In First for Arab Woman, Ghaida Rinawie Zoabi, Appointed Israeli Consul General In Shanghai
New Age Islam News Bureau
23 February 2022
• Hijab Row in India: 'Wearing Hijab Doesn't Make Muslim Women Oppressed'
• Girls Education in Jeopardy Due To Sexual Crimes at
Educational Institutions in Pakistan
• Muslim Women Journalists in India Decry Rising
Threats
• Turkey’s Female Journalists under Attack from the
State
• ‘I Feel Free When I Run’: The Young Women Enjoying a
Sense of Freedom in Iraq
• IUML's First Woman Candidate in Chennai Corporation
Fathima Muzaffer Scores A Win
• As Kuwait Cracks Down, a Battle Erupts Over Women's
Rights
Compiled by New
Age Islam News Bureau
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/arab-woman-ghaida-rinawie-zoabi-shanghai/d/126434
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In First for Arab Woman, Ghaida Rinawie Zoabi,
Appointed Israeli Consul General In Shanghai
Ghaida Rinawie Zoabi at
the Knesset, last year.Credit: Knesset
-----
February 23, 2022
Lawmaker Ghaida Rinawie Zoabi, of the dovish Meretz
party, was appointed Israel’s Consul General in Shanghai, China, on Tuesday,
the first Arab woman to head an Israeli diplomatic mission.
While the move was hailed as an important step in
advancing members of Israel’s Arab minority, it was largely seen as an effort
to get Zoabi out of the Knesset, where she has undermined the stability of the
coalition on several occasions.
“MK Rinawie Zoabi comes with rich managerial
experience and a diverse and impressive economic and public service
background,” Foreign Affairs Minister Yair Lapid said in a statement announcing
the appointment.
“I wish her success, and I’m sure that she will lead
Israel’s Consulate General in Shanghai to new and important achievements,” he
added, noting “the importance of China in general and of Shanghai in particular
to the global economy.”
“Our economic ties with China are an important growth
engine for the Israeli economy and must continue to be promoted,” he said.
Thanking Lapid, Zoabi said it was a “great privilege
to be the first Arab woman to serve in such a senior diplomatic role.”
She said she was “pleased to be able to contribute to
the important task of strengthening our economic, commercial, and cultural
cooperation with one of Israel’s most significant economic partners.”
While Lapid and Zoabi both highlighted the importance
of China to Israel’s economy, sources said the move was more about internal
politics.
Zoabi has been a thorn in the side of the coalition,
which rules by a razor-thin majority, withholding her vote on several occasions
to torpedo key legislation, including a recent bill on conscripting the
ultra-Orthodox.
With Zoabi heading to China, she will be replaced in
the Knesset by Kati Piasecki, currently a member of the Bat Yam City Council.
“Lapid took action to improve the chances of making it
to the rotation and reduce the risks along the way,” a source involved in the
decision told the Haaretz website, referring to Lapid becoming prime minister
under a coalition rotation agreement with Naftali Bennett.
“This move was a win-win for Lapid,” another source
said told Haaretz. “He promoted an Arab woman to a senior diplomatic post, and
he also got a worthy new MK in the Knesset, Kati Piasecki, who will strengthen
the coalition instead of undermining it.”
Zoabi has also voiced strong opposition to military
operations carried out by Israel.
Last year, following an exchange of fire between the
Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon, and the Israel Defense Forces,
she said “[Prime Minister Naftali Bennett] knows that if the government goes to
a military confrontation, the coalition will fall because Meretz and Ra’am will
not agree to such a thing.”
She added: “My position is very clear. I support peace
and I strive for peace, and for me, peace is not just a slogan.”
Nevertheless, Zoabi is expected to face unique
challenges in her role, as China’s growing economy is forcing Israel to
reposition itself politically and economically with the rising superpower.
Data published by Israel’s National Bureau of
Statistics in January indicated that in 2021 China became Israel’s largest
source of imports, surpassing even the United States.
Israel imported $10.7 billion in goods from China
throughout 2021, compared with $7.7 billion the previous year, a nearly
40-percent increase.
Recently, Israel and China held a joint committee on
innovation cooperation, led by Lapid and China’s Vice President Wang Qishan.
The committee agreed to a three-year plan to regulate cooperation and
government-to-government dialogue between the countries through 2024.
While gradually strengthening ties with Beijing, the
Israeli government has also notified the Biden administration that it will keep
the White House in the loop regarding significant deals it strikes with China
and is prepared to reexamine such agreements if the US, Israel’s closest ally,
raises opposition.
Zoabi, 49, is a prominent activist for Arab Israeli
rights and businesswoman who served as executive director of the Injaz Center
for Professional Arab Local Governance. She was named in 2018 as one of the 50
most influential women in Israel by Forbes. Zoabi made headlines ahead of
entering the Knesset when she told the Kul al-Arab network that she’d abstain
in a vote banning gay conversion therapy “out of respect” for the Arab public
from which she came. Later that day, the party released a video of a somber
Zoabi assuring voters that she would in fact support such legislation and back
every effort in support of LGBT equality.
