Women's Morocco Football Team Africa Cup Success Led To Natural Disasters: Preacher, Hamza Elkhaldi
New Age Islam News Bureau
26 July 2022
• Iranian Women under Pressure As Raisi Stiffens Hijab
Mandate
• Twenty-Four
of the 34 Provinces in Indonesia Impose Repressive Dress Codes for Women and
Girls, Including Christians
• Houthis
Abduct Up To 100 Women over Prostitution Claims
• Police: Woman
Opened Fire in Dallas Airport; Cop Shot Her
Compiled by New Age Islam News Bureau
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/morocco-football-disaster-hamza-elkhaldi/d/127576
--------
Women's Morocco Football Team Africa Cup Success Led
To Natural Disasters: Preacher, Hamza Elkhaldi
The Moroccan women's team
made it to the finals of the Africa Cup of Nations [Anadolu via Getty]
-----
25 July, 2022
A Moroccan preacher has sparked controversy by linking
the success of the women's national football team to natural disasters and
other hardships in the country.
The Moroccan women's football team made history by
reaching the finals of the Africa Cup of Nations, before losing to South Africa
on Saturday. The run has been hailed as a milestone in Arab women's football
and coincides with the Women's European Championships.
The remarkable run has been widely celebrated in
Morocco.
Before the match, preacher Hamza Elkhaldi said women's
football matches were "undoubtedly forbidden", partly because their
clothing is 'impermissible' for Muslim women.
He said the watching and broadcasting of women's
football matches, as well as Morocco's hosting of arts festivals, invoked the
wrath of God.
The preacher pointed to the wildfires that tore
through parts of the country and high prices of staple goods as consequences of
the women's football success.
He appeared to double down on his comments in a
Facebook post, saying "everyone who watches women's matches is without a
doubt a sinner".
Though some preachers backed Elkhaldi's comments,
others said he was being a killjoy.
"Unless these demeaning perceptions of women are
abandoned... we will, unfortunately, hear more of these voices that try to
spoil and annoy every joy," The Independent's Arabic-language service
reported Rafiki Abu Hafs, a preacher known for making statements in defence of
gender equality, as saying.
Women's football continues to gain an increasing
platform worldwide, with tournaments like WAFCON and the ongoing Euro 2022
winning bigger viewerships than ever.
Source: The New Arab
https://english.alaraby.co.uk/news/morocco-preacher-says-womens-football-invokes-gods-wrath
--------
Iranian Women under Pressure As Raisi Stiffens Hijab
Mandate
Women pose for a photo
along the bank of the Zayandeh River in Iran's central city of Isfahan on May
15, 2022. - ATTA KENARE/AFP via Getty Images
------
Kourosh Ziabari
July 23, 2022
As the administration of Iranian President Ebrahim
Raisi faces discontent over increasingly difficult economic conditions, the government is ratcheting up
agitprop around compulsory hijab, the Islamic dress code, in what many Iranians
say is a bid to divert public attention from the nation’s day-to-day hardships.
The government's efforts to enforce hijab rules are
divisive in Iranian society with its outward-looking young population and liberal-minded
middle class.
On July 12, as the government hyped “chastity and
hijab week,” thousands of Iranian women pushed the envelope of their
traditional social roles and recorded themselves walking around the streets of
Tehran and other cities with their headscarves removed, risking stern police
warnings and arrest. The women’s collective action was a bid to express their
unhappiness with the authorities' increasing pressure over hijab compliance.
The videos have gone viral on social media accompanied by hashtags defying the
ironclad mandate.
Last month, Shargh Daily reported on what is believed
to be the most violent encounter so far between the morality police enforcing
the hijab mandate and ordinary citizens. In early June a 22-year-old officer
shot a former boxing champion at least four times after he intervened to
prevent his wife from being harassed over her dressing style while the couple
were on a stroll at Pardisan Park in Tehran.
The Initiative for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention
of Vice, whose namesake in Saudi Arabia has seen its powers substantially
curtailed since 2019, has introduced new regulations that will beef up
surveillance over female employees at government agencies and stipulates the
dismissal of administrators whose staff don’t strictly observe the hijab codes.
The Raisi administration has allocated a budget of $3.8 million to the powerful
religious entity.
An entire department of Iran’s police called “Gasht-e
Ershad” (guidance patrol in Persian) is tasked with enforcing the government’s
compulsory hijab codes. The unpopular vice squad arrests hundreds of women
every year for dressing in ways deemed insufficiently Islamic, though the hazy
requirements are quite arbitrary and the officers decide who to chastise and
who to let go on a whim.
