(Published: 2006-12-03 12:07 PM)
November 30, 2006
A MEETING of Muslim feminists from across the world in New York last week made a brief paragraph in The Australian, and in no other newspaper that I saw. It should have made front pages, being at least as important as the Group of 20 or Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation meetings, which had as wide a coverage as sound editorial judgment demanded.
(Published: 2006-09-24 05:34 PM)
Article by keza which was published in The Australian (25 September 2006)
(Published: 2006-08-13 07:06 AM)
Hero Ibrahim Ahmed spends half her time with the president in Baghdad, and half in Iraqi Kurdistan. So who exactly is the latest member of the Arab leaders' wives' club?
(Published: 2006-07-25 03:55 AM)
... in Washington, administration officials said they viewed Mr. Maliki’s public breaks with American policy positions as proof that he was his own man leading his own government, and was not a prop of the Americans.
“We hope he comes with his own plan,” said a senior administration official, who requested anonymity because of a general policy limiting public comments in advance of presidential meetings.
(Published: 2006-06-20 04:42 AM)
Unable to win on the battlefield, the Taliban are fighting to prevent half the country's children from getting an education.
(Published: 2006-03-11 05:17 PM)
(Published: 2006-03-11 05:08 PM)
Limitations on the lives of women are legalized in laws prohibiting women from the presidency,
leadership, judgeship and certain educational fields, as well as by inheritance laws. Firmly rooted in the principle of vali-e-faqih, Iran's constitution controls both the public and private lives and role of women.
source
(Published: 2006-03-11 04:48 PM)
Amnesty International condemns the violent action taken by Iranian police, Revolutionary Guards and others on 8 March to forcibly disperse about 1,000 women who had gathered peacefully in Tehran to commemorate International Women’s Day. Scores of women are reported to have been beaten by the police and those assisting them.
Public Statement
AI Index: MDE 13/024/2006 (Public)
News Service No: 060
10 March 2006
(Published: 2006-03-09 06:56 PM)
Leaflet produced for International Women's Day, 2006.
(Published: 2006-02-09 05:06 PM)
(Published: 2006-01-03 04:36 AM)
As Iraqi women streamed into polling centres for last week’s election, IWPR reporters sought out the views of this increasingly assertive constituency.
By IWPR trainees in Iraq (ICR No. 159, 20-Dec-05)
(Published: 2005-11-13 04:25 AM)
MANAMA, Bahrain, Nov. 12 - A meeting of Muslim nations initiated by the Bush administration ended in discord on Saturday after objections by Egypt blocked a final declaration supporting democracy.
(Published: 2005-06-18 12:00 AM)
"The democratic winds of reform sweeping through the Middle East appear to have bypassed the Islamic Republic of Iran ... However, the election has caused more excitement and debate than initially expected ... Among the [candidates] is Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the veteran politician and president between 1989 and 1997 ... Mr Rafsanjani's re-emergence signifies an essential and often overlooked change in Iran's power structure - a weakening in the position of the rahbar or supreme leader ...
(Published: 2005-06-04 04:14 AM)
Women from southern Kazakstan are being forced into prostitution both at home and abroad.
(Published: 2005-06-04 04:01 AM)
The United States estimates that about 800,000 people are trafficked against their will between nations each year, and that many hundreds of thousands more are enslaved within their own nations.
The government also estimates that about 15,000 people are trafficked to the United States each year. That estimate has fallen since the Central Intelligence Agency issued the first one in 2000. Then it was estimated that as many as 50,000 people were trafficked to the United States from a dozen foreign countries each year.
(Published: 2005-05-21 08:06 AM)
The oppressive Taleban regime is long gone, but many Afghan women are still afraid to abandon their burqas.
By Salima Ghafari in Kabul (WP No. 1, 19-May-05)
(Published: 2005-05-21 08:00 AM)
Director’s Note:
By Anthony Borden in London (WP No. 1, 19-May-05)
(Published: 2005-05-21 07:56 AM)
"Women are half the population of the Middle East," she told Reuters in an interview. "If they are not part of the democratisation process in a full capacity, the process will be incomplete.
(Published: 2005-05-20 09:21 AM)
Hamas' electoral victories underscore a key problem for President Bush as he pushes for Mideast democracy: When people are free to choose, Washington can't count on a friendly result.