Source: Times Of Israel
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Hijab Row in India: 'Wearing Hijab Doesn't Make Muslim
Women Oppressed'
Muslim women say they feel
angry having to explain their choice to wear the hijab (photo: BBC)
-----
February 23, 2022
MUMBAI — Nabeela Shaikh was 30 when she started
wearing the hijab. She was the last of three sisters to take to it.
The eldest, Muzna, first wore it when she was eight,
inspired by a cousin. She would then wear it depending on the company around
her - until, she says, she realized she couldn't "please everyone".
The youngest, Sarah, reached for it at the
"lowest point" in her life when her dream of becoming a surgeon was
dashed by low exam scores. "It started with things like praying on
time," she says. "The hijab came later and it came naturally."
Born to two doctors, the sisters grew up in India's
coastal metropolis, Mumbai. Their mother still doesn't cover her head. But when
they do, they say, people assume it's out of compulsion.
The hijab is widely worn in India, where public
displays of faith are common - but last month, schoolgirls in Karnataka state
protested over being barred from wearing it in class and spotlighted the
headscarf like never before.
The question - whether Muslim girls have the right to
wear the hijab to class - is now in court. The row has sparked violence,
divided campuses and stopped a number of Muslim girls in Karnataka from
attending classes.
The BBC spoke to Muslim women across India who say
they feel angry about the "intrusive nature" of the debate.
"We are constantly reminded that to be accepted,
we must give up our religion," said one woman from Delhi. What is drowned
out by the public outcry, they say, is the intensely personal nature of their
choice.
Those who choose to wear the hijab say it is not
solely a religious decision, but one born out of reflection. And those who
choose not to wear it say their hair is not a barometer for their faith.
"People don't understand how one can feel
empowered by wearing a headscarf," Nabeela says, laughing. "It
confuses them so they judge us."
Oppressed is a word commonly hurled at women wearing
the hijab - but many point out that refusing to take into account why they do
so is not liberating either, and neither is keeping girls out of school because
they refuse to remove it.
"Young Muslim women are out on the streets
protesting for their rights. And you're still telling me that [these] women
can't think for themselves?" said 27-year-old Naq from the southern city
of Bangalore, who goes by her first name only.
When Naq decided to take up the hijab five years ago,
she says she encountered "the weirdest" reactions.
"My veil unveiled a lot of people's
mind-sets," she says. "People would hiss at me: Are you oppressed?
Are you feeling hot? What shampoo do you use? Some people asked me if I even
had hair - they thought I had cancer."
For her, the hijab was also a sartorial experiment -
she sees glamour in every drape and drama in the colours.
"People think my hijab is at odds with my trendy
clothes and makeup. But it's not," she says. "If I step into a room,
I want people to look at me and think, that's a Muslim women achieving her
goals, traveling the world, and is flourishing."
Other Muslim women - like Wafa Khatheeja Rahman, a
lawyer in the southern city of Mangalore - say not wearing the hijab does not
make them any less Muslim.
"I didn't wear it because it does not align with
who I am - and no one can tell me to wear it," she says. "But just
like that, nobody can tell me I shouldn't wear one either."
Wafa's mother never wore the hijab either - but she
says she grew up with faith all around her, listening to stories of not just
the Prophet but also women in Islam.
"The Prophet's first wife was a businesswoman,
while the second rode into battle on a camel. So, are we really as oppressed as
the world wants us to believe?" she asks.
There was a time when Falak Abbas hated the thought of
covering her hair, an unusual choice in Varanasi, a conservative northern city.
But she was 16 when she saw Malala Yousafzai, the
Pakistani Nobel Prize winner, on TV and changed her mind.
"Her head was covered, but she sounded so
powerful. I got inspired and decided to cover my head too."
Her convent school objected, saying the hijab clashed
with the uniform, which was a long tunic and trousers.
Falak alleges that for three days she was barred from
class - she even missed a biology exam. When she protested, the school called
her parents and accused her of misbehaving.
"They said, if I wear a hijab, it will cause
problems not just for me but also the school as everyone will find out I am
Muslim," she recalls. "What's wrong in being a Muslim?"
But she relented after her parents told her not to
"jeopardise her education over the hijab".
Eight years on, watching the scenes from Karnataka,
she says she is once again overcome with "deep anger".
Khadeeja Mangat, from the southern state of Kerala, is
also indignant over the scrutiny.
Her school banned the hijab overnight in 1997 - the
ban was later overturned, but Khadeeja wonders what will happen in Karnataka.
"Everything is in front of you - the
constitution, its values and our voices," she says. "Yet we are made
to relentlessly defend ourselves, even at the cost of our education."
'The way people see you can be really consuming'
While the court hearing is ostensibly focused on
wearing the hijab in the classroom, Muslim women are anxious about how the
verdict will play out in a highly polarised India under Prime Minister Narendra
Modi's Hindu nationalist government.
Simeen Ansar, from the southern city of Hyderabad,
says the hijab is being turned into a subversive symbol for "political
gains".
