Taliban Flog Woman, Four Men In Northern Afghanistan
New Age Islam News Bureau
14 February 2025
· 37-Year-Old Woman Kidnapped, Murdered, And Burned In Iran
· Taliban Flog Woman, Four Men In Northern Afghanistan
· Saudi Woman Imprisoned For Tweeting In Support Of Women’s Rights Released After Four-Year Ordeal
· The Muslim Women Rejecting Marriage And Choosing To Be Single
· Women And Equalities Committee Launches New Inquiry Into Gendered Islamophobia
Compiled by New Age Islam News Bureau
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/taliban-flog-woman-northern-afghanistan/d/134622
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Taliban Flog Woman, Four Men In Northern Afghanistan
By Siyar Sirat
14 February 2025
A Taliban member at a roundabout in Wazir Akbar Khan area, downtown Kabul. File photo,
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KABUL — Taliban publicly flogged five people, including a woman, in the northern province of Takhar, accusing them of adultery, sodomy, and theft, according to a statement from the Taliban-controlled Supreme Court on Thursday.
The court said that each of the individuals received 39 lashes and was sentenced to prison terms ranging from one year and six months to one year and seven months.
The public punishment took place on Thursday morning in a stadium in Yangi Qala district, following approval from the Taliban’s Supreme Court, the statement added.
According to figures compiled by Amu TV, Taliban have publicly flogged at least 50 people, including seven women, over the past three weeks in various provinces, punishing them for alleged moral and criminal offenses.
Despite widespread condemnation from human rights organizations and the international community, the Taliban continue to enforce public corporal punishments, drawing concerns over their increasingly repressive rule.
Source:amu.tv
https://amu.tv/157325/
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37-Year-Old Woman Kidnapped, Murdered, And Burned In Iran
FEBRUARY 13, 2025
Samira Besharati, a married mother of a 10-month-old child from the Mazang district of Bandar Gaz, was murdered on Monday evening while traveling between her home and workplace
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A 37-year-old woman was kidnapped and killed by unknown assailants in Bandar Gaz, according to a report by the Hirkani Human Rights Organization.
Samira Besharati, a married mother of a 10-month-old child from the Mazang district of Bandar Gaz, was murdered on Monday evening while traveling between her home and workplace.
According to the Hirkani report, the perpetrators abducted Besharati, stole her belongings, killed her, and then burned her body in the forests surrounding the county.
Rokna News Agency, quoting the victim’s husband, reported that initial investigations indicate the kidnappers were familiar with the victim.
At least two people have been arrested in connection with Besharati’s murder, and investigations are ongoing.
Source:iranwire.com
https://iranwire.com/en/women/139019-37-year-old-woman-kidnapped-murdered-and-burned-in-iran/
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Saudi Woman Imprisoned For Tweeting In Support Of Women’s Rights Released After Four-Year Ordeal
14 February 2025
“Salma al-Shehab’s ordeal in prison is finally over. For more than four years she has been subjected to one gross injustice after another including at one point being handed an egregious 34-year prison sentence for her social media posts. She spent almost 300 days in prolonged solitary confinement, was denied legal representation, and was then repeatedly convicted on terrorism charges and handed a decades-long sentence. All just because she tweeted in support of women’s rights and retweeted Saudi women’s rights activists. Saudi Arabia’s authorities must now ensure she is not subjected to a travel ban or any further punitive measures.
“While today is a day to celebrate Salma’s release, it’s also an opportunity to reflect on the many others serving similarly lengthy sentences in Saudi Arabia for their activities online. This includes other women such as such as Manahel al-Otaibi, and Noura al-Qahtani, jailed for speaking out for women’s rights and Abdulrahman al-Sadhan, jailed for 20 years for satirical tweets. We urge the Saudi authorities to immediately release them and end their relentless crackdown on the right to freedom of expression once and for all.
Background
Salma al-Shehab, 36, a Leeds University PhD student and mother of two, was arrested on 15 January 2021 for tweeting and retweeting Saudi women’s rights activists on Twitter. Based on these tweets, she was charged, amongst other things, with “disturb[ing] public order, [and] destabiliz[ing] the security of society and the stability of the state.”
In March 2022, the Specialized Criminal Court (SCC) sentenced Salma al-Shehab to six years in prison. At her appeal trial in August 2022, the prosecution demanded a harsher punishment, and the SCC drastically increased her prison sentence to 34 years. Salma appealed that judgement and in January 2023 the Supreme Court referred her case back to the SCC’s appeals chamber. The court reduced her sentence to 27 years’ imprisonment. In September 2024, after the Supreme Court sent her case back to the SCC’s appeals chamber again, her prison sentence was reduced from 27 years to 4 years in prison with an additional four years suspended. Her four-year prison term ended in December 2024, and she was subsequently released this month.
