Sri Lankan Rizana Nafeek has been beheaded last week in Saudi Arabia, for allegedly killing the baby of her employer. Her family is hoping to obtain her remains, so that she can have a proper burial. May Allah grant her eternal peace and justice.
IPS features an article on the many struggles that Yemeni women (still) face. Al Arabiya reports that “husband killings” by Yemeni women and their relatives are on the rise, as a result of domestic violence and inequality.
An increasing, but still relatively small, number of Pakistani women are seeking divorce to escape their abusive and/or loveless marriages.
Despite a recommendation by the Norwegian Faith and Ethics Policy Committee, the hijab will not be permitted as part of the police uniform nor in the court system in the near future, says Norwegian Minister of Culture Hadia Tajik.
The marriage of a Saudi man in his 90s to a 15-year-old has sparked a heated social media debate in the region; the girl has been granted a divorce after the invention of a regional tribal chief and local dignitaries.
Female Iraqi police officers attend celebrations marking the 91st anniversary of founding of the country’s police. Image by AFP/Ahmad Al-Rubaye
In (rural) Uzbekistan illegal forced sterilisations, as a part of government policy to curb the population growth, continue to affect the lives of women. It is said that according to secret instructions every woman who has had two children or more, should have her fallopian tubes tied or uterus removed during labor.
According the Belgian court ruling a department store was wrong to sack a worker, because of her headscarf. The company is fined to pay the woman six months of wages in compensation.
According to recent statements by the Turkish prime minister Erdogan, the popular series Muhteşem Yüzyil, which depicts life at the court of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and focuses mainly on the women in his harem, is an unbearable disparagement of the history of the Ottoman Empire. He continued to say that the producers of the series should be charged and the series should be censored and altered to depict history he views is correct: more heroism and less influential meddling women.
Next month a new campaign is launched in Scotland asking Muslim men and women to speak out against domestic violence in the community.
The United Arab Emirates is investigating ten Egyptian female expatriates, who are all believed to be member of a female branch of an allegedly militant group operating in the UAE with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
The bodies of three female Kurdish activists have been found with gunshot wounds in a Kurdish information centre in Paris, France. Both France and Turkey condemned the killings; it is yet unsure who is behind this.
According to Amnesty International, a 15-year-old Maldivian girl is facing charges of fornication, after she has been allegedly sexually abused by her stepfather.
RNW raises the question whether Yemen is ready for so-called pink taxis, taxis driven by women for women.
A spokesperson of Aung San Suu Kyi’s political party in Burma has issued a statement concerning the rape of an allegedly underage Muslim girl, stating that both the victim and the perpretrator were Muslims, previously a couple, and that this is, therefore, not a case of Islamophobia.
The image of an Asian woman in hijab yelling at a footballer during a Bradford City game in the UK, represents, and I quote commentator Jim White, “evidence of social progress”.
Despite the relative calm and sense of security in Somalia, rape and sexual assault remains a pertinent issue in Mogadishu’s IDP (Internally Displaced People) camps.
A new coffee shop in Cairo, Egypt encourages its customers to conform to gender segregation, and this is raising alarm bells for some people.
The Washington Post features an article on the how the role of women in Syria’s conflict has evolved.
The mother, who beat her son to death for his failure to learn the Quran, has been found guilty, even though the judge described her to be an otherwise “devoted and caring” mum.
Amina Mahmoud Takhtakh, the only woman who has been voted into Libya’s government as an independent, is in hiding after speaking out against the Bani Walid massacre last September.