Afghan Female Cyclists To Race In Switzerland To Raise 'Alarm' Over Women's Plight
23 October 2022
•
Afghan Female Cyclists To Race In Switzerland To Raise 'Alarm' Over Women's
Plight
•
Parental Pressure, Commitment-Phobes And Aging - Finding Love As A Muslim Is
Hard In UK
•
To Wear Or Not To Wear Hijab Is The Dilemma Confronting Muslim Women The World
Over
•
Qatar Pressed On Safety Of Women Travelling To World Cup
•
Australian Women Sue Qatar Over Forced Airport Vaginal ExamsTwo Years Ago
•
Canadian Who Assaulted a Muslim Woman Gets 16 Months in Jail
Compiled
by New Age Islam News Bureau
URL:
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Afghan
Female Cyclists To Race In Switzerland To Raise 'Alarm' Over Women's Plight
Jacques
Klopp
October
23, 2022
Masomah
Ali Zada was the first Afghan female cyclist to compete in the Olympics. PHOTO:
AFP
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For
Afghan refugee cyclist Masomah Ali Zada, it will be a bittersweet moment. For
the first time in five years, she will take part in the Afghanistan Women's
Cycling Championships on Sunday, but not in Kabul.
Instead,
the 26-year-old will race in southwest Switzerland, reunited with dozens of
Afghan cyclists who now live in different countries.
Since
the hardline Taliban returned to power last year and restricted women's
freedoms, Ali Zada says "sport is dead" for Afghan women.
The
Taliban have banned women from playing sport, barred women from many government
jobs and forbidden secondary school education for girls.
A
special moment for Ali Zada came last summer when she took part in the Tokyo
Olympics where she hoped to be a beacon for women forced to leave their country
or to abandon their sporting dreams.
Unable
to enjoy her Olympic adventure, she spent the rest of the summer with a heavy
heart as she followed minute by minute the events unfolding in Afghanistan,
with Kabul falling in August 2021 and the Taliban put back in charge.
When
she was growing up, her family, part of the historically oppressed Shiite
Muslim Hazara community, were forced to live in Iran like millions of other
Afghans.
It
was there she learned how to ride a bike before joining the Afghan national
team at the age of 16 when the family returned to Kabul.
After
years of being physically attacked for daring to don sportswear, suffering
insults for simply riding a bike and having stones thrown at her, she sought
asylum in France in 2016. The pressure on her to give up had become too strong
as her victories multiplied.
Girls
can no longer go to high school and while women can still attend university,
that will be difficult in the future since girls today will not have the
necessary classes to go on to higher education.
"Dreaming
big for girls today is just being able to go to school. Just going to school.
So sport is completely dead for women," says Ali Zada, who is currently
studying at Polytech Lille University.
BenafshaFaizi,
a journalist and former spokeswoman for the Afghanistan National Olympic
Committee who fled the country with the International Cycling Union (UCI) in
2021, agrees.
Ali
Zada, who has joined the International Olympic Committee Athletes' Commission,
believes "the world has become silent" in the face of the repression
of Afghan women.
"We
abandoned women in Afghanistan. Everyone who says they defend human rights, all
those who say they defend women, they haven't done anything," she says.
A
total of 49 female cyclists from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Singapore and
Switzerland will take part in the 57-kilometre (35-mile) race in the Swiss city
of Aigle and the surrounding Vaud canton, where UCI has its headquarters.
But
she is "so happy" to reunite with "teammates with whom I cycled
with in Afghanistan. It's been five years since I last saw them".
Juggling
her studies and cycling, she prepared for the event but doesn't say who she
thinks will win the race.
Source:
Sports.Yahoo
https://sports.yahoo.com/afghan-cyclists-race-raise-alarm-040620621.html
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Parental
Pressure, Commitment-Phobes And Aging - Finding Love As A Muslim Is Hard In UK
By
AnisahVasta
23
OCT 2022
The
Muzz singles event took place at Birmingham's Archies welcoming Brummie singles
from across the city. (Image: Muzz)
-----------
As
a 22 year old single Muslim woman I can safely say that finding Mr Right is no
walk in the park. Although I haven't actively searched for a partner yet, I
would be lying if I said finding a companion wasn't something I wanted at some
point.
