Archive for the 'Faith' Category
Somalia’s hardline al Shabaab insurgents closed three grassroots women’s organisations in the rebel-held town of Balad Hawa on Monday to stop women from going to work, a rebel leader said.
The group wants to impose its own version of Islamic law on areas it controls, and Washington says it is al Qaeda’s proxy in the Horn [...]
Plans to open branches of a Malaysian “Polygamy Club” in Indonesia have upset women’s groups and religious leaders in the world’s most populous Muslim nation, who say the search for multiple wives should be handled privately — not by a matchmaking service.
Under Islamic law, Muslim men are permitted four wives. The club claims a noble [...]
Something is stirring in the home of western European chauvinism. Italian womanhood is rising up. An online petition decrying the way female politicians are treated by Silvio Berlusconi, prime minister and billionaire businessman, has gathered 100,000 signatures.
A slogan – “I am not a woman at your disposal” – is catching on. It is aimed [...]
Based in Kuala Lumpur, Zainah Anwar, a leading Malaysian social activist and intellectual, is one of the founding members of ‘Sisters in Islam’, an activist group struggling for the rights of Muslim women. She is also one of the pioneers of Musawah, a recently launched initiative to build a global movement for equality and justice [...]
Somalia’s hardline Islamist group al Shabaab has publicly whipped women for wearing bras they say violate Islam by constituting a deception, north Mogadishu residents said last week.
The insurgent group, which seeks to impose a strict form of sharia Islamic law throughout Somalia, amputated a foot and a hand each from two young men accused of [...]
Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip say safety concerns and social traditions, not Islamic religious values, are the main reason behind a decision to ban women from riding motorbikes and scooters.
In a decision which would raise eyebrows in Rome or Rio de Janeiro, the Interior Ministry said it was banning women from riding two-wheelers or [...]
The Joint Action Group for Gender Equality (JAG), Suara Rakyat Malaysia (SUARAM) and National Human Rights Society (HAKAM) are gravely concerned that the Pahang Syariah Court of Appeal had heard and decided the revision of Kartika Dewi Shukarno’s (Kartika) sentence of whipping without all the relevant stakeholders in attendance to present arguments, or the public [...]
‘All kinds of trade-offs go on behind the scenes, which is the way they’ve done politics for the last three decades’
An in-depth investigation into the murky process that led to the enactment of Afghanistan’s controversial “rape” law reveals a porous, dysfunctional and corruptible parliamentary system.
But the system is at least functioning, it shows, a fact [...]
Muslims who commit adultery in Indonesia’s semi-autonomous province of Aceh could be stoned to death after the provincial parliament last week passed laws expanding Islamic law.
The new laws, which also include multiple lashings in public for those caught having pre-marital sex, were opposed by women’s groups and the province’s governor, and were rammed through just [...]
On 25 August the court of Al-Shamli, north of Hail, found Mrs Khamisa Sawadi guilty of the charge of “khilwa” (mingling with two young men to whom she was not immediately related), and the higher court in Riyadh ratified their verdict. One of the two young men who was tried alongside Sawadi may face additional [...]
As lawmakers struggle to form a government three months after Lebanon’s parliamentary elections, women’s rights activists await the opening of parliament to debate a new bill on domestic violence.
Ghida Anani, programme coordinator of KAFA, a Lebanese organization campaigning against violence and the exploitation of women, estimates that as many as three-quarters of all Lebanese women [...]
Human rights groups are calling on the Afghan government to adopt a new law which would more clearly differentiate rape, a criminal offence, from consensual adultery, considered a serious crime in the country.
“Rape and adultery are two different issues and should be separate in law. Rape is an act of violence and coercion and the [...]
The following is the text of a report submitted to the Commission on the Status of Women on the trial of Sudanese journalist Lubna Hussein who was charged under Article 152 (Indecent and Immoral Acts) of the 1991 Sudanese Penal Code for wearing trousers. (WLUML Networkers)
The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is not [...]