Source:amnesty.org.au
https://www.amnesty.org.au/saudi-woman-imprisoned-for-tweeting-in-support-of-womens-rights-released-after-four-year-ordeal/
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The Muslim Women Rejecting Marriage And Choosing To Be Single
13 February 2025
Aisha’s nieces and nephews have a phrase for the life she’s built: “Doing an Auntie Aisha.” The 45-year-old from Oxfordshire has become an example in her family of a different kind of future, one without marriage. “My parents were brilliant — they were kind, caring, loving. We weren’t an affluent family, but there was a lot of love,” she says. Raised by a feminist mother and a doting father “whose daughters were his pride and joy”, Aisha never felt pressured to follow tradition. Now, her younger relatives openly admire her independence, some even declaring they want to follow in her footsteps.
Yet, for centuries, marriage has been considered a cornerstone of life for women, especially for Muslims. The idea that marriage completes “half of your deen” is a widely repeated hadith, reinforcing the belief that a woman’s role in faith, family and society is incomplete without a husband. Now, a growing number of Muslim women are pushing back against this expectation in heterosexual relationships — not due to a lack of suitors, but as a conscious choice for autonomy and, for some, a deeper connection to their faith.
“People assume there must be a broken relationship somewhere, or that something bad happened to me, or that I’m divorced. No, I’ve never been married,” says Aisha, who made the conscious decision to remain single in her 30s. For her, rejecting marriage was about preserving her sense of self. “I’ve seen people start diluting who they are when they get married. That just couldn’t be me.”
This shift to singledom reflects a broader global trend. Between 2002 and 2018, the number of single people aged between 40 to 70 in the UK rose by half a million. Data from the 2021 census for England and Wales shows nearly four in 10 adults have never been married or been in a civil partnership, up from three in 10 at the start of the century. In the US, nearly 40% of adults are unpartnered, compared to 29% in 1990, according to the Pew Research Center. And about half aren’t interested in dating or a relationship.
Yet there are still deeply engrained gender expectations driving stigma for single women. While single men are often celebrated as independent or career-driven, women are painted as undesirable, lonely or incomplete. The word spinster has long carried connotations of pity and failure, reinforcing this double standard.
Bella DePaulo, author of Single at Heart: The Power, Freedom and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life, who has been studying single people for more than 30 years, has seen perceptions change, though progress is slow. “The number of single people keeps growing, and when so many people are not married, it is hard to keep insisting that there’s something wrong with all of them,” she says.
For Muslim women, however, the decision carries an added weight. Marriage is not only a cultural expectation, but often framed as a religious duty, making the choice to remain single particularly radical. “There were single women in the time of the Prophet (PBUH) who were warriors, business women, and never married,” says Sana, 24, who made the decision to be single five years ago. “Why is it such a big deal now?”
All the women I spoke to — despite being proud of their choices — insisted on anonymity, citing fears of judgment and a desire for privacy.
“I think we live in a very judgmental patriarchal society,” says Melia, 31, who’s been single since her mid-20s. “Women making choices that do not benefit the patriarchy are highly criticised. For me, I don’t fear criticism, I simply value my peace and my anonymity. The more I protect my inner self, the less I am opening up myself to other people’s opinions.”
Aisha, meanwhile, insists her choice to stay anonymous isn’t about shame. “I’m not embarrassed about my choices, but I’m a deeply private person,” she says.
Beyond anonymity, they all share the frustration of having their choices dismissed. “People assume I must be broken, damaged, or that something bad happened to me,” says Aisha. “They always ask, ‘Why are you single?’ as if it’s a tragedy. But I just tell them: ‘Your marriage isn’t that great either, is it?’”
Much of this resistance stems from ingrained cultural and religious expectations. Yet, despite the emphasis on marriage in Islam, these women remain deeply connected to their faith.
“I rejected Islam for a while because the version I was taught was patriarchal,” says Melia, an Algerian Canadian government worker. “But when I studied it myself, I realised it’s actually a feminist religion. It is a religion that elevates women, and makes a man who is married to a woman obligated to finance her life, whereas her money stays her money.”
Reclaiming Islam through a feminist lens was key to understanding her place within it, she says. “Historically, the religion was interpreted and translated by men in ways that benefited them, perpetuating the patriarchy.” Melia now follows Qur’anic interpretations, such as Qur’an: A Reformist Translation, that challenge traditional readings.
Her own upbringing, she says, was shaped more by cultural expectations than religious teachings. “I grew up in a very conservative Muslim household with many siblings. I’m the eldest so I had many responsibilities from a very young age, and marriage was seen as another duty,” she explains. “My parents’ marriage was arranged against my mother’s will. The house that I grew up in was a very patriarchal household, and not quite Islamic at all.” It was only through her own research that she began to separate faith from tradition.
Jelly, an 18-year-old law student from India, plans to stay single as she gets older. She pushes back against the idea that being single is un-Islamic. “Nothing in Islam says women are obligated to marry. Marriage is encouraged, but it’s not required. Staying single doesn’t make me any less of a Muslim.”