Saudi Arabia, one of the most conservative Muslim
nations, has ditched its hijab orthodoxy and is granting increased freedoms to
women. Iran remains one of the last Muslim-majority countries in which the
Islamic dress code is compulsory and the government resorts to force to
perpetuate. Although there are nuances, all women must wear headscarves and be
covered with full-length attire at all times.
Shortly after the 1979 revolution, hijab was declared
obligatory and over time, women who defied the establishment’s dress codes or
were seen not to following them strictly were disenfranchised, denied social
rights and employment opportunities.
Although the chieftains of the Islamist uprising had
promised there would be no such coercion, they drew back from that commitment,
and it was incorporated in Iran’s Islamic Penal Code that the crime of
violating hijab can carry a sentence of up to two months in prison.
Different Islamic Republic administrations have
approached the enforcement of hijab laws differently. Reformist President
Mohammad Khatami, an advocate of civil liberties, abstained from intrusion into
lifestyle issues, and during his tenure in the late 1990s, there was noticeably
more tolerance for women’s personal choices.
Hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is credited
with upping the stakes over the dress code after he communicated a national
directive to several government agencies in January 2006 markedly toughening
the regulations. As part of the directive, the Supreme Council of the Cultural
Revolution, police forces, Ministry of Culture, Islamic Republic of Iran
Broadcasting, Ministry of Education, Islamic Development Organization and a
catalogue of other institutions were assigned different responsibilities for
promoting and enforcing hijab.
Although Iran's hijab rules are stringently enforced
and all Iranian women must abide by them, whether they are religious-minded or
don’t wish to be veiled, hard-line clerics, government-affiliated ideologues
and the state media continue to lecture the public about the need for these
standards and complain about laxity in their observance in the public spaces,
saying it does society ethical harm.
Elham Gheytanchi, an associate professor of sociology
at Santa Monica College, argues that in Iran, “hijab has nothing to do with
morality, religion or ethics” but is “what the political elite wants, and it is
how they came to power.”
“Making hijab mandatory for all means that the regime
governs your most private realm and is present everywhere. If it had to do with
religion, it would have been a private matter between women and their God. But
the Iranian government has declared itself as the force of God and their
legitimacy depends on it,” she told Al-Monitor.
Every year, multiple national events, conferences,
music and film productions, hundreds of hours of TV programming and online
campaigns are devoted to proselytizing on an issue the Iranian government has
made into a national security matter. In 2017, the noted human rights lawyer
Nemat Ahmadi said a staggering sum of $193 million is spent on hijab-related
promotional activities every year.
Iran's morality police are often accused of using
excessive force against women deemed to be in violation. Self-appointed
vigilantes and religious traditionalists who are not commissioned by the
government but feel empowered by its discourse also approach women on the
street to aggressively correct their dress code compliance.
The government’s hijab rhetoric has become decidedly
more aggressive under Raisi, pitting groups of people against each other and
fueling hostile debates on social media. Some Iranians say the Islamic Republic
has invested so heavily in the issue that it has aligned its legitimacy with
women keeping their headscarves on. Others argue because the administration is
unable to address the country’s economic and foreign policy deficiencies, it
has taken to distracting the people by amplifying a minor issue.
The patriarchal nature of Iranian society also plays a
role in the pressure against women.
Zahra Tizro, a senior lecturer in psychology at the
University of East London, told Al-Monitor that many Iranian women have
resisted these oppressive policies over the years since the revolution, but
with little support. "We often hear how families themselves, especially
the males, enforce a system of command and control on female members of their
families, sometimes using more aggressive behaviors such as domestic violence,
honor killings and so on, and there are no strong reactions against such inequalities,”
she said, concluding, “It seems to me that religious traditionalism is deeply
rooted and entrenched in cultural and social discourses and practices.”
Source: Al Monitor
--------
Twenty-Four
of the 34 Provinces in Indonesia Impose Repressive Dress Codes For Women And
Girls, Including Christians
By
Anugrah Kumar
JULY
26, 2022
Twenty-four
of the 34 provinces in Muslim-majority Indonesia impose repressive dress codes
for women and girls, including Christians. Many who do not comply face
consequences and bullying, according to women who spoke with an international
human rights group.
