Salam alaikum, readers! It’s been awhile, but we’re back to our regular Friday links! I’m still a little jet-lagged, so there may be stories missing. As always, if you see a news story about Muslim women that isn’t on our links, feel free to post it in the comments!
- A judge at Riyadh Summary Court has ridiculed calls for the construction of extra floors just for women at the Grand Mosque in Mecca.
- elan speaks with Maria Ebrahimji about working in the media.
- Women activists in New Delhi staged a demonstration against a cleric who spoke against Muslim women’s participation in politics.
- Female Iraqi soldiers face hostility and resistance from their male counterparts.
- Hissa Hilal, the only female contestant on The Millions Poet, criticizes the religious establishment in her latest poem. More coverage here.
- The Voice of America examines how European Muslim women work on fashionable wardrobes while the entire continent tells them what to wear.
- Protesters in Yemen support a law that would make the minimum marriage age 17, and are agitating lawmakers to hurry up and pass it already. More from the BBC.
- Al Masry Al Youm takes a look at Egypt’s Ideal Mother competition.
- Sisters in Islam is targeted once again as Muslim activists filed a lawsuit asking the organization to remove the word “Islam” from its name.
- A report by the World Bank said that life after marriage is one of the obstacles that raises unemployment rates among Egyptian women compared to their male counterparts.
- The Australian notes that a new push for Shariah law in Australia would hurt Australian Muslim women.
- Samia Rahman examines the world of Muslim women in Ecuador.
- Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al-Missned, wife of the Emir of Qatar, said that Gulf women must use their ability for innovation to work for the improvement of society.
- Egypt’s Cinema Culture Center celebrated International Woman’s Day this month by screening five films by female filmmakers from the Iranian Makhmalbaf family.
- The Economist thinks that women are the ones really holding back women’s progress.
- Kristin Halvorsen, the Norwegian Socialist Left’s (SV) Minister of Education, says the government will not be imposing a ban on wearing a hijab in school.
- Leila Ahmed believes that Muslim women’s activism in the U.S. has increased.
- The Hindu profiles the movie Shifting Prophesy, which examines the emergence of a Muslim Women’s Movement in Tamil Nadu.
- InFocus remembers Aminah Assilmi.