"I grew up with Hindu girls who covered their
legs under their school skirts, a fact that seemed no more remarkable to me at
the time than seeing Sikh boys wearing turbans," she says.
"But when it comes to the hijab, Muslim women are
reduced to binaries. I am traditional and oppressed if I wear one, modern and
liberated if I don't."
She says she and her sister started wearing the hijab,
but gave it up soon after because their choice was never completely accepted.
While her sister faced discrimination at work, Simeen
says people gawked at her in places where they didn't expect to see a
hijab-clad woman - the gym, a bar or a party.
"The way people see you can be really
consuming," she says.
And this is a fear echoed by many Muslim women - that
now more than ever, the hijab is all that people will see.
It's an anxiety that is making Wafa, who doesn't even
wear the headscarf, follow the hearing closely.
"Even when I'm at work, I put on my earphones and
follow the [court] proceedings," she says.
She is worried how this will affect friends and family
who do wear the headscarf.
"You take away my hijab, what's next? My name is
still Arabic. Will I have to change that too to get respect from you?" —
BBC
Source: Saudi Gazette
https://saudigazette.com.sa/article/617421
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Girls education in jeopardy due to sexual crimes at
educational institutions in Pakistan
Feb 23, 2022
ISLAMABAD: Recent cases of sexual harassment and
murder of medical students in Sindh province of Pakistan shed light on the
threat faced by young women pursuing higher education in the country, local
media reported.
These 'mysterious' cases also reflect how the supposed
safe environment of schools, colleges and universities is marred by the
'narrow-minded sexual sensibilities', The Friday Times reported.
Institutions turning blind eye to horrific incidents
of sexual offences against women as seen in the case of Parveen Rind, a nursing
house officer at People's University of Medical and Health Sciences For Women
(PUMHSW), is more disappointing.
Rind, who had accused three varsity officials of
sexual harassment and physical torture against her, received an apathetic
response from the authorities. However, it was only after an outcry from social
media activists that Sindh authorities ordered a probe into her allegations,
the publication reported.
In another incident, the University of Balochistan
(UoB) attracted media attention in 2020 after allegations of sexual harassment
faced by some students.
Sexual harassment was rampant on the UoB campus,
especially for Hazara girls studying there, the media outlet reported, quoting
an investigative report by Dwan.
According to the report, a few young women faced
several displeasing and uncomfortable remarks from their professor while they
were sitting in his office to discuss studies.
"You look red like a pomegranate. So let me order
pomegranate juice for you," the Hazara student recalled the professor as
saying, according to the report.
"He did that because he knew he could get away
with it. He even kissed her in front of us," the report quoted the student
as saying.
It is ironic that these universities establish
anti-harassment cells comprising of individuals whose own knowledge of
harassment watchdog is very limited and do not know how to investigate such
matters. And thus, these cases are obscured into darkness until social media
steps in.
The modus-operandi of educational institutions dealing
with sexual harassment has been to hide the incidents to save their reputation,
The Friday Times reported, adding it is because of their unprofessional
handling of such crimes that assaulters and predators thrive.
Source: Times Of India
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Muslim Women Journalists in India Decry Rising Threats
February 22, 2022
Arshi Qureshi was "auctioned" on the Bulli
Bai app, where many Muslim women and girls were offered "for sale,"
and even though the app was shut down after widespread condemnation,
intimidation and online trolling against her have not ceased.
"I am quite often abused on social media if I put
up a tweet or post criticizing the ruling regime," Qureshi told VOA.
As a journalist, Qureshi says, it's her job to report
on social and political issues affecting her country, India, but she finds
doing so increasingly difficult and risky.
"I've realized I can't be silent. This is what
they want. They want to silence vocal Muslim women's voices," she said.
Qureshi's is not the only case.
This week, United Nations-appointed independent rights
experts issued a statement calling on Indian authorities to stop systematic
harassment against a prominent Indian Muslim journalist.
"Relentless misogynistic and sectarian attacks
online against journalist Rana Ayyub must be promptly and thoroughly investigated
by the Indian authorities and the judicial harassment against her brought to an
end at once," the statement said.
Ayyub has been targeted for her consistent reporting
on women's rights, government accountability and the situation of religious minorities
in India.
"They call our existence, our reportage, our
opinions as insignificant but unleash all their favorite anchors, prime time
shows, twitter trends, right wing ecosystem, propaganda websites and leaders to
defend themselves against a journalist," Ayyub wrote on Twitter on
Tuesday.
Media under fire
Over the past few years, India has ranked as one of
the most dangerous and restrictive countries for journalists in the world.
Of the 27 journalists killed in different parts of the
world in 2021, five documented deaths occurred in India, according to the
Committee to Protect Journalists.
And despite its secular and democratic status, India
is ranked 142nd — next to Myanmar and Pakistan — in the Reporters Without
Borders (RSF) 2021 World Press Freedom Index.