Mali’s President Amadou Toumani Toure has sent a new family code that would boost women’s rights back to parliament for revision, giving in to pressure from the country’s top Islamic body and traditional leaders.
The new code, aimed at improving women’s rights by removing a previous clause demanding that they must obey their husbands, had won [...]
Hamas authorities in Gaza should suspend all orders that violate personal freedoms, including imposition of an Islamic dress code for female students, Human Rights Watch have said.
Human Rights Watch has received reports from Gaza residents that since the school year opened in late August, schools have been turning away female students for not wearing a [...]
If Kyrgyzstan does not tackle the social and economic causes of popular discontent, many more women will join radical Islamist groups.
Women and Radicalisation in Kyrgyzstan, the latest report from the International Crisis Group, focuses on the increasingly important role that women are playing in the Islamist movement, as the government of Kyrgyzstan ignores their problems. [...]
For wearing trousers, I face 40 lashes. This is the brutal reality of Sudan: we live in fear of those who should protect us
Next week I will stand trial in a Sudanese court, charged along with 12 other women with committing an “indecent act” – wearing trousers in a public place. I will face up [...]
Dozens of people, mostly women, ride on ‘mehadrin’ buses in which men and women sit separately and sit at front of bus in protest. Protesters demand an end to discrimination that forces women to sit at back of bus for modesty reasons. Protesters make sure to respect religious ban on coming in physical contact with [...]
While rights groups are celebrating a newly-adopted family code in Mali that changes marriage laws and expands girls’ rights, Muslim leaders and youths have vowed, even threatening violence, to block the code from becoming law.
The code – under discussion for 10 years before its adoption on 3 August – includes more than 1,100 new articles, [...]
Recent postings- Race, Feminism, Our Future – The Issues Magazine
- Trafficking Victims at UN Highlight Need for Recognition
- END FGM European Campaign launches web site
- Rid the world of female genital mutilation
- Lifting Silence on Menstruation to Keep Girls in School in Uganda
- Obama’s attack on abortion rights
- Differences between men’s and women’s health
- WHO calls for action beyond the health sector to improve the health of girls and women
- Malaysian Women’s Groups say Abolish Section 498
- Politics can be a Risky Business for Women in Bolivia
- new on womensgrid
- Rape Crisis Centres Westminster Hall debate 10 November 2009 at 12:30 pm
- Grassroots Co-ordinator – Women for Refugee Women – 23rd November 2009
- Jenny Okojie is doing a 7.2km sponsored walk for CRASAC – Please sponsor her!
- 16 days of action event Greater Manchester
- Football teams needed for special tournament against domestic violence in Barnet
- Be a judge for a day in Truro as part of Domestic Violence Awareness Week
- The right of murder suspects to use their partner’s sexual infidelity as a partial defence in court is set to end
- 100 rapists are let off with a caution: The serious offences that never come to court
- Scotland Yard has instructed officers not to use the phrase ‘gang rape’ to describe such crimes because it is too ‘emotive’ a term
- Government Shelves Measures To Restrict Paedophiles On Facebook because of Human Rights concerns
- new on women in london
- Information added to website September 2009
- Information added to website August 2009
- Information added to website July 2009
- GLDVP January-April 2010 open training programme is now available
- Prostitution Clauses Policing And Crime Bill 2009 – ECP
- Head of Communications – Women’s Resource Centre – 23rd November 2009
- Mrs Goundo’s Daughter – Free Event – Forward – 7th December 2009
- New European Campaign on FGM – Forward
- FORWARD releases an Information Services and Support Guide for Young People in the UK
- FGM is always with us – experiences perceptions and beliefs of women affected by female genital mutilation in London – Forward
“Women Will Benefit From Secularism” – Nawal El-Saadawi
28 October 2009 in Equality, Faith, Feminism, Government, Middle East, Opinion Comment
Controversy stalks dissident writer Nawal El-Saadawi, whose views on women and religion have put her at odds with Egyptian conservatives.
Recently she returned to Cairo after nearly three years in exile, and has already created a stir with the launch of a local chapter of her global campaign for the separation of religion and state.
“God has [...]