"Nearly
150,000 schools in Indonesia's 24 Muslim-majority provinces currently enforce
mandatory Jilbab (hijab) rules, based on both local and national regulations.
In some conservative Muslim areas such as Aceh and West Sumatra, even
non-Muslim girls have also been forced to wear the hijab," reads a recent
report from Human Rights Watch.
Millions
of girls and women in the Southeast Asian archipelago have to wear hijabs, the
female headdress covering hair, neck and chest. Hijabs are typically worn with
a long skirt and a long sleeve shirt.
"The
officials who issued the decrees contend the Jilbab is mandatory for Muslim
women to cover intimate parts of the body, which officials deem to include the
hair, arms, and legs, but sometimes also the woman's body shape," the
report says.
HRW
interviewed more than 100 women who have experienced abuse and often long-term
consequences for refusing to wear the hijab. The dress codes, inspired by
Sharia law, have impacted not only schoolgirls but also teachers, doctors and
other professionals.
Two
of the women interviewed say they received death threats on social media.
"Since
grade four, my stepmother forced me to wear the jilbab," Sheilana Nugraha,
a 25-year-old Christian and graduate student at Gadjah Mada University in
Yogyakarta, said.
She
told HRW that she entered high school in 2012 and was asked to wear a
headscarf. In 2013, she was paralyzed in a motorcycle accident and went to live
with her biological mother, a Christian.
"My
birth mother is Christian. My father is Muslim," she said. "I took
off my jilbab, wearing short-sleeved shirts to school, although my mother still
took me to Islamic prayer and study sessions. I was the only Muslim student who
did not wear the jilbab at the school. There were Christian students, the
number was small, fewer than 10 people in the school, and none of them wore
headscarves."
"Once
[in first year of high school in 2012], I was approached by a history teacher,
a woman wearing a headscarf, who was also my neighbour. She scolded me,
swearing that I 'wouldn't be successful without the Jilbab and would go to
Hell.' I cried, felt humiliated, and this was witnessed by many students, since
it took place in front of the class near the whiteboard and the classroom door.
I was shamed. I was crying, depressed."
Nugraha
said that for four days in a row in 2012, three female teachers and a male
Islamic teacher "bullied" her.
"The
Islamic religion teacher did not make me cry, but he was sarcastic. The math
teacher was also my homeroom teacher. My grades were affected, screwed up [by
the resulting psychological distress]," she said. "The principal did
nothing to protect me."
HRW
urges Indonesia's Interior Ministry, which oversees local governments, to
invalidate the more than 60 local dress code laws nationwide. While Indonesia's
central government doesn't have the authority to repeal local laws, the Home
Affairs Ministry can nullify local executive orders that contradict national
laws and the Indonesian Constitution.
"President
Joko Widodo should immediately overturn discriminatory, rights-abusing
provincial and local decrees that violate the rights of women and girls,"
said HRW's Acting Asia Director Elaine Pearson. "These decrees do real
harm and as a practical matter will only be ended by central government
action."
Indonesia,
which is home to the world's largest Muslim population, has 20.4 million
Protestants and 8.42 million Catholics. Together, these two groups comprise
10.58% of the total population of 272.23 million, according to the latest data
from the Directorate General of the Department of Population and Civil
Registration of the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Indonesia's
Constitution is based on the doctrine of Pancasila — five principles upholding
the nation's belief in the one and only God and social justice, humanity, unity
and democracy for all.
But
many extremist groups in Indonesia oppose Pancasila and target the Christian
minority.
Churches
often face opposition from groups that attempt to obstruct the construction of
non-Muslim houses of worship. HRW previously reported that more than 1,000
churches in the archipelago had been closed due to pressure from such groups.
Source:
Christian Post
https://www.christianpost.com/news/indonesia-women-forced-to-wear-hijabs-or-quit-school.html
--------
Houthis
abduct up to 100 women over prostitution claims
July
25, 2022
AL-MUKALLA:
The Iran-backed Houthis have abducted up to 100 women from their homes over
prostitution allegations since the beginning of July in Yemen’s northwestern
province of Hajjah, Yemeni activists and rights groups warned on Monday.
The
Geneva-based SAM Organization for Rights and Liberties said that it received
information that Houthi authorities in Hajjah city, capital of Hajjah
Governorate, aggressively raided homes in the city, arresting about 60 women
and throwing them in prison.
“We
stress that what happened with the women is a full-fledged kidnapping crime
that does not take into account the legal controls imposed by the law,” the
organization said. “We call on the Houthis to immediately and unconditionally
release the women.”