"Ever since the general elections in the spring
of 2019, won overwhelmingly by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata
Party, pressure has increased on the media to toe the Hindu nationalist
government's line," RSF said.
In addition to facing increased public harassment,
Muslim journalists, particularly women, are also exposed to discrimination at
their workplaces.
"Even within the large Indian media companies,
there is kind of a glass ceiling for many Muslim journalists, that they had been
discriminated against inside many of the big publications," Steven Butler,
Asia program coordinator at CPJ, told VOA.
The risks facing free media in India also undermine
the country's democratic institutions.
"You cannot have democracy without freedom of the
press," Butler said.
Majoritarian politics
India is the world's most populous democracy, and
about 14% of its 1.4 billion people are Muslim, but human rights groups say the
country has become increasingly intolerant and at times even threatening toward
them.
These groups blame the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP), including Modi, for stoking Hindu-Muslim tensions.
"The BJP government at both central and state
levels have adopted laws and policies that discriminate against minorities and
vulnerable communities, especially Muslims," Jayshree Bajoria, a senior
researcher with Human Rights Watch, told VOA.
As millions of Indians cast votes in seven state
legislative elections, including in the most populous state, Uttar Pradesh,
some Hindu religious groups have reportedly stoked religious sentiments for
political gains.
In recent weeks, BJP political rallies have included
threats of mass violence against Muslims, and some party leaders have labelled
Muslims as terrorists.
And a new law banning Muslim girls from wearing hijabs
at educational centres has led to protests and closures of schools in the
southern Indian state of Karnataka.
The hijab ban "is the latest example of Indian
authorities increasingly seeking to marginalize Muslims, exposing them to
heightened violence," Bajoria said.
For the journalist Qureshi, the fight for hijab is not
just religious.
"Hijabi Muslim women are fighting for their
constitutional right — rights that are being snatched away in a democratic
country," she told VOA.
While Modi has not publicly commented on his party's
policies regarding Indian Muslims, he claimed at an election rally this month
to have the blessings of Muslim women.
Modi was quoted in Indian media as saying: "We
freed Muslim sisters from the tyranny of triple talaq (divorce). When Muslim
sisters started supporting the BJP openly, these vote mongers became uneasy.
They are trying to stop Muslim daughters from progress. Our government stands
with Muslim women."
Source: VOA News
https://www.voanews.com/a/muslim-women-journalists-in-india-decry-rising-threats-/6454992.html
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Turkey’s female journalists under attack from the
state
By ALEXANDRA DE CRAMER
FEBRUARY 22, 2022
Journalism is in peril in Turkey, a country that is
becoming known more for its jailed journalists than the quality of their
reporting. Increasingly, though, it is Turkey’s female journalists, once the
frontline defenders of Turkish media freedom, who are in the crosshairs. From
institutional bias to the government’s repressive gender policies, being a
woman in the Turkish news business is a thankless, and often costly, endeavor.
Two years ago, the story read differently. In December
2020, the Turkish edition of Madame Figaro featured “The Jedi Women of the
Fourth Estate” – five successful female journalists who were fighting the
industry’s dark forces.
Not only had these women established themselves in
Turkey’s male chauvinistic media ecosystem, but they were still airing critical
views despite an expanding bubble of censorship that was granted a legislative
boost after a failed coup attempt in 2016.
Fast-forward to 2022, and at least three of the five
“Jedis of journalism” have appeared to become casualties of Turkey’s war on the
press.
Last month, journalist and television presenter Sedef
Kabas – the first Turk ever hired by CNN International – was detained for
allegedly insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Her crime: Reciting a
proverb about a bull, a palace, and a barn on television.
With a disproportionate show of force, Kabas’ home was
raided at 2am and she was taken into custody. Prosecutors have demanded an
11-year jail term.
After the sudden arrest, fellow Madame Figaro “Jedi”
Ozlem Gurses reported the arrest on social media, lamenting the fate of her
colleague.
Since the cover shoot, each of the three other women
featured by Madame Figaro have left their positions.
Ahu Ozyurt, a Columbia Journalism School graduate with
more than 30 years of experience in news, lost her job at TV100 in a round of
layoffs. Tuluhan Tekelioglu left her job as a television anchorwoman to pursue
documentary filmmaking. Even Esra Aysan, the editor-in-chief of Madame Figaro
who brought the women together, has left the magazine.
“My heart is breaking,” Gurses wrote on Instagram.
“All of us are educated, smart, conscientious, hard-working, strong women. The
outcome should have somehow been different.”
Even in more emancipated countries, women are
underrepresented and underpaid in the media landscape, especially in executive
positions. In the United States, 73% of the top management jobs in the media
sector are held by men. The gender gap seems hardest to bridge at the top
echelons of liberal journalism. At The New York Times, for instance, two out of
every three bylines are by men.
It was only after the #MeToo movement that Western
media warmed up to the idea of female executives. In 2019, the Financial Times
appointed its first female editor-in-chief, Roula Khalaf, in its 131-year
history. In 2015, Katharine Viner broke the glass ceiling at the 194-year-old
The Guardian, and Zanny Minton Beddoes became the first female editor at The
Economist in its 170 years.