Often
there are two routes Muslim singletons take in finding partners. One being
arranged marriage which is basically choosing profiles on a WhatsApp group
filled with potentials or just going out and finding your own partner which is
more popular.
But
with the many rules and regulations Muslims have to follow like no free mixing
and proposing marriage as soon as possible - dating has become extremely hard.
But an increasingly popular phenomenon in the Muslim dating scene, is Muslim
dating apps like Muzz.
So,
I decided to go to a Muzz event in Brum and find out how Brummie Muslim
singletons are finding love and the challenges they're facing. On awkwardly
mingling, I spoke to a Pakistani woman from Bordesley Green in her thirties.
After sharing my age, she shockingly said "what are you doing here?"
and I replied, as my mum would say, "it's never too late to start
searching, right?"
Speaking
to the woman, I found that unfortunately age isn't just a number when it comes
to dating. For many single Muslims, age determines an expiry date for finding a
partner and parental pressures kick in.
Meet
36 year old Egyptian Mariam Osama from Sutton Coldfield who works for Muzz and
is also single. Mariam has been on the app for the last four years.
She
told BirminghamLive: "My age has always been a big factor, I'm not old but
not young either." Mariam expressed a preference of finding a partner who
was Egyptian or Arabic.
She
said: "One of the big challenges I feel is trying to bring together a mix
of Muslims values and what the West see as dating. We still don't want to have
this notion of an arranged marriage and some people are open to it.
"I
did get a guy who said, 'well you have been on the app for too long, so
something must be wrong with you?' - I've had a few people like that." she
said.
Mariam
spoke about how the app has changed Muslim dating habits especially through
Covid-19 and how it breaks away from traditions. She said: "Safety is
number one priority on Muzz. Covid-19 has made it harder to do physical dating
but we have had successful couples during this time.
"The
app can do as much as it can but eventually you will have to be with that
person for the rest of your life - we be slow in the process in choosing that
person. It is tough as it's not just the person but the family too.
"It's
bypassing the middle man who would traditionally be an aunty or your mother and
just going into it by yourself. It is a scary space but it's also about taking
control," she said.
Tasneim
Idris, 26 from Perry Barr felt commitment issues were a challenge. She said:
"I'm at a point to settle down and get married and have a family but a lot
of people I have been meeting are not on the same level or stage.
"There's
some that want me to wait four or five years before getting married. However I
don't see myself talking to someone for that many years without a future in
mind - so many have those commitment issues and can't move past the talking
stages.
"My
mum has been on my case to get married so I have tried meeting people she wants
me to from my own background but have grown up in Sudan. But that can be
difficult because of lifestyle differences.
Source:
Birmingham Mail
Please
click the following URL to read the full text of the original story:
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To
wear or not to wear hijab is the dilemma confronting Muslim women the world
over
By
Amar Bhushan
October
22, 2022
The
refusal by six girls of a junior government college in Kundapura in Udupi
district of Karnataka to attend classes without Hijab had kicked off a major
communal storm in February this year.
All
that college management wanted was to enforce uniformity in students' dress to
foster a sense of discipline and secular temperament. But radical Islamic
groups and Imams called it an invasion of their girls' religious identity.
Consequently,
violent mobs clashed with police in different parts of the state and hijab
marches were taken out in Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh,
Telangana and Maharashtra. It was one more attempt by them to pursue
exclusionist agenda like holidays on Friday in educational institutions, separate
prayer rooms in commercial and official establishments, right to pray on
government land and exemption from body search at airports, electoral booths
and sensitive public places.
Muslim
hotheads and preachers were not alone in protesting. Non-BJP political parties,
with an eye on Muslim votes, quickly came forward in their support. Liberals
were not far behind in terming hijab ban as a non-secular, draconian measure.
Lo and behold, it also found a traction in the supreme court.
In
a split verdict, justice Dhulia ruled that wearing hijab was a matter of choice
and asking Muslim girls to take them off, was an invasion of their privacy and
dignity, guaranteed by the constitution. He added that right to education was
girls' fundamental right which could not be denied because they did not wear
hijab. One hopes the mavericks will not take justice Dhulia's words literally
and start attending classes, courts and security institutions in fancy dresses,
turning them into carnivals.
