Last week, Hanifa Safi, an Afghan Women’s Affairs official was killed by a car bomb. While she is not the first female Afghan official to be killed, the Afghan government has not done much to prevent these murders, or to bring those responsible to justice. In the same week, a young Afghan girls, Tamana, was killed, which […]

On July 11, World Population Day, an international conference on Family Planning was held in London, which has resulted in a relatively large number of related articles in the news. Quite some articles covered the north-south divide in maternal health in Nigeria. The predominantly Muslim north is poorer and the topic of contraception is still very sensitive there; in […]

Six women from Gaza have appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court to grant them permission to pray at the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. While Christian women from Gaza have been allowed to visit religious sites in Israel, Muslim women are generally denied to enter Israel for this reason. Last Sunday voters in Senegal hit the polls, it is for the first […]

A group of Syrian women from the city of Homs have announced the formation of an all-female armed organization, the first of its kind in Syria. The group is not affiliated with any existing organization and will be fighting against the current Syrian regime. The victory of Algerian women during the election concerns some Algerians; […]

Popular singer Ghazala Javed has been killed in northwestern Pakistan, along with her father. Ghazala Javed was a Pashto-language singer in her early twenties. While government sources insist that her ex-husband was the culprit, it is still not clear who is responsible for her death. May Allah give her everlasting peace and justice! Hoda Badran, […]

More than a third of Turkish women have experienced sexual and physical violence at some point, but an anti-violence law was watered down in Turkey last March.  Activists now fear the erosion of women’s rights and increasing gender based violence. While violence between the Buddhist majority and Muslim minority in Burma/Myanmar is still increasing, neighbouring […]

An Indian High Court has decided that the marriage of a 16-year old Muslim girl, who was married without parental consent at age 15, is valid and she can stay in her matrimonial home, even though the legal age of marriage in India is 18. Her mother is against the marriage, saying she was kidnapped, but the girl testified that she left […]

The upcoming Olympics and the whole debate around the hijab in sports has resulted in numerous pieces featuring female Muslim athletes, such as Kuwaiti shooter Mariam Erzouqi and Qatari swimmer Nada Arkaji. An article in The Daily Star focuses on the legacy of female Muslim athletes during the Olympics and the fields yet to be conquered. RFERL […]

At the upcoming June 19 elections in Libya, Libyan women hope to secure a good amount of seats in the national assembly. The Saudi Gazette features a story about a Saudi woman, Alya Al-Ghamdi, whose ex-husband denies her the right to see her children, supposedly because he is afraid that her new British Muslim husband […]

Twenty years after the war in Bosnia, there are still refugees living in makeshift camps that lack basic necessities, such as running water. Many of the refugees are elderly women, who are often widowed because of the war, and have nowhere else to go. A Filipino newspaper published a picture last week of a woman […]