(Published: 2005-04-24 06:35 AM)
The atrocious treatment of women in the Arab world is well-known, but people are much less aware of the plight of some European Muslim women. The increasing degradation of Muslim women in Europe is largely due to the work of the Wahhabi and Muslim Brotherhood propaganda over the last 15 years. In European countries, some Muslims --especially the younger generation -- are faced with an identity crisis. They do not feel Western even though they were born in the West and are European citizens. But they do not feel Arab either. So they choose a new nationality: Islamist.
(Published: 2005-04-24 06:35 AM)
(Published: 2005-04-15 07:02 AM)
One morning last week, three dozen women in Western-style business suits crowded into the office of the man who would soon be Iraq's prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Most were members of the newly elected National Assembly, and they had a list of demands............Hours later, another group of women who are assembly members arrived in Dr. Jaafari's office. They wore black abayas, the garments that cover a woman's body from head to foot, and they had another agenda
(Published: 2005-04-15 06:43 AM)
Television talk-show host Matilda Farjallah shifts forward in her chair and looks the white-bearded Sunni sheikh sitting across the table directly in the eyes. "Tahzeeb al-mara ["instructing the woman"] is discussed in the Koran. Does it allow instructing a woman by beating her?" she asks.
(Published: 2005-04-10 12:04 AM)
Kafa is Enough in Arabic. This is the Had-It Revolution. The Enough Revolution. The Fed-Up Revolution. The Get-Out Revolution. This is NOT the "we'll remain steadfast through your foreign manipulation and hegemony" Revolution. We've had ENOUGH STEADFASTNESS.
(Published: 2005-04-09 08:40 PM)
Fearful of shaming their families, pregnant Muslim girls resort to potentially fatal illegal abortions.
By Olga Dosybieva in Shymkent (RCA No. 366, 08-Apr-05)
(Published: 2005-04-09 08:21 PM)
Afghanistan's first women’s team looks forward to performing on the international stage.
By Mohammad Jawad Sharifazda in Kabul (ARR No. 167, 04-Apr-05)
(Published: 2005-04-09 07:54 PM)
Sulaimaniyah court hears how Kurdish man staged “insurgent” attack on his Norwegian wife.
By Sirwan Ghareeb in Sulaimaniyah (ICR No. 117, 17-Mar-05)
(Published: 2005-04-09 07:48 PM)
Self-immolation is the last resort for women trapped in unbearable lives, and it seems to be on the increase. The Kurdistan Women's Union has launched an awareness campaign to try to persuade women not to take this drastic step.
"We’ve run a number of adverts to show women that no circumstances in life can justify a woman setting herself alight,” said Payman Izzadin, a spokesperson for the woman’s union.
By Azeez Mahmood in Sulaimaniyah (ICR No. 117, 17-Mar-05)
(Published: 2005-04-06 07:55 AM)
(Published: 2005-04-02 06:54 PM)
Advocates of women’s rights mark International Women’s Day by noting progress while looking ahead to how much still needs to be done.
By Suhaila Muhseni in Kabul (ARR No. 165, 18-Mar-05)
(Published: 2005-04-02 05:17 AM)
Saudi woman poet Nimah Ismail Nawwab is the first woman to have appeared publically at a book signing in Saudi Arabia.
(Published: 2005-04-01 07:44 AM)
The first quarter of 2005 has seen increasingly dramatic news from the Middle East, but equally significant developments, relevant to the future of Islam and the whole world, continue to emerge in Washington. When the United States took leadership of the Iraq intervention in 2003, few Beltway insiders grasped the immense importance of liberating an Arab country, with a Shia Muslim majority, that included in its territory the holy sites of the Shia sect, Kerbala and Najaf.
(Published: 2005-03-31 07:15 PM)
Men are illegally divorcing their wives without them knowing.
By Aso Akram in Sulaimaniyah (ICR No. 118, 25-Mar-05)
(Published: 2005-03-31 07:12 PM)
Village girls want to continue their studies at high school, but are disadvantaged by their parents’ traditional way of thinking.
By Niaz Muhamed in Sulaimaniyah (ICR No. 118, 25-Mar-05)
(Published: 2005-03-30 06:56 AM)
"No matter how you look at it, with the Internet, cable television and everything our children are taking in, I believe the young ones are going to impose their needs and demands."
(Published: 2005-03-23 12:46 AM)
Two years after Iraq invasion, Mideast is being swept by political changes challenging decades-old stalemate of power. The embryonic democratic awakening in the region also spread to the conservative United Arab Emirates.
