Ghazala, a Muslim Girl Gets Five Gold Medals for Being the Best Student of MA (Sanskrit) At Lucknow University
New Age Islam News Bureau
11 February 2022
• Roza Barakat, Yazidi Teen Says the Horrors She
Endured After Islamic State Enslavement Still Hold Her Captive
• Muslim Women in Prayagraj Stage Protest against
Restrictions on ‘Hijab’ In Karnataka
• Muslim Women Will Take Out a ‘Hijab March’ On
Saturday in Ludhiana
• Pakistan Women Protest India's Ban on Headscarves in
Schools
• Hijab Row: Parents of Six Protesting Muslim Girls
Lodge Complaint over Sharing Of Information
• French Minister Slams Headscarf Ban for Muslim
Footballers
• ‘UK Committed To Promoting Higher Education for Pak
Women’
Compiled by New
Age Islam News Bureau
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Ghazala, a Muslim Girl Gets Five Gold Medals for Being
the Best Student of MA (Sanskrit) At Lucknow University
Daughter of a daily wager,
Ghazala was awarded the medals by dean arts Prof Shashi Shukla during a
faculty-level medal distribution ceremony.
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Feb 11, 2022
LUCKNOW: In a small one-room house located in the
narrow lanes of Nishatganj, Ghazala, 23, wakes up at 5am daily to offer Namaz,
winds up her household chores, and then sits down with her Sanskrit textbooks
for seven hours straight in pursuit of her goal to gain in-depth knowledge of
the subject. This is all on way to realising her dream to become a Sanskrit
professor.
Her two younger brothers gave up their education to
educate her and now she has brought big smiles to their faces by winning five
gold medals for being the best student of MA (Sanskrit) at Lucknow University.
Ghazala’s name was announced by LU during its
convocation ceremony held in November but due to Covid-19, medals could be
given only to a few students during the ceremony.
On Thursday, Ghazala was awarded the medals by dean
arts Prof Shashi Shukla during a faculty-level medal distribution ceremony.
Popular on the campus for reciting Sanskrit shlokas,
the Gayatri Mantra, and Saraswati Vandana during LU's cultural festivals, the
daughter of a daily-wager who succumbed to cancer wants to paint the world with
lessons peace, unity, and secularism as a professor.
From someone who struggled to pass school-Ghazala's
father passed away when she was in class X-she is now a proud postgraduate who
knows five languages: English, Hindi, Urdu, Arabic, and Sanskrit.
"These medals are won not by me but by my
brothers Shadab and Nayab who left school and began working in a garage at the
age of 13 and 10 years respectively so that I could study," said Ghazala.
Her elder sister Yasmeen, too, began working in a
utensil shop while her mother Nasreen Bano took care of all of Ghazala's
requirements.
"These five medals are for all five of us," Ghazala
added.
On why she wants to be a Sanskrit professor, she said,
"Bhashasu Mukhya Madhura Divya Girvan Bharti. Satrapi Kavyam Madhuram
Tasmadpu Subhashitam (Of all the languages, God's own language Sanskrit is the
mother: divine, and most lyrical. In Sanskrit, poetry is more melodious wherein
good verses hold prime position)."
Ghazala's interest in Sanskrit began at the government
primary school in Nishatganj where her teacher "Meena ma'am" taught
her Sanskrit in class V. "Thereafter I got admitted to Aryakanya Inter
College and got a brilliant Sanskrit teacher, Archana Dwivedi. As a result, I
scored very well," she added.
Although, she began dreaming of becoming a Sanskrit
professor after her mentors in higher studies.
"These are Nagma Sultan, who taught me Sanskrit
during BA at Karamat Hussain Muslim Girls' PG College, and Prayag Narayan
Mishra, at LU during MA," she said.
Ghazala now has Vedic knowledge and expertise in Agni
and Indra Sukta, Rigveda mantra, and Brahma Upanishad.
"My Sanskrit knowledge and interest often
surprise people who ask me how being a Muslim I developed love for the
language. They ask me what I will do with it, but my family always supported
me," said Ghazala.
