Afghans urge next US president to pressure Taliban on women’s rights
New Age Islam News Bureau
06 Nov2024
· Afghans urge next US president to pressure Taliban on women’s rights
· Re-election for Tlaib and Omar – first Muslim women to serve in US Congress
· Madras High Court grants bail to YouTuber arrested for hijab video
· London man charged with attacking Muslim women makes court appearance
· Video: ‘Zionist thugs’ invade Jewish anti-genocide demo and Muslim woman dragged out of ‘debate’
· Women's education influences fertility rates in sub-Saharan Africa
· UN reports graduation of 20 women from two-year midwifery program in Daykundi
· Woman killed, son injured as lorries collide on PLUS near Bidor
Compiled by New Age Islam News Bureau
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/afghans-president-taliban-women-rights/d/133635
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Afghans urge next US president to pressure Taliban on women’s rights
By YasinShayan
6-NOV-2024
KABUL, Afghanistan — As the U.S. presidential election approaches, many Afghans are calling on the next American leader to take a strong stance against the Taliban, particularly over the regime’s restrictions on women and girls.
Residents in Kabul expressed hope that the next U.S. administration will push for meaningful reforms in Afghanistan to counter what they describe as widespread human rights abuses by the Taliban.
“The U.S. president must seriously address the Taliban’s restrictions on women,” said Sadaf, a Kabul resident. “They should pressure the Taliban to reopen schools and universities for girls.”
Both Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, and Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, are competing for the White House. While neither candidate has presented a specific plan for Afghanistan, some Afghans, weary of the Taliban’s rule, say they expect the next U.S. president to break from the current administration’s policy and apply greater pressure on the Taliban. Many feel the withdrawal of U.S. forces in August 2021 and the subsequent Taliban takeover have led to severe setbacks for women’s rights, democracy, and freedom of speech in the country.
Since taking power, the Taliban have imposed strict regulations on women and girls, closing schools for girls above grade six and barring women from universities and many public sector jobs. The effect has been a dramatic erosion of women’s rights, with Afghan women calling on the U.S. to help them regain their freedom and financial independence.
“We urge the next U.S. president to help lift the excessive restrictions imposed by the Taliban,” said Yalda, another Kabul resident. “Schools, universities, and government jobs should be accessible to women again.”
The fall of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces and the collapse of two decades of gains in democracy and women’s rights have left many Afghans fearful for the future. For these citizens, the next U.S. president, as the leader of one of the world’s most powerful countries, has a responsibility not to remain silent about the Taliban’s policies and to advocate for the rights of Afghan women and girls.
Source:amu.tv
https://amu.tv/135312/
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Re-election for Tlaib and Omar – first Muslim women to serve in US Congress
6 Nov 2024
US Representatives Rashida Tlaib, left, and Ilhan Omar in 2019 [File: Caroline Yang/Reuters]
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The Democratic Party’s Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar – the first two Muslim women to serve in the United States Congress – have won re-election to the US House of Representatives.
Tlaib, who is also the first woman of Palestinian descent in the US Congress, was re-elected on Tuesday for a fourth term as a representative for Michigan with support from the large Arab-American community in Dearborn.
Omar, a former refugee and Somali American, retook her seat for a third term in Minnesota, where she represents the strongly Democratic 5th District, which includes Minneapolis and a number of suburbs.
A leading critic of US military support to Israel in its war on Gaza, Tlaib ran uncontested in her primary and defeated Republican James Hooper to represent the solidly Democratic district in Dearborn and Detroit.
In a post on social media, Omar thanked her supporters for all their hard work in her election campaign.
“Our hard work was worth it. We knocked on 117,716 doors. We made 108,226 calls. And we sent 147,323 texts. This is a victory for ALL of us who believe that a better future is possible. I can’t wait to make you all proud over the next two years,” she said.
Tlaib and Omar are both members of the informal group of lawmakers known as “The Squad”, which is made up of progressive members of Congress including Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, among others.
Other “Squad” members Jamaal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri both lost their party primaries against opponents who had won substantial support from the pro-Israel fundraising group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
The group has invested more than $100m in US political races this year in a bid to silence pro-Palestine voices in Congress.
Source:aljazeera.com
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/6/re-election-for-tlaib-and-omar-first-muslim-women-to-serve-in-us
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Madras High Court grants bail to YouTuber arrested for hijab video
05 Nov 2024
Ayesha Arvind
Hijab
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The Madras High Court recently granted bail to YouTuber AnashAhamed who was arrested in September this year by the Coimbatore police on charges of cyber terrorism after he allegedly recorded and shared a video on a private channel asking people to wear hijab and share their experience.
In the order passed on October 30, Justice P Dhanbal granted bail to Ahamed after noting that he had already been in custody for over 50 days and that he had no criminal antecedents.
