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 […]

2013 ended with another decision, somewhere in the world, to entrench the persecution and ostracisation of a minority group. I’m referring to a new syariah law introduced by the Pahang Islamic Religious and Malay Customs Council (MUIP) in early December 2013, which would imprison for a maximum of one year or fine up to RM1000 (USD […]

A few days ago a fellow Facebook friend of Indian descent posted “10 reasons why you should not marry a Pakistani man”. Articles like this are not uncommon, since attitudes towards marrying certain types of men are not uncommon. In all cultures, religions and groups, there are assumptions about the best or worst marriage partners […]

In April 2011, Faleh Hassan Almaleki, an Iraqi immigrant to the United States, was sentenced to 34.5 years in prison for killing his 20 year-old daughter for becoming “too westernized.” The case was deemed an “honor killing” because the daughter, according to the dad, dishonored the whole family. This story is one of many presented […]

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 […]

As the debate on Quebec’s Charter of Secularism (formally the unaptly named Charter of Values) rages on, two Montreal professors wore the hijab to demonstrate their solidarity with Muslim women. In short, the Charter of Values in Quebec is a proposed law that bans the visibility of religious symbols – hijabs, kippa, crosses, turbans – […]

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 […]

On the 18th of December, the Syrian Trojan Women project staged a production of Euripides’ tragedy The Trojan Women with a cast of Syrian refugee actors and crew in Amman. Their reinterpretation of this 2000-year-old play traces the parallels between the fates of the women of Troy and contemporary Syrian women refugees fleeing the violence […]

Born into a family where art is a compulsion, Isha Farha started learning dance at the age of three from her mother, Kalamandalam Haseena. She is now adept in various Indian dance forms, including Bharathnatayam , Mohiniyattam, and Kuchipudi. She won the title of Kalathilakam in 2008 for excellence in the field of Bharathnatyam, Mohiniyattam, […]

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 […]