Iranian ones: these women, who by law can do and say and expose and adorn almost nothing, are agitating for the most basic human rights in the smallest of ways. And it is these tiny acts of rebellion that the Iranian government, which has further constricted the rights of women since the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005, cannot abide. "I do not know a single woman who is pro these laws," says a 29-year-old Iranian woman, who has lived in the US for the past 11 years. "They are not as bad as the Taliban, but it's all relative." The women of Iran are on the verge. They are more literate and highly educated than men (63% attend university), and, as in the US, women comprise 50% of the vote. Ahmedinejad's challengers -- even Karroubi, the cleric! -- made a point of soliciting the female vote, appearing in public with their wives, or speaking to the need for more women in parliament or positions of power. Mousavi, the so-called reform candidate, shrewdly deployed his wife, political science professor Zahra Rahnavard, as a vocal campaigner. Her electrifying effect on the electorate led to comparisons to Michelle Obama. Read more ...Source: The New York PostIranian Women
Latest recipients of The MASH Award
By Deborah Weiss The current uprising in Iran is not merely about a fraudulent election. The simmering masses of Iran are restless for the freedom and prosperity they once enjoyed, before being straitened for decades by the strictures of religious fanaticism. The people have seized upon this election fraud to push for greater openness and such forgotten notions as women’s rights. Nothing better illustrates the awful injustices Iranian women face than a soon-to-be released film, The Stoning of Soraya M. The film tells the grisly true story of an innocent woman who was stoned to death in Iran on charges of adultery. The events – which are described in flashback by the title character’s aunt, Zahra – take place in 1986, in the rural village of Kupayeh. Zahra recounts how years earlier her niece Soraya entered a marriage that had been arranged by her parents. She was 14 and her husband, Ali, was 20. Together they had four children, two boys and two girls. Ali was emotionally and physically abusive to his obedient wife, physically beating Soraya and openly cavorting with prostitutes. At the age of 41, Ali fell in love with another 14-year-old girl and wanted to marry her, but couldn’t afford two wives. He requested a divorce, offering to take the two boys with him and to leave Soraya a meager settlement. Knowing the divorce would leave her and her daughters in abject poverty, Soraya declined, which only served to escalate Ali’s abuse. Read more ...Source: FPM
 By Amir Taheri Former President George W. Bush's policy of en couraging Middle East democratization has just produced spectacular results in the Kuwaiti general election. In a major victory for the secular reformists over the Islamists, women -- four of them -- were elected to the 50-seat national parliament for the first time. The Islamists' share of Sunday's vote dropped almost 30 percent from the last general election, held just more than a year ago. The radical Muslim Brotherhood lost three of its four seats, while the hard-line Salafis dropped to two from four. The election of women represents a political earthquake in the Gulf Cooperation Council, a grouping of six oil-rich traditional Arab monarchies. Kuwait has had a parliament on and off since gaining independence in 1960, but the other GCC members entered the era of electoral politics largely due to pressure from the Bush administration. US pressure also played a crucial part in persuading Kuwait's leaders to enfranchise women for the first time in 2005. Read more ...Source: FSM
By Nayereh Tohidi - WeNews commentator (WOMENSENEWS)--In Iran, the government of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently proposed a bill and, in Orwellian fashion, named it the "Family Protection Law." If passed it would have threatened the stability, equilibrium, and mental health of families by reinforcing and facilitating polygamy, temporary marriage, and men's privileged position with regard to divorce. The good news: A diverse coalition of women's rights activists and even some moderate clerics and politicians persuaded a judicial commission to drop some of the most contested articles and Majles, the Parliament, passed an amended version on Sept. 9. This version makes second marriage contingent upon the first wife's consent and does not attach any tax on the amount of dowry to be paid to wife in case of divorce. Read more ...Source: WOMENSENEWS H/T: AAFAQ
By M. Nissimov, Y. Mansharof and A. Savyon In late January 2008, the Media Supervision Committee of Iran's Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance ordered the closure of the women's movement monthly Zanan, which had appeared in Iran for 16 years. The order came after the magazine published an investigative article on istishhad (i.e. martyrdom) operations. The conservative news agency Fars reported, citing a knowledgeable source, that the magazine had been shut down for "breaking the law and defaming military and revolutionary institutions, including the Basij," and for "publishing reports and [raising] issues that undermine [society's] spiritual security, morale, and ideological strength, and that create a sense of insecurity in society and discredit the status of women in the Islamic Republic of Iran." Read more ...Source: MEMRI