“Considering the representation made on both sides, nature of offence, there is no previous case pending against the petitioner, taking into consideration the period of incarceration undergone by the petitioner and all other factors this Court is inclined to grant bail to the petitioner with certain conditions,” the Court said while directing Ahamed to execute a bond of ₹10,000 and to make an appearance before the police every morning for the next one month.
Ahamed was arrested by the Coimbatore police on September 5 and booked under Sections 352 (intentional insult to disrupt public peace) and 353 (statements conducing to public mischief) of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) for allegedly creating public mischief and breaching public peace. The police also booked the 21-year-old under Section 66(f) of the Information Technology Act charging him with the offence of cyber terrorism.
The prosecution opposed Ahamed’s bail application and argued that the said video had been recorded and uploaded on social media to “cause disturbance to public peace” and to “promote enmity between two religions.”
Ahamed however, told the court he was “innocent” and that he was being “falsely implicated” in the case.
Advocate P Mohan Babu appeared for Ahamed.
Government Advocate S Vinothkumar appeared for the State.
Source:barandbench.com
https://www.barandbench.com/news/madras-high-court-grants-bail-youtuber-arrested-hijab-video
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London man charged with attacking Muslim women makes court appearance
Nov. 6, 2024
The man accused of assaulting two Muslim women in west London made his first court appearance Tuesday.
James Henkel, 79, appeared briefly with another court date scheduled for mid-December.
According to police, in late September, a man yelled derogatory comments at a woman wearing a hijab near Berkshire Drive and Berkshire Place.
They say another woman came to help and both women were assaulted.
Source:ctvnews.ca
https://london.ctvnews.ca/london-man-charged-with-attacking-muslim-women-makes-court-appearance-1.7099790
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Video: ‘Zionist thugs’ invade Jewish anti-genocide demo and Muslim woman dragged out of ‘debate’
By SKWAWKBOX (SW)
05/11/2024
Manchester University event was titled ‘Is Anti-Zionism Antisemitism?’ and was supposedly a debate but Palestinians were ejected, while right-wingers outside chanted ‘free free Pakistan’ to try to drown out protest
A group described as ‘Zionist thugs’ invaded – and allegedly attacked – a peaceful protest staged by anti-genocide Jews outside a Manchester University ‘debate’ titled ‘Is anti-Zionism anti-Semitism’ on Thursday evening. The invaders tried to disrupt the protest and shouted ‘Free free Pakistan’, seeming to assume that anyone opposing Israel’s genocide of innocent Palestinians must be from Pakistan.
Inside the hall, the ‘Whitworth debate’ saw a young Muslim woman dragged out by guards for demanding to know why there was no Palestinian on the stage for the debate – and challenging a group of sneering Israel supporters how they would feel if their children were among the tens of thousands of children slaughtered in Gaza by settler-colonial, apartheid Israel:
Alison Harris, who attended the demo, said that some of the Zionist group outside later became ‘much more aggressive and confrontational’. Skwawkbox was told that some resorted to outright violence with, for example, one of the ‘invaders’ attempting to knee an anti-genocide protester in the groin although he was partially blocked and caught his victim in the thigh.
Gary Ostrolenk, an anti-Zionist Jewish activist, posted to Facebook about the events:
To their shame, the University of Manchester held a public “debate” on 31st October titled “Is Anti-Zionism Antisemitism?” On the platform, they positioned a Jew and a Muslim to answer the question, deliberately framing the discussion as a debate between religions. Can you believe it – a clear attempt to re-legitimiseZionism.
Outside the hall, local anti-Zionist Jews protested that the meeting was a disgrace. Jewish Action for Palestine Manchester, Jewish Voice for Labour and Na’amod all had banners and people picketing the hall. Here you can watch the moment when a group of aggressive Zionist thugs arrive, trying to intimidate and silence the protesters.
Inside the hall, Youth Front For Palestine bravely intervened to successfully disrupt the meeting. See the first comment below to watch a video inside the hall as a young Asian woman gets forcefully manhandled out of the meeting by security guards whilst baying Zionists terrorise the protesters.
Inside and outside the hall, the Zionists posed a continuous threat of violence – Israel is a terrorist state, and not just in Palestine.
The Zionists attending this meeting are one with the fascists and the IOF [Israeli military] in Israel. It is important that we confront them here in the UK, face-to-face, and make it clear not only that they do not speak for all Jews, but that they are actively complicit in genocide. They have no place in our public spaces, in our public institutions nor on our streets.
A letter subsequently sent by the anti-genocide protesters to the university challenged the university for its ‘deeply offensive’ decision to stage such a debate when thousands are being brutally massacred by the occupation regime – and for framing it in such a way as to ‘absurdly’ paint the many thousands of anti-Zionist Jews as antisemitic:
OPEN LETTER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER FROM JEWS REGARDING THE DEBATE OF 31/10/2024 ON “IS ANTIZIONISM ANTISEMITISM?”