Expressing her happiness, she said, "You can't
imagine how big these medals are for a person like me who just dreams of
getting a study table and laptop one day so that I don't have to attend online
classes on the phone."
Ghazala now wants to pursue a PhD in Vedic literature.
Eventually, she wants to become a civil servant.
Source: Times Of India
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Roza Barakat, Yazidi Teen Says the Horrors She Endured
After Islamic State Enslavement Still Hold Her Captive
Roza Barakat, Yazidi Teen
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February 10, 2022
BARZAN village, Syrian Kurdistan, — Roza Barakat’s
tormentors have been defeated, but the horrors she endured still hold her
captive.
She was 11 years old when she was captured and
enslaved by the Islamic State group, along with thousands of other Yazidi women
and girls taken when the militants overran northern Iraq in their brutal 2014
campaign.
Torn from her family in the town of Sinjar (Shingal),
the enclave of the ancient religious Yazidi minority, she was taken to Syria,
sold multiple times and repeatedly raped. She bore a child, a boy she has since
lost. Now, at 18, she speaks little of her native Kurdish dialect, Kurmanji.
With the defeat of IS in 2019, Barakat slipped into
the shadows, opting to hide in the turmoil that followed the worst of the
battles. As IS fighters were arrested, their wives and children were packed
into detention camps. Barakat was free, but she couldn’t go home.
“I don’t know how I’ll face my community,” she told
The Associated Press, speaking in Arabic, as she nervously played with the ends
of her long dark braid, the red polish on her dainty fingers fading.
For years, her IS captors told her she would never be
accepted if she returned. “I believed them,” she said.
Barakat’s tale, corroborated by Yazidi and Syrian
Kurdish officials, is a window into the complicated realities faced by many
Yazidi women who came of age under the brutal rule of IS. Traumatized and lost,
many struggle to come to terms with the past, while the Yazidi community is at
odds over how to accept them.
“What do you expect from a child who was raped at 12,
gave birth at 13?” said Faruk Tuzu, co-chair of Yazidi House, an umbrella of
Yazidi organizations in northeastern Syria. “After so much shock and abuse they
don’t believe in anything anymore, they don’t belong anywhere.”
The AP does not typically identify people who say they
are victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission.
Barakat spoke to the AP from a safe house run by
Tuzu’s group just a few days after the leader of the Islamic State group,
believed to have played a key role in the enslavement of Yazidi women, was
killed in a U.S. raid in northwestern Syria.
She shrugged off the news, saying it doesn’t make a
difference.
IS first sold Barakat to an Iraqi from Tal Afar, a man
older than her father. She shudders as she recounts how he “made me call his
wife ‘mother.’” After a few months she was sold to another man.
Eventually, her IS captors gave her a choice: Convert
to Islam and marry an IS fighter, or be sold again. She converted, she says, to
avoid being sold. She married a Lebanese they chose for her, a man who ferried
food and equipment for IS fighters.
“He was better than most,” she said. At 13, she gave
birth to a son, Hoodh. At the peak of the militants’ self-proclaimed
“caliphate,” they lived in the city of Raqqa, the IS capital.
Once, she begged her husband to find out what happened
to her older sisters who had been taken just like her. She had lost hope that
her parents were still alive.
Some weeks later, he told her he found one of her
sisters, holding up a photo of a woman in Raqqa’s slave market where Yazidi
girls were sold.
“How different she looks,” Barakat remembers thinking.
By early 2019 as IS rule was crumbling, Barakat fled
with her husband first to the eastern Syrian city of Deir el-Zour, and then to
the town of Baghouz, which became IS’s last stand. As U.S.-backed Kurdish
Syrian Democratic Forces surrounded Baghouz, a safe passage was offered to
women and children.
At this point, Barakat could have stepped forward and
identified herself as a Yazidi and sought safety. But instead, she clutched
Hoodh in her arms and walked out of the town with other IS wives.