SAM
said that several Houthi officials, including the city’s security chief
Mohammed Salbah and another figure called Hisham Wahban, conducted the raids on
women’s gatherings and homes in Hajjah.
Yemeni
officials and human rights activists put the number of abducted women at about
100, warning that the Houthis falsely accused the captives of prostitution
without offering evidence to support their allegations.
Many
of the abducted women have suffered from intense social stigma as a result of
the arrests, with some ostracized by family members.
Hadi
Wardan, a lawyer and a member of the National Committee for Allegations of
Human Rights Violations in Yemen, told Arab News that armed Houthis stormed
homes and female student accommodations in Hajjah city and arrested at least 95
women, including many displaced people from the neighboring Haresh and Abes
districts. The militia placed the women in prisons and secret detention cells
in the city, Wardan added.
“They
frightened people and said that these women practice adultery, prostitution and
immoral acts. They did not catch a single case red-handed,” Wardan said, adding
that no men were man arrested during the raids.
The
Houthis also rejected a mediation proposal by local dignitaries and tribal
leaders who tried to secure the release of the abducted women, the Yemeni
activist said.
Activists
believe that the Houthis launched the raids after growing local anger over the
group’s morality crackdowns, which targeted women who allegedly violated
Islamic dress codes or socialized with men.
Wardan
said: “How can that number of women be involved in prostitution and why didn’t
they arrest any men?”
Due
to the raids, some husbands have divorced their abducted wives while other
women have been made social outcasts.
“Many
women now prefer staying in the prison to going back to their houses after the
Houthis distorted their reputation. In one case, they arrested a mother, her
daughter and her daughter-in-law,” Wardan said.
Wardan
accused provincial Houthi operatives, including Naif Abdullah Abu Khorfesha,
Hajjah province security chief; Mohammed Salbah, Hajjah city security chief;
Sadeq Al-Gailil, an officer; and Mohammed Al-Madwami, deputy director of
criminal investigation in Hajjah city, of masterminding the raids.
Source:
Arab News
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2129281/middle-east
--------
Police:
Woman opened fire in Dallas airport; cop shot her
July
26, 2022
DALLAS:
A 37-year-old woman fired several gunshots, apparently at the ceiling, inside
of Dallas’ Love Field Airport on Monday before an officer shot and wounded her,
authorities said.
The
woman was dropped off at the airport at about 11 a.m., walked inside near the
ticketing counters and entered a bathroom, Dallas police Chief Eddie Garcia
said at a news conference. She emerged wearing a hooded sweatshirt or some
other clothing that she hadn’t arrived in, pulled a gun and fired several
shots, apparently at the ceiling, he said.
“At
this point, we don’t know where exactly the individual was aiming,” Garcia
said.
An
officer nearby shot the woman in her “lower extremities,” wounding her and
enabling her to be taken into custody, Garcia said. She was taken to a local
hospital for treatment.
“No
other individuals were injured in this event other than the suspect,” Garcia
said.
Police
later identified the woman as Portia Odufuwa, 37, and did not speculate as to
her motive.
“We
wanted to ensure that our community knows that this is not an active
situation,” the chief said.
Karen
Warner told The Dallas Morning News that she was checking in for her flight
when she heard a loud argument about 20 feet (6 meters) behind her, followed by
a gunshot. Then she started running.
“I
heard about 10 more shots while I was running away,” said Warner, who couldn’t
discern what the argument was about.
Love
Field, which is one of the Dallas-Fort Worth area’s two major airports,
suspended airport operations after the shooting but said at around 3:45 p.m.
that they had resumed. The Federal Aviation Administration held up flights for
a couple of hours while police investigated, but flights were cleared to resume
around mid-afternoon.
A
spokesman for Southwest Airlines, which uses Love Field as a hub, said the airline
canceled most of its flights that were scheduled to depart or arrive at Love
Field before 6 p.m. CDT. Southwest canceled 85 flights at Love Field on Monday,
according to the flight tracking website FlightAware.
The
shooting wasn’t the first violent incident at the airport.
In
2016, a police officer shot and wounded a man outside of Love Field after
police said he advanced toward the officer with large landscaping rocks in his
hands after battering his ex-girlfriend’s car with a traffic cone and rocks as
she dropped him off at the airport.
Source:
Arab News
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2129511/world
--------
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/morocco-football-disaster-hamza-elkhaldi/d/127576