The U.S. military announced the capture Saturday of an insurgent leader who was recruiting and training women, including his wife, to wrap themselves in explosives and blow themselves up - the latest sign that al-Qaida in Iraq plans to keep using women to carry out suicide attacks. In southern Iraq, a British airman was killed in a rocket attack on a base near Basra late Friday, said Capt. Finn Aldrich, a British military spokesman. The U.S. military said it had killed six insurgents and detained 13 suspects Friday and Saturday during operations against al-Qaida in Iraq in central and northern Iraq. In another development, the military said Saturday it had captured a sniper instructor in Baghdad who had been trained by Iranians. Iran has in the past denied such claims. Read more ...Source: AP
Eisha Aziz, 7, of Rawalpindi, Pakistan, stood with demonstrators sponsored by the All Pakistan Democratic Movement last month in Islamabad, mourning the death of Benazir Bhutto.By Betsy Pisik LAHORE, Pakistan -- Humaira Shahid spent her first four years in Pakistan's National Assembly trying desperately to build support for a bill to outlaw a corrupt lending practice in which families - unable to keep up interest payments in excess of 100 percent - can be forced to hand over a daughter to settle their accounts. "These women were used as collateral, to barter, and it turned into a mafia business overnight," said Mrs. Shahid, astounded that colleagues did not share her outrage. Read more ... Source: The Washington Times
By D. Hazan A number of Islamist websites include special forums for women and for the Islamic family. A review of these forums reveals that over two-thirds of their participants are men, that their objective is essentially indoctrination, and that their principal concern is with issues such as encouraging women to carry out suicide operations - for example, by relating and extolling biographies and testaments of female martyrs in Islamic history and in modern times. These forums urge women to take an active part in jihad, or at least to support its fighters through financial contributions. They also promote jihad education from an early age, publicize various sheikhs' fatwas on jihad and martyrdom, and highlight the reward that awaits both male and female martyrs in Paradise. Read more ...Source: FrontPage Magazine
By Julie Kirtz WASHINGTON - Two months into an arranged marriage, Fozia Sadiq, a young Pakistani immigrant, found herself trapped in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas, with a violent husband. She says he routinely beat her and intimidated her into never going anywhere in public without him. "My neck had so many bruises, and I had scratches all over my arms," Sadiq told FOXNews.com through an interpreter. A practicing Muslim, Sadiq finally escaped in 2006, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. She says she stayed up all night reading the Koran and was physically abused by her husband for not cleaning up the kitchen the next morning. Read more ...Source: Fox News
By Jamie Glazov  Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Azar Majedi, the chair of Organization for Women’s Liberation-Iran. She has also been active in opposing the establishment of Sharia in Canada. She has recently published a book, Women’s Rights vs. Political Islam, a collection of political writings. She was nominated for the Emma Humphrey memorial prize in 2007. FP: Tell us a bit about your background. Majedi: I was born in Iran. My father was an atheist and left political activist, my mother a religious Muslim. I was influenced by my father a great deal and became an activist from my teen years, both against the dictatorship in Iran and for women’s rights. The Iranian revolution had a great impact on my life as on many others. I became more absorbed in political activities. I opposed the Islamic regime from the outset. I was working actively against the restriction the regime was imposing on women, and also working with a left political organization. In 1982 the security forces were pursuing my husband and I, so we had to escape. In 1984 we moved to Europe. In Europe I have continued my activities uninterruptedly against the Islamic Republic, against political Islam, for women’s rights, for secularism and a more egalitarian and libertarian society. Read more ...Source: FrontPage Magazine
FREEDOM AGENDA"Love him or hate him President George W. Bush has helped spread more freedom in this world than any leader since Ronald Reagan.
Today, President Bush met with three Kuwaiti women to discuss democracy and development in Kuwait. 7 years ago Kuwaiti women were not even allowed to vote. Today, President Bush met with women who were now able to run for seats in the Kuwaiti Parliament." I wish I had kept track of them all, but this is only one of the multitude of shifts towards democracy in the Islamic world, both large and small, that followed the invasion of Iraq. In fact, that is one of the main reasons the invasion took place in that country rather than into some other tyrant's sanctuary. The Middle Eastern based company, Tyrants-R-Us, was run by a board of directors known as Arab Nationalist dictators. Getting rid of the "chairman of the board" was the first step. Helping the cowering, suffering, yearning people, who for years had been under his ugly jackboot - FROM WHOSE EXILES AND REFUGEES WE HAD LEARNED AS MUCH - was the next step. The iron grip of the corporation has been broken. May democracy and respect for human rights continue to grow and spread.
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Copyright Muslims Against Sharia 2008. All rights reserved.
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