The
supreme court's final ruling on this subject will settle for generations how
much we are willing to surrender progressive ideas to accommodate religious
obscurantism in a democracy.
Contrast
Muslim reaction in India with what is happening in Iran, a highly conservative
Islamic nation for past five weeks. Paradoxically, Muslim women in Karnataka
are fighting to wear hijab, while Muslim women in Iran are laying their life
for not wearing them. On September13, Mahsa Amin, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman
of Saqqez was arrested by the Morality police (known as 'Guidance Patrol') and
detained in a re-education centre for violating country's compulsory veiling
laws. After three days of torture and a fatal blow to her head, Mahsa went into
coma and died.
The
incident triggered massive protests in 156 cities and universities in 31
provinces. Hundreds of women cut or shaved their hair in public and burnt
hijab, shouting 'no to headscarf, yes to life, freedom and equality'. Scores of
schoolgirls blocked traffic in Shiraz, Karaj, Tehran, Saqeez, Sanandaj and nine
other cities, waving and throwing their headscarf in air, chanting slogans
against clerical authorities and asking others to unite lest they are killed
one by one.
President
Raisi, a hardliner, called the protesters hooligans and Ayatollah Khamenei
accused the US and Israel of orchestrating riots. The Iranian security forces
have since killed 224 activists including 34 children and detained over 12500.
Source:
One India
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Qatar
pressed on safety of women travelling to World Cup
Andrew
BEATTY
23
October 2022
Lawyers
for a group of women subjected to intrusive searches at Doha Airport two years
ago called Sunday for Qatar to guarantee female fans travelling to next month's
football World Cup will be safe.
Five
women are suing Qatar Airways and the state-run Qatar Civil Aviation Authority
after they were removed from flights for non-consensual gynaecological
examinations in October 2020.
"This
group of brave women have been forced to go to court to send a message to Qatar
that what happened was wrong and should not be allowed to take place
again," lawyer Damian Sturzaker told AFP.
"With
the World Cup less than a month away female travellers are entitled to an
assurance from Qatar that their human rights will be respected."
After
the child was discovered the airport was locked down and women on about 10
flights were shooed into ambulances where they were subject to invasive
examinations to see if they had recently given birth.
Two
years later, a group of women are taking Qatari authorities to court in
Australia, claiming unspecified costs and damages for the trauma of the event.
According
to papers filed with an Australian federal court earlier this month, the five
women were between 31 and 73 years old at the time.
As
the plane sat on the tarmac, a cabin announcement instructed all women aboard
to leave the aircraft with their passports and "persons in dark uniforms
armed with guns entered the aircraft".
Four
of the women were then taken into ambulances, their clothing was removed and
they were subjected to intrusive examinations of their genitals -- and in one
case the breasts and stomach.
They
accuse Qatar Airways and the authorities of neglect, assault, battery, false
imprisonment and a range of other breaches of the law.
Qatar
Airways and the government of Qatar did not immediately respond to requests for
comment, but the authorities have previously announced that prosecutions would
be made of those responsible for the searches.
Facing
potentially devastating commercial and reputational damage, Qatar has
repeatedly vowed to guarantee the future "safety and security" of
passengers.
The
Gulf nation has faced intense scrutiny over its human rights record ahead of
the tournament, and concerns about strict local customs that might trip up
foreign visitors.
In
November 2020, Qatari authorities said they had identified the parents of the
abandoned child and the "fugitive" mother from an Asian country. She
faces 15 years in jail if apprehended.
Source:
Uk.News
-----
Australian
Women Sue Qatar Over Forced Airport Vaginal Exams Two Years Ago
By
Mary Papenfuss
Oct
23, 2022
Five
Australian women are suing the government of Qatar over forced vaginal exams
and other invasive medical procedures at gunpoint at the Doha airport two years
ago.
The
women are seeking damages from both Qatar Airways and the Qatar Civil Aviation
Authority — owned by the Qatari government — over the “unlawful physical
contact” and damage to their mental health, including depression and
post-traumatic stress disorder.