If it took this long for women in the West to ascend
to the highest rungs of the media ladder, how can one expect Turkey’s female
journalists to get there sooner?
Still, the gendered headwinds that Turkish journalists
must navigate are particularly fierce. Turkey ranks 133rd out of 156 countries
for gender equality, according to the World Economic Forum, and women make up
less than one-third of Turkey’s labor force.
Meanwhile, President Erdogan has pursued policies that
have infuriated women’s rights activists, lawyers, and opposition politicians.
He has gone on record saying that women are not equal to men and has accused
feminists of rejecting motherhood. Last year, he annulled Turkey’s ratification
of the Istanbul Convention on violence against women, bending to hardliners.
All of this translates to a dismal showing for women
in Turkey’s media industry. In 2014, the Bianet news agency found that 90% of
newspaper editors-in-chief were men, and just 16% of newsroom executives were
women.
Further analysis conducted in 2020 by Yunus Erduran
and Dilek Icten, for the Media Research Association (MEDAR), found that 20% of
employees in print media, and 16% in television, are women.
Moreover, a February 2018 survey of the Journalists’
Union of Turkey’s Women and LGBTI Commission, found that six in 10 female
journalists have been discriminated against because of their gender, and more
than 55% believe they are victims of unequal pay.
It’s hard not to conclude that Turkey’s leaders have
no interest in reversing these trends. Months before the withdrawal from the
Istanbul Convention, a report prepared by the Coalition for Women in Journalism
(CFWIJ) ranked Turkey first in the world for violence against female
journalists.
Even more troubling, CFWIJ found a 158% spike in
police violence against women in the news, a horrific uptick that can only be
read as the state deliberately targeting female journalists.
Legal harassment and intimidation by the state have
become daily hazards for journalists in Turkey, and in 2021, 18 journalists
were behind bars (down from 84 in 2016). Sedef Kabas is one of the state’s most
recent victims.
The government’s position is clear: Journalists who
speak their minds have no place in today’s Turkey, and that goes double for
women.
Source: Asia Times
https://asiatimes.com/2022/02/turkeys-female-journalists-under-attack-from-the-state/
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‘I Feel Free When I Run’: The Young Women Enjoying a
Sense of Freedom in Iraq
Jessie Williams
22 Feb 2022
The mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan are edged with a
tangerine glow as our minibus drives past them. We set off earlier from Erbil,
the region’s capital, and are driving to Shaqlawa, a historic city about 50
minutes away, to hike up the nearby Safeen Mountain. Inside the minibus, a
group of teenage girls are playing their favourite songs.
The teenagers live with their families in one of
Erbil’s two main camps for internally displaced people (IDPs), Baharka and
Harsham, having fled Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, and surrounding towns
such as Tal Afar and Sinjar, when the area was captured by ISIS in 2014. The
hike has been organised by Free to Run, an NGO that supports and empowers women
and girls in regions of conflict through sport, offering them life-skills
training, and creating safe spaces for them to develop confidence and friends,
and to reclaim public space in a country where women’s rights are lacking.
War magnifies existing inequalities and makes women
and girls, in particular, vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. The girls at
Free to Run have lived through two: the Iraq War (2003-2011), and the war with
ISIS (2014-2017). They’ve not only suffered the trauma of having to flee their
homes. Many have lost loved ones and missed out on education. Now they are
stuck in a cycle of poverty.
Free to Run was established in 2014 and the executive
director is Taylor Smith, an American human-rights advocate. The programme has
enrolled 30 girls from Baharka and Harsham this year alone. Smith told me that
due to their age, backgrounds, and socioeconomic status as IDPs, the girls
“struggle more with access to public life, the ability to play sports, and
autonomy over their own bodies”. In their home towns, many of the programme’s
participants were only allowed to play sport until they reached puberty, “at
which point communities and families said it was inappropriate for them to
continue”.
Faiza, who is 15, is one of the more confident girls
participating in the Free to Run programme, and despite her gentle demeanour,
her favourite sport is kickboxing, which the programme teaches. (Some names
have been changed, to protect identities.) “Kickboxing isn’t just a form of
exercise for me,” she says when we meet at her home. “It is a way to live my
dreams.” Before she enrolled in Free to Run two years ago she was shy and
withdrawn. “Even when someone said, ‘hi,’ I didn’t like to say ‘hi’ back. But
now I feel stronger, like I can protect myself.”
Faiza lives in Baharka Camp, along with 2,700 other
children, plus their families. The camp sits on a flat plain; Erbil rises out
of the dust in the distance. When I visit, boys climb on the wire fence that
surrounds the camp on its perimeter; all around there are tents and concrete
blocks. When she’s not at school, Faiza helps her mother to clean their home,
plays with Barbie dolls, and has started learning new languages. She has lived
in the camp for several years; she left her home town when it was destroyed by
Isis. “I feel sorry for my family,” she tells me. “I wish to get more money so
I can buy a house for them and live in Erbil city, because I don’t like to stay
in the camp. But we are forced to stay here – it is the only way.”