We are Jews resident in the Northwest or with a connection to the University of Manchester, writing to express our consternation and disgust at the framing of the above debate.
While it is entirely appropriate that the university should seek to promote rational debate on the outstanding political and social issues of our time, in order for a debate to be worthy of a ‘world class’ university its framing must satisfy certain elementary academic criteria:
1. Any proposition to be debated must have a reasonably clear meaning which is not obviously nonsensical. The proposition. “Antizionism is antisemitism” dramatically fails this test.
While there may be some marginal variations in scholarly usage, there is general agreement that the word antisemitism refers to essentialist religious or ethnic hatred or prejudice against Jews because they are Jews. This is not only the traditional interpretation but also the overwhelming consensus amongst eminent scholars of the Holocaust.
On the other hand the word ‘zionism’ in its current usage refers to a political settler colonial doctrine first formulated in the 19th century by protestant Christians in the US and UK and subsequently elaborated by Theodor Herzl and other mostly secular European Jews. Since 1948 zionism has become the official ideology of the state of Israel, and is enshrined in its legal and constitutional framework. It is a very specific form of settler colonial nationalism which now accords to the entire Jewish diaspora and even to those with a single Jewish grandparent, whether religious or secular, national rights in Israel which are not accorded to the indigenous population of Palestine wherever they currently live.
It follows that the proposition that “Antizionism is antisemitism” is absurd. There is nothing to debate because there have always existed large numbers of antizionist Jews – prior to WW2 they even constituted a majority of European Jews. At the time of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the only Jewish member of the British cabinet, Edwin Montagu, declared Zionism itself to be antisemitic and a “mischievous political creed”.
2. It is deeply offensive that, at the very moment when the Israeli colonisers’ brutal massacres in Gaza are being livestreamed daily across the world, the University has sought to cast the historic Palestinian national struggle for self-determination as a religious conflict between Muslims and Jews.
For that is the clear implication of the University’s framing of the debate and choice of protagonists. Would a marketing executive of a large fundamentalist Christian charity be chosen to ‘represent’ the supposed viewpoint of ‘the UK Christian community’ on international or national politics? One has only to pose this question to expose at once the patronising bigotry which underlies this chicanery. We might also ask how the Palestinian Christians who are also being indiscriminately slaughtered by Israel in Gaza might feel about this framing.
Moreover the question chosen for debate is quite asymmetrical in that only Palestinians and Muslims are implicitly being accused of bigotry and racism: the overtly genocidal rhetoric of Israeli government ministers and the vicious racism of their camp followers in the UK parliament and media are given a free pass.
If the University had been trying to devise a debate designed to increase prejudice against Arabs and Muslims, reinforce the received bigotry rampant in our media and public institutions, and exacerbate intercommunal tensions, it would be hard to conceive of a more effective method.
3. To assert that “Antizionism is antisemitism” is itself clearly antisemitic, since it delegitimises the very existence of antizionist Jews,
Antizionist and nonzionist Jews today include some of the most eminent academics, jurists, doctors and other professionals, but their voices are systematically ignored by the media. They are also routinely insulted and marginalised as ‘self-hating’ or ‘fringe Jews’ byzionists who feel empowered to malign or ignore them, confident that their own outpourings will .
remain unchallenged in a corrupt and pliant media – and now increasingly in universities, supposedly institutional bastions of free enquiry. The vulgar communalisation of political thought whereby an ethnic or religious minority community is deemed to have a single political viewpoint which can mystically be accessed by consulting an approved ‘representative’ is a symptom of the creeping intellectual collapse overtaking our society
Indeed the myth that all Jews support zionism is at present the greatest driver of antisemitism.
For it is an agreed principle that to hold every Jew responsible for Israel’s actions is antisemitic. Yet if it is asserted that all Jews support zionism then it is indeed tempting for the uninformed to conclude that all Jews are at the least complicit in the actions of Israel. Such a conclusion may appear particularly natural since Israel, unlike any other state, vociferously proclaims itself to be the nation state of world Jewry and not just of those who are citizens of Israel.
4. Amidst the horror of the current genocide, we demand that the University cancel the present debate and organise instead a debate featuring eminent academic historians or political scientists, both Palestinian and Jewish, on the proposition that
“Political zionism is incompatible with self-determination for the Palestinian people”
The truth is that ‘liberal’ zionist ideology, which was always contradictory, has finally collapsed into naked ethnic supremacism. For that reason zionists now strenuously avoid debating such a fundamental question. However for that very reason we must press the University to organise precisely that debate to broadcast to the world in order to expose the naked racism of the zionist settler colonial project.