The
case has been filed just weeks before Qatar’s controversial hosting of the
World Cup — a venue decision linked to massive bribes of soccer officials —
amid concerns about treatment of female fans who may kiss or have sex with
their boyfriends, drink alcohol and wear revealing clothing.
The
plaintiffs and several women on a Qatar Airways flight headed to Sydney —
including citizens from Australia, New Zealand and Britain —were pulled off the
aircraft and subjected to invasive gynecological exams in October 2020 after an
abandoned newborn was discovered in an airport bathroom. Abandoned newborns are
a problem in the country, which imprisons women who become pregnant out of
wedlock.
The
women were taken to ambulances on the tarmac, some at gunpoint, the lawsuit
stated, locked inside and told to remove their underwear for an examination,
the BBC reported at the time.
One
of the women, a 33-year-old nurse, told The New York Times that she has not
traveled since. “It completely changed me as a person, that day,” she said.
“It
seems like they’ve just moved on, they’re not sorry for it,” she added.
“They’re going on with their lives normally while we’re all here, quite
affected.”
Officials
initially insisted the searches were “wholly inconsistent with Qatar’s culture
and values.” After a cascade of controversy, officials apologized, and an
airport officer who arranged the searches was arrested and eventually given a
suspended sentence.
Australia
filed an official complaint after the nation’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison
blasted the “appalling” searches, and Foreign Minister Marise Payne called the
measures “grossly disturbing [and] offensive.”
Attorney
Damian Sturzaker, partner at the Marque Lawyers firm, which is representing the
women who are suing, told the Guardian this week he was “proud to stand with
this group of brave women who have been forced to take on the Qatar government
after it gravely breached their human rights.”
The
newborn discovered the day of the searches survived and was turned over to
social services. The baby’s mother and father, later tracked down, were both
reportedly from “Asian countries,” officials said. In Qatar, that typically
means nations in South Asia, a source of a large number of migrant workers in
the country. Human rights activists have sharply criticized Qatar not only for
its treatment of women, but of migrants as well.
It’s
illegal to have sex outside of marriage in the ultraconservative nation, and
migrant women who become pregnant out of wedlock risk imprisonment, driving
some to abandon their babies.
Source:
Huff Post
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Canadian
Who Assaulted a Muslim Woman Gets 16 Months in Jail
October
23rd, 2022
A
Canadian man who perpetrated a "racially motivated" attack on a Black
Muslim woman and her daughter was sentenced Friday to 16 months in prison and
probation for two years.
Richard
Bradley Stevens, 43, accosted the pair Dec. 8, 2020, while they were sitting in
their car outside a shopping mall in Edmonton, Alberta.
He
uttered racial threats, broke a window and when the pair exited the vehicle, he
tore off their hijabs and punched one of the women repeatedly until she passed
out. He pleaded guilty to two assault counts and one mischief count.
Stevens'
defense was that he was off his medications that help control a psychotic
disorder and was not thinking clearly because he had taken drugs. But Judge
Ferne LeReverend did not buy his excuses.
“I
reject that because he specifically referred to them as f—ing Somalis and
demanded they leave the country,” said LeReverend. She said Stevens has
demonstrated a “history of prejudice.”
The
older woman is a mother of 10 and the court was told Stevens' attack erased her
sense of security and left lasting mental health wounds. She was bedridden for
six months because of a leg injury sustained in the attack.
Her
daughter also had physical and psychological injuries as a result of the
attack. The court heard she continues to relive the horrid assault on her
mother, underwent physiotherapy and missed 90 days of work.
“There’s
no doubt that this heinous Islamophobic attack left a tremendous amount of pain
on Edmonton, and Alberta, and especially, in particular on Black Muslim women,
those who wear hijab and other visible and vulnerable Muslims," said NCCM
lawyer DalalSouraya. “While today was an important day, and was a significant
precedent-setting judgment, nothing can undo the harm this family and community
has suffered.”
Source:
Albawaba
https://www.albawaba.com/news/canadian-who-assaulted-muslim-woman-gets-16-months-jail-1495914
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URL: https://www.newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/afghan-female-switzerland-women/d/128246