She describes her Iraqi home town as being “like a
prison,” and says she wouldn’t want to return even if she could. “People there
are stricter and more religious,” she tells me. If she were to leave her home
without a hijab, she would be reprimanded. “Even running – they wouldn’t let me
do it.” If she ever returns, she says, she “won’t be able to fulfil any of my
dreams”.
She goes to get ready for school. When she returns,
she is dressed in a white dress and a black hijab, and she is wearing a hint of
red lipstick. She asks to have her photo taken for her ID. Last year, her
father died of Covid – he was 37 – and before that Faiza’s grandfather was
kidnapped and killed by Isis. She is the family’s eldest daughter, and now she
is expected to marry quickly.
Child marriage is illegal in Kurdistan – Iraqi law
states the minimum age for marriage is 18 – though it is still common and
widespread. But some are fighting against this. Shaimaa, now 24, was one of the
first girls to enrol with Free to Run, in 2018. She had divorced her husband,
whom she married in 2015, aged 17, and who was abusive. Ashamed of Shaimaa’s
decision to divorce, her family shunned her. One uncle beat her. But she
persevered, eventually finding sanctuary in sports, particularly running, for
which she has won numerous medals for.
She began encouraging other displaced women and girls
to sign up to Free to Run, spreading the word around Baharka Camp, where she
lived, before becoming a coach for the programme and working with Save The
Children on local projects. In 2020, she moved out of the camp and into an
apartment nearby. “I feel free when I run, far from prisons and war,” she said
in an interview with Time Magazine last year. “I feel like there are no limits
and nothing to stop me.”
Nine girls from the Free to Run programme, including
Faiza and her neighbour, Laila, are taking part in the hike up Safeen
Mmountain. Pine trees and apple trees dot the trail, which is steep and
difficult in parts – loose stones make it slippery. A passing male hiker stops
to say it is “too difficult for girls”, but the girls ignore him and continue
upwards. Juan, Free to Run’s programme officer, a friendly Kurdish woman, leads
the hike. She says the girls see her as not just their “second mother”, but
also as their friend. It makes her proud to see the progress they make, she
says. “Before [enrolling in Free to Run] they were depressed – I could see it
in their faces. But month by month they started changing.”
We reach a cave, and the girls immediately start
climbing the rocks and taking photos of each other. “[During the Free to Run
programme] we learned not to be afraid any more,” says Wafaa, 16, as they tuck
into their snacks. “Before, when we went to these places, we were afraid, and
now we see it’s very normal and easy.” Hiba, a 14-year-old girl, adds
philosophically: “Hiking is like life. It is challenging, but it is better to
go through these challenges and get to the other end.”
Hiba lived in Mosul under the thumb of Isis, only
leaving once the city was liberated following a lengthy battle in 2017. Her
school was destroyed by the fighting, and her parents didn’t allow her to leave
the house. “I just used to play inside my home with my sister and brother,” she
says. “I was so scared I felt like I wanted to die – I wanted to get away from
all these feelings. When I left my home in Mosul and came to Baharka Camp, all
the way I felt scared that something bad would happen. But when I arrived in
Erbil I could feel the freedom, like a big weight on my chest was lifted.”
One of the other girls, Bushra, is particularly
boisterous, climbing and running around. Juan says she is always hyperactive
and sometimes gets into trouble for it. The 16-year-old didn’t have any friends
before joining Free to Run. “My mum used to ask me: ‘Why don’t you go out like
other girls?’” she says. “I didn’t like to meet anyone, not even my relatives
when they came to my home. My friends at Free to Run are the most wonderful
thing that has ever happened to me.”
Bushra is from Mosul, and lived under Isis from 2014
to 2016. “I miss Mosul because I miss my dad – all my memories of him are
there.” Bushra’s father was killed in 2016 by the terrorist group while he was
fighting in the Iraqi army. A photo of him is stuck to a wall in their home in
Harsham Camp, with a bouquet of fake flowers next to it. Although they receive
financial compensation from the government, it is not enough, says her mother,
who works as a cleaner at the school in the camp. Bushra’s extended family
wanted her to stop school and marry her 16-year-old cousin, but Bushra refused,
and her mother supported the decision. “I try to encourage my daughter to study
in order to get a good job in the future and become independent,” she explains,
sitting next to Bushra on the floor of their home. “I got married so young,
when I was 15 years old. I don’t want my daughter to live the same life as me.
I became a widow at 24, and had to provide for my family. I don’t want her to
clean the same school that I clean now.” Bushra says she would like to be a
lawyer when she’s older. “I want to help others who have been through a similar
thing to us,” she tells me. “It is painful whenever we go to the government to
ask for any help.”