Today, over 2,800 Yazidi women and children are still
missing, said Tuzu. Some have cut ties and are building new lives outside the
community, believing that if they return, they’d be killed. Others fear being
separated from their children, fathered by IS members.
Iraq’s Yazidi community has forced women returning to
Sinjar to give up their children as a condition to return. Many were told their
children would be adopted by Syrian Kurdish families but dozens have ended up
in an orphanage in northeastern Syria.
The fate of the children has been at the center of an
ongoing debate within the Yazidi community. In 2019, the Yazidi Spiritual
Council, the highest authority among Yazidis, called on members to accept all
Yazidi survivors of IS atrocities. Days later, the council clarified the
decision excluded children born of IS rape.
“This is our mistake, and we recognize that — we
didn’t allow the children to stay with their mothers,” said Tuzu.
He confirmed that some Yazidi women are still at
al-Hol camp, which holds tens of thousands of women and children, mostly wives,
widows and children of IS members.
Many of the missing Yazidis scattered across Syria and
Turkey, others live clandestine lives in the Syrian city of Aleppo and in Deir
El-Zour. Tuzu expects the majority may have gone to the rebel province of
Idlib, where al-Qaida is dominant but where IS also maintains a presence.
After walking out of Baghouz with other IS women in
March 2019, Barakat slipped away to a nearby village rather than end up in a
camp. With the help of IS sympathizers, she took a smuggling route and ended up
in Idlib, in northwesten Syria, in a home for IS widows. Her husband was killed
in Baghouz.
Here, Barakat’s story diverges from what she told
officials. Initially, she told them she had left her son behind in Idlib to
find work elsewhere. She told the AP that Hoodh died after an airstrike in
Idlib.
When pressed to clarify, she said: “It’s hard. I don’t
want to talk about it.”
With the help of a smuggler, she made her way to Deir
el-Zour and eventually found work at a clothing market, saving up for a new
life in Turkey.
She still dreamed of making it to Turkey when Kurdish
internal security forces caught her last month, waiting in a house in the town
of al-Tweinah to be taken by smugglers across the Syria-Turkey border.
She was held and interrogated for days.
“I did everything to hide that I was Yazidi,” she
said. She told the investigators she was from Deir el-Zour, and was hoping to
get medical treatment in Turkey, but they didn’t buy it.
One held up an old photo found on her mobile phone — a
young Yazidi woman in an IS slave market — and asked her to explain.
“The words just came out: ‘That is my sister,’”
Barakat said.
Once the truth was out, Barakat was taken to a safe
house in the village of Barzan, in Syria’s Hassakeh province, where the Yazidi
community welcomed her.
“I was in shock to hear their kind words, and to be
welcomed the way I was,” she said.
She isn’t ready to go back to Sinjar just yet. Her
entire family was either killed or is still unaccounted for.
What is there to go back to, she wonders. “I need
time, for myself.”
In August 2014, the Islamic State ISIS militants
attacked the Sinjar district in northwest Iraq, which was home to hundreds of
thousands of Yazidis, after ex-Kurdistan president Massoud Barzani’s KDP
militia forces withdrew from the area without a fight leaving behind the Yazidi
civilians to IS killing and genocide.
Thousands of Yazidi families fled to Mount Sinjar,
where they were trapped in it and suffered from significant lack of water and
food, killing and abduction of thousands of Yazidis as well as rape and
captivity of thousands of women.
Thousands of Yazidi women were raped and murdered,
with many of the survivors sold into sexual slavery and taken away to other
parts of Iraq, Syria, and even further afield. Men and boys were systematically
murdered, forced to work for the group, or coerced into becoming child
soldiers.
18,000 peshmerga forces of Massoud Barzani’ were on
the spot and retreat without mounting any defense when Islamic state IS
attacked the Yazidi area of Sinjar (Shingal) on August 3, 2014, an unpublished
report by Iraq’s Kurdistan regional government revealed.
It is estimated that 3,000 Yazidis were killed over a
period of several days and 6,800 others were abducted.