For most of the women, their decisions were based on a series of experiences, such as encounters with sexism or other people’s “toxic marriages” that made the traditional route seem less appealing.
“The final nail in the coffin was when a man I thought of as a potential future partner said: ‘Women should be grateful. They have it easy in life. They just sit in an office with pretty nails while we men do the real work’,” says Sana. “That conversation gave me the most disgusting taste in my mouth.” She references the misogynistic “red pill” movement trumpeted by Andrew Tate as being something she hears a lot of these days from men.
Jelly has decided to follow 4B, a radical feminist movement that originated in South Korea in the mid 2010s advocating for the rejection of marriage, childbirth, dating and sex. “My reason is quite simple. I don’t think there is a single man in this world that thinks normally of women. And even if there is, I doubt we’ll ever cross paths.”
For all these women, the decision has been affirming. “The most wonderful part was when I felt like I fully embraced choosing to be single,” says Aisha. “You know what it’s like when you’re in your 20s, you’ve got the stress of answering questions about marriage all the time, and you carry that. I just feel liberated from that and confident in myself now.”
Her contentment is reflected in Happy Every After, a book written in 2019 by behavioural scientist Paul Dolan, who says: “The healthiest and happiest population subgroup is women who never married or had children.”
“Romantic love isn’t the only kind of love in this world. In fact, I think it’s harder to live without platonic love,” adds Jelly.
These women aren’t asking for permission to be single, but they do want more acceptance.
Aisha, a devoted fan of the Brontë sisters, feels a kinship with the independent women of history who lived life entirely on their own terms. “My family jokingly call me ‘Princess Margaret’ from The Crown, but I like that,” she says. “I’m a bit different, a bit quirky.”
She dreams of one day learning flamenco dancing, taking up painting, and finally mastering the art of sewing. But financial independence comes at a cost. “If I had more time and financial freedom, I’d throw myself into all these things,” she reflects.
Still, the future feels like liberation. A partner isn’t part of her plan, and she doesn’t see that as a loss. So why should anyone else?
Source:hyphenonline.com
https://hyphenonline.com/2025/02/13/the-muslim-women-rejecting-marriage-and-choosing-to-be-single/
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Women And Equalities Committee Launches New Inquiry Into Gendered Islamophobia
13 February 2025
The Women and Equalities Committee (WEC) is today (Thursday, 13 February) launching a new inquiry examining issues around gendered Islamophobia.
Inquiry
Submit evidence
Women and Equalities Committee
WEC’s new inquiry aims to understand the specific challenges facing Muslim women in the UK today. It will focus on the barriers women and girls encounter reporting Islamophobia and the ways gendered Islamophobia can be challenged.
During a recent evidence session, MPs on the cross-party Committee, chaired by Labour MP Sarah Owen, heard how gendered Islamophobia impacts women and girls in their everyday lives, including in the areas of education, employment and sport.
It also follows the launch in December of WEC’s new inquiry into community cohesion.
Chair comment
Women and Equalities Committee (WEC) Chair Sarah Owen MP said:
“It’s concerning but sadly unsurprising to hear about women and girls’ experiences of Islamophobia and through this new inquiry, the Committee will explore why they are more likely to be victims of Islamophobia, and what impact this has on them, their communities and wider society.
“WEC’s new work will examine in what ways gendered Islamophobia has an intersectional dimension and ask why some women are more likely than others to be subject to this abuse and prejudice. The inquiry will also explore if there is evidence of Muslim women being harassed from within their communities, for example, for not conforming to expected community norms or due to generational differences.”
“Alongside WEC’s programme of work into the state of community cohesion nationwide, this inquiry will ask if there are any steps, including legislative, that the Government should take to help address Islamophobia. It will also explore what schools, workplaces, trade unions, community groups, places of worship and sports clubs can do to help tackle Islamophobia and to support Muslim women and girls.”
Terms of Reference
The Committee invites written submissions through the inquiry website addressing any or all of the issues raised in the following terms of reference by Friday 21 March 2025.
Why are women more likely to be the victims of Islamophobia and what common forms does it take?
In what ways does gendered Islamophobia have an intersectional dimension? Are some women more likely than others to be subject to this abuse and prejudice and if so, why?
What impact does Islamophobia have on women and girls, their communities and wider society?
Is there evidence of Muslim women being harassed from within their communities? For example, for not conforming to expected community norms or due to generational differences?
Are there any steps, including legislative, that the Government should take to help address Islamophobia?
What can schools, sports clubs and other community groups, trade unions, places of worship and workplaces do to help tackle Islamophobia and to support Muslim women and girls?
Source:parliament.uk
https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/328/women-and-equalities-committee/news/205265/women-and-equalities-committee-launches-new-inquiry-into-gendered-islamophobia/
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URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/taliban-flog-woman-northern-afghanistan/d/134622