There are 294 families inside Harsham Camp, including
811 children, who have little to do during the day when they are not at school,
which only lasts a few hours. Mostly they play on the roads, though there have
been accidents. Children have been hit by cars, says Alva Aied Ali, the Harsham
Camp manager. When the government electricity runs out – power cuts are frequent
– there is no back-up generator to keep the electricity going in the camp’s
primary and secondary school. “Since the end of the war a lot of NGOs have
withdrawn their support from the camp, so we are struggling,” says Aied Ali.
“Living in this camp is a bad situation and,
especially for the children. It is like a prison. So [Free to Run] is a good
opportunity for them to get away from the camp,” says Ayad, a serious-looking
man with a thick black moustache. He is the father of Tagreed, 16, who joined
Free to Run a year ago. We meet them at their home in Harsham Camp, where
Tagreed lives with her parents, two sisters and four brothers. She enjoys the
group’s “team spirit,” she says, and loves running – they train four times a
week in a local park in Erbil and ran a 10k race in November. She hopes to run
the Erbil Marathon in May 2022.
“I would not let my daughter carry on running when she
stops the Free to Run programme, not because of me but because of the society
inside the camp,” says Ayad. “Most of them are religious, strict people, so
they will talk about my daughter if she goes out alone, even to the market or
running. Even though she is young, people in the camp think that women should
just go out for one reason – just to go to her husband’s house and to get
married, nothing else.”
However, both Ayad and Diana, his wife, are adamant
that Tagreed should finish her schooling. “I don’t care what society says, I
will make all my children continue their education. I don’t want them to marry
early – it is against my values,” says Diana.
Tagreed tells me that she wants to keep running, no
matter what. “Even if the community don’t like me running in the park, I don’t
care; I feel strong and I will continue with my running.” The girls have
overcome many obstacles; they have many more to face in the future. Their
horizons may have broadened since joining Free to Run, but a lot still depends
on the willingness of their families and wider community to give them the right
to control their own futures. I ask Juan if she thinks there is change in the
air when it comes to the patriarchal culture that is still so ingrained. “It
cannot change 180 degrees,” she says, “but actually I see it is changing 60 or
70 degrees, and that is good.”
On the drive back from the hike the girls stand up in
the minibus and clap to the music, before deciding that is not enough. We pull
over and they teach me some Arabic dance moves on the side of a road. Wafaa
takes my hand and we dance in a circle, Bushra shakes her hips to the music, Laila
claps, Hiba sways, and Faiza waves her hands in the air. Juan watches, laughing
and clapping along. Even the occasional beep from a passing car won’t deter
them.
Source: The Guardian
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IUML's First Woman Candidate In Chennai Corporation
Fathima Muzaffer Scores A Win
22nd February 2022
CHENNAI: The woman, who led numerous anti-CAA protests
in Chennai, AS Fathima Muzaffer from the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML)-DMK
alliance emerged victorious in ward 61 of the Chennai Corporation on Tuesday by
a huge margin of votes.
After five and a half decades, IUML's own symbol
(ladder) was used and this is the first time in the history of the party that a
woman candidate has contested in Chennai.
Notably, Fathima's father, Abdul Samad, an ex-Member
of Parliament, won from the Harbour area during the 1958 urban local body
polls. Fathima bagged 6,347 of 11,443 votes in her ward.
"It is a historic moment for IUML as we contested
only from one ward and won. This is a silent answer to the ongoing hijab
fiasco. Also, this is my first political campaign. I have been a social
activist largely and hope to do the same as a councillor -- serve the
public," said Fathima, who is also the national president of IUML's
women's wing.
With numerous colleges, a prestigious stadium and four
slums in her ward, Fathima says she wishes to bridge the gap between the elite
and downtrodden.
"I want to implement a lot of youth programmes.
Since this ward has good population of youth, it is crucial. Apart from this,
social equality and communal harmony will always be at the forefront."
Fathima's family has been in politics for three
generations.
Her grandfather, Moulana Abdul Hameed Baqavi was a
freedom fighter and reportedly the first person to translate the holy Quran
into Tamil.
She has also won a lot of awards in the field of
social service for her work on women's empowerment and education, especially in
the Muslim community.
Source: New Indian Express
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As Kuwait cracks down, a battle erupts over women's
rights
FEBRUARY 21, 2022
The Kuwaiti Government has canceled a women’s yoga
retreat this month in the latest flashpoint of a long-running culture war over
women’s freedoms in the Gulf Arab sheikhdom
When an instructor in Kuwait this month advertised a
desert wellness yoga retreat, conservatives declared it an assault on Islam.
Lawmakers and clerics thundered about the “danger” and depravity of women doing
the lotus position and downward dog in public, ultimately persuading
authorities to ban the trip.
The yoga ruckus represented just the latest flashpoint
in a long-running culture war over women’s behavior in the sheikhdom, where
tribes and Islamists wield growing power over a divided society. Increasingly,
conservative politicians push back against a burgeoning feminist movement and
what they see as an unravelling of Kuwait's traditional values amid deep
governmental dysfunction on major issues.
“Our state is backsliding and regressing at a rate
that we haven’t seen before,” feminist activist Najeeba Hayat recently told The
Associated Press from the grassy sit-in area outside Kuwait’s Parliament. Women
were pouring into the park along the palm-studded strand, chanting into the
chilly night air for freedoms they say authorities have steadily stifled.