Source:skwawkbox.org
https://skwawkbox.org/2024/11/05/video-zionist-thugs-invade-jewish-anti-genocide-demo-and-muslim-woman-dragged-out-of-debate/
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Women's education influences fertility rates in sub-Saharan Africa
5-NOV-2024
How does education affect women's desire to have children? In a new study, researchers from IIASA, the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR), the University of Vienna and the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital, examined how women's education affects fertility rates in sub-Saharan Africa.
The researchers developed a new method for forecasting education-specific fertility trends. The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), finds a strong empirical correlation between higher levels of female education and lower fertility rates.
“We developed a fertility forecasting model based on education levels that supports population planning and social development strategies. It gives a clear picture of fertility trends and enables more accurate predictions,” says IIASA alumna SarojaAdhikari, study lead author and postdoctoral researcher at MPIDR.
The specific innovation of this paper is to show that it is not only the education of the individual women that matters, but also the average education of the environment in which the women live. Higher average educational attainment is significantly correlated with lower ideal family size and lower actual fertility for women in each separate education category. This holds across a wide range of geographical and temporal contexts.
"Our study shows that educated women are leading the shift towards smaller family sizes in high-fertility communities, even influencing the choices of women with less education around them. This insight is now part of a new population forecasting model, giving policymakers better tools to understand how women’s education can shape future population trends and drive sustainable development across Africa," says IIASA alumnus EndaleKebede, a postdoctoral teaching and research associate at the University of Vienna and the Wittgenstein Centre, who is one of the study coauthors.
The research team used data from 138 demographic and health surveys conducted in 39 sub-Saharan African countries between 1986 and 2022. The model explicitly takes into account individual educational attainment and general educational background, without relying on subjective assumptions. The results are also highly relevant to climate change research, as forecasts based on education levels are increasingly used to assess societies' capacity to adapt to climate change.
Results reveal that education programs for women can play a key role in reducing fertility rates and thus helping to cope with rapid population growth in Africa. Improving women's education levels could therefore accelerate fertility decline and thus contribute to better population control and socio-economic development.
“While it's well known that educating women helps drive demographic change, this paper shows an added effect: women with less education often follow the behaviors and norms of more educated women in their community. The paper also uses this effect to create the first model for predicting fertility trends based on education levels,” emphasizes Wolfgang Lutz, study coauthor and IIASA Distinguished Emeritus Research Scholar.
Adhikari reiterates that their results could significantly contribute to designing family planning programs and policies.
Adapted from a press release prepared by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research.
Source:eurekalert.org
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1063757
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UN reports graduation of 20 women from two-year midwifery program in Daykundi
By Fidel Rahmati
November 6, 2024
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced that 20 women have graduated from a two-year midwifery program in Daykundi province.
On Tuesday, November 5, UNHCR shared on its X page that the program aims to “combat the high maternal and child mortality rates.”
According to UNHCR, this initiative is supported by the European Union and the “Watan Social and Technical Services Institute.”
The organization also announced the launch of a new training program for another group of midwives.
Previously, the UNHCR in Afghanistan reported the completion of a second midwifery training course for girls in Bamyan province.
Afghanistan continues to have one of the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the world.
According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 24 mothers and 167 newborns die every day in Afghanistan.
Despite the challenging conditions, these midwives are committed to reducing the high rates of maternal and child mortality in the country.
Programs like these play a crucial role in improving healthcare access in rural areas, potentially saving thousands of lives and empowering women with valuable skills.
This comes amid restrictions on women’s employment and education beyond sixth grade, as well as a dire humanitarian crisis and widespread poverty in Afghanistan.
Source:khaama.com
https://www.khaama.com/un-reports-graduation-of-20-women-from-two-year-midwifery-program-in-daykundi/
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Woman killed, son injured as lorries collide on PLUS near Bidor
06 Nov 2024
IPOH, Nov 6 — A woman was killed and her son injured yesterday afternoon when the lorry they were traveling in collided with a timber-laden lorry at KM350.3 on the northbound side of the North-South Expressway (PLUS) near Bidor.
Perak Fire and Rescue Department (JBPM) assistant director of Operations SabaroziNor Ahmad said an emergency call was received at 4.55 pm, following which seven firefighters and two fire engines were dispatched to the scene.
“The accident involved a three-ton Mitsubishi lorry carrying shoes rear-ending a five-ton UD Nissan lorry loaded with timber.
“A 36-year-old woman was confirmed dead by the Ministry of Health team, while her eight-year-old son suffered a broken leg. The driver of the Mitsubishi lorry (the victim’s 36-year-old husband) was unharmed,” he said in a statement last night.
He said the driver of the UD Nissan lorry was also reported safe. — Bernama
Source:malaymail.com
https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2024/11/06/woman-killed-son-injured-as-lorries-collide-on-plus-near-bidor/155972
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