Although several thousand Yazidis have been rescued
over the last four-and-a-half years, another 3,000 remain missing, according to
official statistics.
Most of the Yazidi people lost faith in the ruling
Barzani family when the KDP Peshmerga forces failed to protect them from
Islamic State in 2014 which lead to the genocide of the Yazidis in Sinjar
district in northwest Iraq.
Many Yazidis, critics, Kurdish politicians and
observers blame ex-Kurdistan president Massoud Barzani, the commander in-chief
of the KDP Peshmerga, for the Yazidi massacre.
The Yazidis are a Kurdish speaking religious group
linked to Zoroastrianism and Sufism. The religious has roots that date back to
ancient Mesopotamia, are considered heretics by the hard-line Islamic State
group.
Prior to the 2014 ISIS assault, there were around
600,000 Yazidis live in villages in Iraqi Kurdistan region and in Kurdish areas
outside Kurdistan region in around Mosul in Nineveh province. As the ISIS group
took over large swaths of territory in Nineveh Province, 360,000 Yazidis
managed to escape and find refuge elsewhere, according to the Yazidi Rescue
Office.
The are additional Yazidi communities in
Transcaucasia, Armenia, Georgia, Turkey and Syria. Since the 1990s, the Yazidis
have emigrated to Europe, especially to Germany. There are almost 1.5 million
Yazidis worldwide.
Source: Ekurd
https://ekurd.net/yazidi-teen-cant-go-home-2022-02-10
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Muslim women in Prayagraj stage protest against
restrictions on ‘hijab’ in Karnataka
Feb 10, 2022
A group of around 200 young women in ‘hijab’ and
headscarves staged a protest at Atala in the old city area of the city against
restrictions on ‘hijab’ imposed at educational institutions in Karnataka.
The women, holding placards with messages supporting
their rights to wear ‘hijab’, expressed solidarity with the young woman in
Karnataka who faced a group of aggressive youths in saffron shawls.
The women ended the demonstration after handing over a
memorandum to the President of India through the city magistrate. In the
memorandum, the women requested President’s intervention in the issue to secure
their rights of religious freedom and education.
Afreen Fatima, a former JNU student, said that the
protest was organised by Muslim girl students of Allahabad University and
affiliated colleges.
“We are here to express resentment over the state of
affairs in Karnataka, where Muslim women are not being allowed inside classes
while wearing hijab. We are with our sisters in Karnataka who are facing
religious apartheid and are being harassed by goons and religious extremists.
We have sent a memorandum to President of India asking him to safeguard the
right to religious freedom and right to education which is promised by the
constitution,” Afreen said.
Another protestor Sara Ahmad said ‘hijab’ is part of
our identity and is not a symbol of oppression.
“Restrictions on ‘hijab’ are an attack on the identity
of Muslim women, and it will not be tolerated at any cost,” she added.
City magistrate Gaurav Srivastava said the memorandum
has been received and will be forwarded to the President of India.
Source: Hindustan Times
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Muslim Women Will Take Out a ‘Hijab March’ On Saturday
in Ludhiana
By Raakhi Jagga
February 10, 2022
Muslim women in Ludhiana will take out a ‘Hijab March’
on Saturday (February 12) to express solidarity with the girl students from the
community in Karnataka where a controversy has erupted over over the issue of
prohibition on the attire. The decision was taken at a meeting of Imams of 80
mosques at Ludhiana’s Jama Masjid.
Maulana Usman Ludhianvi, Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid,
said, “To express solidarity with the Muslim students and to take a stand on
this issue, the women have decided to lead a march from Civil Hospital to the
Jama Masjid covering areas such as Field Gunj and Jagraon Bridge. Men will be
following them”.
The Shahi Imam also praised the girl who stood up to
heckling by a group of students who raised religious slogans outside her
college.
The Karnataka government last week issued an order
making uniforms prescribed by it or management of private institutions
mandatory for students at schools and pre-university colleges across the state.
Protests erupted in the state over students being denied entry to educational
institutions due to the hijab.
