The Syrian regime under leadership of Bashar al Assad is actively recruiting female soldiers to be deployed in checkpoints etc., so that more male soldiers can be deployed at the front lines. The statement by the Indonesian Ulema Council that female circumcision is a constitutional right has sparked a huge debate in the country. Women’s rights […]

A report by the International Rescue Committee tells of the sexual violence many Syrian women and girls cite as the main reason for fleeing the country. The ethnic Hazara community in Pakistan, who are predominantly Shi’a, have been attacked for over two decades, but last week’s attack killed over a hundred Hazaras, leaving behind many […]

As 2012 draws to a close, we’ll be posting some highlights from this year’s posts.  We published way too much to be able to go back through all of it in detail (that’s what the archives are for!), but these highlight posts will include some posts that stood out from each of our writers over […]

This week was the second anniversary of the Arab Spring. Several articles were dedicated to the relationship between women and the Arab Spring movement. One article by the BBC focuses on the fact that women still are waiting for their benefits from the revolution and an article by WeNews mentions the increasing conservative Islamist influence in […]

After the parents of 6-year-old Bibi Roza in Pakistan’s Swat valley protested against the decision of local elders to marry her off in order to end a feud, a local court found the decision by the elders to be illegal, and since then five arrests have been made. As long as victims of domestic violence […]

For an extra treat this week, we have a second new writer to introduce!  You might recognise Sya from her past MMW guest posts on Ramadan in Singapore and on the Save Maryam campaign, and we are happy to welcome her as a more regular contributor to MMW. Last week I was in London, moonlighting […]

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 […]

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 […]

Ramadan Karim to all our readers, we’d like to wish you all a happy blessed month. And a reminder – starting next week will be our series on Ramadan experiences from different parts of the world!

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 […]