For Kuwaitis, it's an unsettling trend in a country
that once prided itself on its progressivism compared to its Gulf Arab
neighbors.
In recent years, however, women have made strides
across the conservative Arabian Peninsula. In long-insular Saudi Arabia, women
have won greater freedoms under de-facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Salman.
Saudi Arabia even hosted its first open-air yoga
festival last month, something Kuwaitis noted with irony on social media.
“The hostile movement against women in Kuwait was
always insidious and invisible but now it’s risen to the surface,” said Alanoud
Alsharekh, a women’s rights activist who founded Abolish 153, a group that aims
to eliminate an article of the country’s penal code that sets out lax
punishments for the so-called honour killings of women. “It’s spilled into our
personal freedoms."
Just in the past few months, Kuwaiti authorities shut
down a popular gym hosting belly dance classes. Clerics demanded police
apprehend the organizers of a different women's retreat called “The Divine
Feminine," citing blasphemy. Kuwait's top court will soon hear a case
arguing the government should ban Netflix amid an uproar over the first
Arabic-language film the platform produced.
Hamdan al-Azmi, a conservative Islamist, has led the
tirade against yoga, accusing outsiders of trampling on Arab heritage and
bemoaning the aerobic exercise as a cultural travesty.
“If defending the daughters of Kuwait is backward, I
am honoured to be called it,” he said.
The string of religiously motivated decisions has
touched off sustained outrage among Kuwaiti women at a time in which not a
single one sits in the elected Parliament and gruesome cases of so-called
honour killings have gripped the public.
In one such case, a Kuwaiti woman named Farah Akbar
was dragged from her car last spring and stabbed to death by a man released on
bail against whom she had lodged multiple police complaints.
The outcry over Akbar’s killing pushed parliament to
draft a law that would, after years of campaigning, eliminate Article 153. The
article says that a man who catches his wife committing adultery or his female
relative engaged in any sort of “illicit” sex and kills her faces at most three
years in prison. There also can be just a $46 fine.
But when it came time to consider the article's
abolition, Kuwait’s all-male parliamentary committee on women’s issues took an
unprecedented step. It turned to the state’s Islamic clerics for a fatwa, or
non-binding religious ruling, about the article.
The clerics ruled last month that the law be upheld.
“Most of these members of parliament come from a
system in which honor killings are normal,” said Sundus Hussain, another
founding member of the Abolish 153 group.
After Kuwait's 2020 elections, there was a marked
increase in the influence of conservative Islamists and tribal members, Ms. Hussain
added.
Before activists could absorb the blow, authorities
called on clerics to answer a new query: “Should women be allowed to join the
army?”
The Defense Ministry had declared they could enlist
last fall, fulfilling a long-standing demand.
But clerics disagreed. Women, they decreed last month,
may only join in non-combat roles if they wear an Islamic headscarf and get
permission from a male guardian.
The decision shocked and appalled Kuwaitis accustomed
to government indifference to whether women cover their hair.
“Why would the government consult religious
authorities? It's clearly one way in which the government is trying to appease
conservatives and please parliament," said Dalal al-Fares, a gender
studies expert at Kuwait University. “Clamping down on women’s issues is the
easiest way to say they’re defending national honor."
Apart from the defense of what social conservatives
consider women's honour, there is little on which Kuwait’s emir-appointed
Cabinet and elected parliament can agree. An anguished stalemate has paralyzed
all efforts to fix a record budget deficit and pass badly needed economic
reforms.
Nearly two years after parliament passed a domestic
violence protection law, there are no government women’s shelters or services
for abuse victims. Violence against women has only increased during the
pandemic lockdown.
“We need a complete overhaul to address the flaws of
our legal system when it comes to the protection of women,” said lawmaker
Abdulaziz al-Saqabi, who's now drafting Kuwait's first gender-based violence
law. “We are dealing with an irresponsible — and unstable — system that makes
any reform almost impossible.”
Some advocates attribute the conservative backlash to
a sense of panic that society is changing. A year ago, activists launched a
groundbreaking #MeToo movement to denounce harassment and violence against
women. Hundreds of reports poured into the campaign's Instagram account with
harrowing accusations of assault, creating a profound shift in Kuwaiti
discourse.
Organizers in recent months have struggled to sustain
the momentum as they themselves have faced rape and death threats.
“The toll it took was massive. We became immediate
clickbait. We couldn’t go out in public without being constantly stopped and
constantly harassed,” said Ms. Hayat, who helped create the movement last year.
Ms. Hayat has little faith in the government to change
anything for Kuwait's women. But she said that's no reason to give up.
“If there’s a protest, I’m going to show up. If
there’s someone who needs convincing, I’m going to try,” she said, while women
around her pumped their fists and held signs aloft.
Source: The Hindu
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URL: https://www.newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/arab-woman-ghaida-rinawie-zoabi-shanghai/d/126434