"In spite of the reluctance of the ruling regimes, democracy is on its way in the Middle East," was the upbeat comment of Amr al-Shubaki, an analyst with the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.
(Published: 2005-03-17 11:26 PM)
A cartoon by Emad Hajjaj which appeared March 3 in a Jordanian newspaper, al-Ghad. The statue furthest to the right, Saddam Hussein, is cracking at the knees and toppling into an almost identical statue of Syrian leader Bashir Assad, which is teetering into a statue of Mubarak, who is falling into a statue whose face can't be seen.
(Published: 2005-03-13 11:47 PM)
What the world is saying about democracy in the middle east.
(Published: 2005-03-13 08:21 PM)
Listen to the conversations in the cafes on the edge of the creek that runs through this Persian Gulf city, and it is hard to believe that the George W. Bush being praised by Arab diners is the same George W. Bush who has been widely excoriated in these parts ever since he took office.
(Published: 2005-03-09 02:40 AM)
In countries where President George Bush and his policies are deeply unpopular, online commentators are starting to think the unthinkable.
(Published: 2005-03-06 02:20 AM)
It is indeed a revolution. And it is following the tradition of such events - revolution results when long simmering causes turn into mass protest movements, triggered by one or more dramatic events: a war or a high-profile assassination. Walid Jumblatt, the Lebanese Druze Muslim patriarch and leader of the opposition to the Syrian presence in Lebanon, is clear about what he thinks that spark is - the elections in Iraq which followed the US-led invasion of that country. 'When I saw the Iraqi people voting ... eight million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world,' he told the Washington Post .
(Published: 2005-03-06 12:00 AM)
Revolutions do not stand still. They either move forward or die. We are at the dawn of a glorious, delicate, revolutionary moment in the Middle East. It was triggered by the invasion of Iraq, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and televised images of 8 million Iraqis voting in a free election. Which led to the obvious question throughout the Middle East: Why the Iraqis and not us?
(Published: 2005-03-03 04:42 AM)
We need to face up to the fact that the Iraq invasion has intensified pressure for democracy in the Middle East
(Published: 2005-03-01 06:48 AM)
Three years ago - April 6 2002, if you want to rummage through the old Spectators in the attic - I wrote: "The stability junkies in the EU, UN and elsewhere have, as usual, missed the point. The Middle East is too stable. So, if you had to pick only one regime to topple, why not Iraq? Once you've got rid of the ruling gang, it's the West's best shot at incubating a reasonably non-insane polity. That's why the unravelling of the Middle East has to start not in the West Bank but in Baghdad."
(Published: 2005-03-01 05:17 AM)
The London-based newspaper Al Quds al-Arabi, which has for some time been a surrogate voice for "insurgent" talk in the Arab diaspora, polled its readers after the Iraqi elections and had the grace to print the result. About 90 percent had been favorably impressed by the sight of Iraqi and Kurdish voters waiting their turn to have a say in their own future. This is a somewhat more accurate use of the demotic thermometer than the promiscuous one to which we have let ourselves become accustomed. Meanwhile, the streets of, say, Beirut have been filled with demonstrators who are entirely fed up with having their lives and opinions taken for granted by parasitic oligarchies.
(Published: 2005-02-25 06:22 AM)
"Enough!" That's one of the simple slogans you see scrawled on the walls around Rafiq Hariri's grave site here. And it sums up the movement for political change that has suddenly coalesced in Lebanon and is slowly gathering force elsewhere in the Arab world.
(Published: 2005-02-24 11:09 PM)
Look beyond the jockeying for jobs in Iraq's embryonic transitional government. Focus instead on the final results in that Arab country's matrix-breaking election. They reveal a little-publicized result that President Bush, feminist organizations and democracy advocates should be shouting from the rooftops.
(Published: 2005-02-02 06:18 AM)
The September 11 attack underlined, in the most terrible fashion, the consequences of our not-so-benign neglect of the Middle East and the wider Islamic world. From Morocco to Iran a huge swath of humanity was sunk in oppression, denied not just democracy but freedom of speech, property rights, freedom of association, freedom from fear and freedom to hope.
What a difference a month makes . . .
Pamela Bone: Women's right to equality
Iranian regime killed the 19-year-old female journalist, Elham Afrootan
Women in Iraq (forum discussion)
Kafa revolution
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