Shahi Imam’s media secretary Mustkeem termed it as a
move to stop Muslim girls from going to the school. “It is a personal choice of
a person to wear hijab or not according to their religious beliefs. No one has
the right to dictate or take control of anyone’s sartorial choice”.
Shahi Imam added,”This shows how communal forces are
trying to play dirty games and are spreading hate amongst people in society.
Few people are busy in playing politics of hate.”
Reacting to the decision of Hijab March, Khatija, who
is pursuing a degree in fashion designing, said,”I wear Hijab in college and no
one has ever objected to it. It is a matter of shame to target someone over
their appearance”.
Asma, a teacher and resident of Mayapuri, said she
will be part of the the march. “Girls go to educational institutions to study.
They may wear hijab or burkha. No one should have any objection to someone’s
religious belief”.
Mustkeem added, “On one hand, the beti padao beti
bachao campaign is bring run in the country by government and on the other hand
such incidents may force many girls to sit at home”.
Incidentally, an indefinite dharna in support of
Shaheen Bagh was started by Ludhiana resident on February 12, 2020 and had
continued for 40 days.
Source: Indian Express
https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/ludhiana/muslim-women-to-lead-march-in-ludhiana-7766780/
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Pakistan women protest India's ban on headscarves in
schools
Feb. 10, 2022
KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistani women rallied
Thursday to denounce a ban imposed in a region in neighboring India on the
wearing of the traditional headscarf, or hijab, by Muslim girls in schools.
About a hundred women took to the streets in the
southern port city of Karachi in a protest organized by a Pakistani Islamist
political party, the Jamaat-e-Islami. And in the eastern city of Lahore, dozens
of women torched an effigy of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and also
demanded the lifting of the hijab ban.
Earlier in the day, a court in Karnataka, a state in
southern India, told students not to wear any religious clothing until it
delivers a verdict on petitions seeking to overturn the ban on hijabs. The
petitions were filed by students challenging the ban, which some schools
implemented recently.
The issue grabbed headlines last month when a
government-run school in Karnataka’s Udupi district barred students wearing
hijabs from entering classrooms, triggering protests outside the school gate.
More schools in the state followed with similar bans, forcing the state’s top
court to intervene.
In the Hindu-majority India, where Muslims make up
about 14% of the country’s almost 1.4 billion people, the traditional Muslim
hijabs are not banned or restricted in public places and are a common sight.
However, violence and hate speech against Muslims have
increased under Modi’s governing Hindu nationalist party, which also governs
Karnataka.
Pakistan and India have a history of bitter relations.
The two South Asian nuclear rivals have fought two of their three wars over
Kashmir, which has been divided between them but claimed by both in its
entirety.
Source: Ncadvertiser
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Hijab Row: Parents Of Six Protesting Muslim Girls
Lodge Complaint Over Sharing Of Information
11 FEB 2022
Amid the ongoing Hjab controversy, parents of six
Muslim girl students, who are protesting for their right to wear hijab at the
pre-university college in Udupi, have lodged a complaint with the police that
the personal details of their children are being shared by some people on
social media.
The parents, who submitted a complaint to the Udupi
district Superintendent of Police N Vishnuvardhan, sought action against those
sharing the details of the girls, including their mobile numbers, in the public
domain.
The parents have expressed fear that miscreants might
use the details to threaten the girls.
Vishnuvardhan said the girls’ parents have submitted a
written complaint to him.
Documentary evidence of the information available
online has been sought from them and appropriate action will be taken once it
is received, he said.
Source: Outlook India
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French minister slams headscarf ban for Muslim
footballers
February 11, 2022
PARIS: France’s gender equality minister threw her
support on Thursday behind Muslim women footballers who are seeking to overturn
a ban on players wearing headscarves on the pitch.
Rules set by the French Football Federation currently
prevent players taking part in competitive matches from wearing religious
symbols such as Muslim headscarves or the Jewish kippa (a skullcap).
A women’s collective known as “les Hijabeuses”
launched a legal challenge to the rules in November, claiming they were
discriminatory and infringed their right to practise their religion.
