Last week was Valentine’s Day, and for some Muslims this is, and has been, a heated topic. Islamic leaders in countries such as  Uzbekistan, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Turkey have spoken out against the celebration, saying that it leads to fornication, “baby-dumping” and general immorality. In Uzbekistan, students were “asked” to sign contracts affirming that they won’t celebrate […]

February 6 was the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation. The UN called for a complete end of genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C). UNICEF reports that more women are taking a stand against FGM in Sudan, and this has resulted in a decrease  in cases of FGM over the last years. Fourteen communities in Mali […]

In a new report by Human Rights Watch, Iraq gets slammed for its treatment of its female prisoners, who are often subjected to torture, including sexual abuse. A relatively small change in Afghan law will have huge consequences for victims of domestic violence, as it will enable men to abuse their female family members without […]

Last week the current Syrian regime announced during the peace negotiations that women and children are free to leave the city of Homs and said it would provide all the necessities, so they would not need for anything. One woman relates her horrifying experiences in Homs, before she fled the city last year. The first […]

Russian authorities are hunting for potential female suicide bombers in and around Sochi; security forces say that they have killed potential “black widow” Zaira Alieva during an operation on Saturday, which left seven dead. The Olympic Games are scheduled to start on February 7. It is estimated that one in nine Pakistani women will have […]

Human Rights Watch has spoken out about the discriminatory rules imposed on women by certain Syrian armed opposition groups. After young Australian couple had been killed in Syria earlier this week, many stories have been coming up about Amira Karroum, the woman involved, stressing her “recent” shift to a more “radical” Islam and her alleged verbal abuse of the neighbours. […]

Thousands of people, predominantly women and children, in the Central African Republic are fleeing the violence to seek refuge in Chad, a country many of them have never been to, but are believed to have originated from. On Sunday a young Afghan girl wearing a suicide vest was detained in Afghanistan, as she tried to […]

An attack by a female suicide bomber in Volgograd, Russia has left 16 dead and many more injured. Several sources have identified the woman as Turkmenistan national Oksana Aslanova. A newly issued fatwa in Kashmir allows women with husbands missing for over four years to remarry, though many so-called half widows indicate that this is […]

In Iraq, much of the sex trade has now shifted to social media, where female pimps are offering prostitution services all over the country. Egyptian campaigners against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) say that the number of cases of female circumcision/cutting in Egypt is on the decline, but completely rooting out this age old tradition will […]

The news that some Muslim organisations in British universities organise gender-segregated events, where women are at times not even allowed to speak up, has sparked outrage in the UK. Al Jazeera features the story of a “forgotten” 12-year-old rape survivor in India, who 16 months after she was gang-raped in her village in Rajastan, has […]