An attack in Quetta, Pakistan on February 16 in a predominantly Shi’a Hazara neighborhood has killed at least 91 people. Women in Quetta, and in other cities as well, staged protests and said they would refuse to bury their dead until authorities would take action bringing those responsible to justice. After several days of protests, last Wednesday the majority of the victims were buried, but a group of around 100 women still want to delay the burial, claiming that the government had not done enough yet. May Allah ease their suffering and grant them justice and safety.
The Guardian posts an extract from Victoria Brittain’s book Shadow Lives: The Forgotten Women of the War of Terror, in which Ragaa, an Egyptian woman living in the UK, tells about her life as the wife of the suspected terrorist Adel Abdul Bary.
The Afghan army is now training women to serve in the special forces.
After a new skin-bleaching cream started promising Senegalese women that they would be “all white in 15 days,” a spontaneous movement emerged in the West African nation, arguing that black is beautiful and that wanting to change one’s natural skin color is a health risk.
The recent law banning the Sharia law in the state of Kansas, USA, is making it difficult for Muslim women to claim compensation from their estranged husbands, as in the case of Elham Soleimani.
A Shi’ite Muslim girl shouts slogans during a rally against the attack on Shi’a Muslims in Quetta, Pakistan. Image by Reuters/Naseer Ahmed.
openDemocracy published an article on the unacceptable violations of women’s sexual privacy by male politicians in Turkey, referring to the recent abortion debate and some other rather interesting recent comments made by male politicians.
Now that the extent of the abuse and violence faced by Malian women during the rebel regime is becoming clear, victims are left without much hope for justice or support.
The BBC speaks with the widows and families of three Thai rebel insurgents, who were killed recently in a failed assault on a Thai marine base.
Lebanese women of all backgrounds are taking to the streets to urge the government to come up with a domestic violence law that protects women; a recent draft has been stalled in Lebanese parliament.
From Syria, a story of hope: Zainab is a Syrian Alawite woman, who despite sectarian differences, left her family for the mountains to be reunited with the man she loves, a Sunni opposition supporter, and they are now happily married.
An article on the BBC website tries to answer the question of why sex attacks on Egypt’s Tahrir square are on the rise.
According to a UN report, the number of civilian casualty numbers in Afghanistan is down for the first time in six years, but the increased tendency by insurgents to target government workers and women is worrisome, to say the least.
The Muslim community in Hyderabad, India, has been quite successful in trying to stop sham marriages, often involving underage local girls and Arab men, and typically not lasting more than a week. Now agents organizing these kind of marriages are popping up in other Indian cities.
The Daily Nation published a detailed article on the arrests of Somalia’s journalist Abdinur Ibrahim and rape victim Lul Osman.
Social media are immensely popular in Indonesia; many women also use social media to express their outrage and rally against sexual comments and attacks on women, and not without consequence…
For the first time women have been sworn in to the Shura council in Saudi Arabia.
Egyptian preacher Abu Islam has been detained for defaming religion; Abu Islam was in the news recently for saying it is okay to rape female protestors.
24-year-old Sabah is one of the hundreds of women of Pakistani or Indian origin who get dumped in their country of origin by their foreign husbands.
Some studies in Turkey suggest that almost half of Turkish women have been victims of domestic violence; artist Derya Kilic, among others, tries to draw attention to violence against women through her art work.
Saira Shakeeb Sadat is Afghanistan’s first female district governor.
IWPR interviews Aynuru Altybaeva, the Kyrgyz politician behind the new law on bride kidnapping.
Women in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, are back behind the wheel; under the Al Shabaab regime, women were not allowed to drive cars.
According to a settlement, Muslim women in Orange County, USA, now do not have to remove their headscarves in custody.
A study in Saudi Arabia compares the employment of female cashiers to human trafficking, says an Al Arabiya article.