“The law says that these young women can wear a
headscarf and play football. On football pitches today, headscarves are not
forbidden. I want the law to be respected,” Equality Minister Elisabeth Moreno
told LCI television.
Two months from French presidential elections, the
issue has become a talking point in a country that maintains a strict form of
secularism that is meant to separate the state and religion.
The French Senate, which is dominated by the rightwing
Republicans party, proposed a law in January that would have banned the wearing
of obvious religious symbols in all competitive sports.
It was rejected in the lower house on Wednesday where
President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Republic on the Move party and allies hold
the majority.
France’s laws on secularism guarantee religious
freedom to all citizens, and contain no provisions on banning the wearing of
religious symbols in public spaces, with the exception of full-face coverings
which were outlawed in 2010.
Source: Dawn
https://www.dawn.com/news/1674439/french-minister-slams-headscarf-ban-for-muslim-footballers
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‘UK committed to promoting higher education for Pak
women’
By Muhammad Saleh Zaafir
February 11, 2022
ISLAMABAD: The United Kingdom is committed to
promoting quality higher education, particularly for women and girls in
Pakistan, Alison Blackburne, British deputy high commissioner, said on
Thursday.
He said this while welcoming back a reception
virtually in honour of the Pakistani scholars, who were awarded the prestigious
Chevening and Commonwealth scholarship 2020-21. The deputy HC said: “We have
worked hard over the years to encourage more women to apply for Chevening
scholarships, and more than half of the scholars last year were women. The scholars
returning from their year of study have benefitted from the world class
education and also had the opportunity to learn more about the UK. They are
part of the deep people-to-people ties, which we are celebrating this year
marking 75 years of UK-Pakistan relations.”
He welcomed the Pakistani scholars who returned from
the UK after completing a fully funded one-year master’s programme and
congratulated them on completing their master’s degree, welcoming them into the
British alumni family, which has around 10,000 members across Pakistan. The
event was attended by the officials of the British High Commission, returning
scholars, and Chevening alumni.
Chevening and Commonwealth scholarships bring together
some of the brightest minds from across the world to the UK’s renowned
universities, where they are able to realise their educational aspirations and
experience all that the UK has to offer.
The scholarship not only brings immediate benefits to
the scholars, but also delivers long-term benefits for both Pakistan and the
UK. Chevening is the UK government’s scholarship programme. Since 1983, around
2,000 Pakistani students have been awarded the Chevening scholarship. The
online application window will open next in August to receive applications for
the next academic year 2023-24.
According to the British HC, it supports inclusion,
education and opportunity for all as over the years, it has been making efforts
to encourage more women to apply, as a result of which the female scholars have
risen from just six percent in 2013 to around 60 percent last year.
Anyone who has the ambition, curiosity, a clear vision
for the future and the ability to achieve goals should apply for the Chevening
scholarship, the British HC said, adding the selected scholars will join a community
of over 50,000 alumni worldwide.
The British HC said that the prominent Chevening
female alumni include first female judge in Gilgit-Baltistan High Court Amna
Zamir Shah, Chairperson Special Talent Exchange Programme (STEP) Abia Akram,
senior journalist Fifi Haroon, former members of the National Assembly of
Pakistan Yasmeen Rehman, Asiya Nasir and sitting MNA Nafeesa Shah.
In 2022, around 3,000 potential candidates applied for
the Chevening scholarship in Pakistan. The Commonwealth Scholarship Commission
in the UK (CSC) provides the main UK government scholarship scheme led by the
international development objectives. The CSC operates within the framework of
the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan (CSFP), which was established
in 1959 by an Act of Parliament. The CSC uses rigorous procedures to ensure
that its programmes promote equity and inclusion, reward merit, and deliver
widespread access, especially to those from disadvantaged backgrounds. The FCDO
is CSC’s lead department and main sponsor, funding awards exclusively for the
candidates belonging to the low and middle-income countries.
Source: The News Pakistan
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/932585-uk-committed-to-promoting-higher-education-for-pak-women
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