The Islamists controlling Mali’s northern city of Timbuktu have announced that from now on they will be arresting indecently-dressed women and girls, and any female who is seen on the streets after 11 pm. Many local women feel deprived of their freedom by this new enforcement of “sharia” law, and secretly hope to be liberated […]

The controversial anti-Islam video has caused protests and violence all over the globe. In Afghanistan, a female suicide car bomber attacked a bus in Kabul, killing 12 people. An armed group has claimed the attack and said it was to avenge the anti-Islam film. Following violent protests in Australia last weekend, which partly ended through the […]

Poverty and harsh conditions have led Syrian refugees to take drastic measures in order to save (the honor of) their daughters, marrying them off, even at a very young age. While many husbands are from Jordan, home to many Syrian refugees, there is now a trend too in online trafficking in Syrian brides, who are taken from refugee […]

Palestine’s religious authorities have announced reforms of divorce laws, which would make it easier for women to end the marriage. A court in the Maldives has sentenced a 16-year-old girl with 100 lashes and eight months house arrest, which will take effect once she turns 18 (?), for having sex with a 29-year-old male. His […]

Alaa Morely, the Syrian woman who stated in an interview on Syrian television in June this year that she had fabricated news reports for Al-Jazeera, has fled to Turkey, where she tells about her forced confession. A New Zealand museum will ban men from watching a documentary featuring unveiled Muslim women, as per request of the […]

Somali runner Samia Yusuf Omar, who competed in the 2008 Olympics for her country, has drowned off the coast of Italy earlier this year. According to an earlier profile by Al Jazeera, Samia had been looking for a trainer in Ethiopia to compete at the London Olympics, but had met a lot of obstacles and resistance. Italian newspapers suggest that she […]

Since images often speak louder than words, from this week on I will include every week a news picture, which features Muslim women, with a special focus on women that usually do not receive a lot of “face time”. An image from Iran, where a major earthquake struck last Saturday, starts us off. May Allah […]

A Catholic-run school in Zamboanga, a Muslim-Christian city in the southern Philippines, bans the headscarf, causing controversy in the country. Last week it was announced in Iran that female students will be banned from 77 areas of study at 34 universities, in fields like accounting, counseling and chemistry. The parents of Shafilea Ahmed, who was murdered […]

This week I will not include any Olympic news, and there is plenty of it, in the Friday Links; a post on Muslim women in the 2012 Olympics will follow. Thanks to a new law on gender parity, a record number of women have been sworn in as legislators in the new parliament of Senegal. Women […]

SETimes reports that domestic violence in Kosovo remains a problem; most victims are married women suffering at the hands of their husbands. Iranians, from inside and outside Iran, have started a facebook campaign called “No to Mandatory Hijab,” where both men and women post pictures of themselves supporting the right of women to chose whether or […]