Nobel Peace Laureate, Shirin Ebadi, Urges UN Official To Visit Prisons When In Iran
New Age
Islam News Bureau
27 January 2024
·
Nobel
Peace Laureate, Shirin Ebadi, Urges UN Official To Visit Prisons When In Iran
·
Former
Iraqi MP, Rizan Al-Sheikh Delir, Exposes Sexual Harassment In Parliament During
Live Broadcast
·
Iran’s Chief
Justice Orders Crackdown On ‘Organized Hijab Defiance’
·
Canvassing
By Women Against Sharia, Declare Kohistan Clerics
·
Hidden
histories of British Muslim women revealed
·
India Celebrates
‘Power Of Women’ On 75th Republic Day
Compiled by New Age Islam News Bureau
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/nobel-peace-laureate-shirin-ebadi/d/131600
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Nobel Peace Laureate, Shirin Ebadi,
Urges UN Official To Visit Prisons When In Iran
Nobel Peace
Laureate, Shirin Ebadi
------
January 27, 2024
Maryam Sinaiee
Iranian Peace Nobel Laureate Shirin
Ebadi has urged a top UN human rights official to cancel her visit or meet with
those on death row during her stay in Iran.
Nada Al-Nashif, UN Deputy High
Commissioner for Human Rights, is scheduled to arrive in Tehran on February 3
to investigate executions and women’s rights violations.
In a message addressed to Al-Nashif on
her Instagram Thursday, Ebadi pointed out that at least four prisoners
including a protester, Mohammad Ghobadlou, and a Kurdish political prisoner,
Farhad Salimi, were executed in one week after unfair trials and in violation
of the Islamic Republic’s own laws just ahead of her visit to Iran.
Ghobadlou who had just turned
twenty-four was hanged despite his death sentence being overturned by the
Supreme Court which ordered a branch of Tehran Criminal Court to retry the
case. Carrying out a death sentence despite such a ruling was unprecedented.
Ebadi recommended to Al-Nashif to cancel
her visit in protest to “extra judicial and increasing executions to prevent
the regime from taking advantage of it and using it for propaganda.
Ebadi also recommended Al-Nashif not to
wear a headscarf, as Iranian authorities demand female foreign visitors to do,
and to meet and talk with ordinary people alongside meetings with government
officials.
“Visit Evin prison and talk with some of
the women who are on hunger strike, including [2023 Peace Nobel Laureate]
Narges Mohammadi, and the family of Mahsa Amini who was killed by government
agents in September 2022 because of her hijab, and with several prisoners who
are on death row such as Mujahid Korkur, among others, so that a fuller picture
of the deplorable conditions of human rights [in Iran] is shown to you,” Ebadi
wrote.
Another post on Ebadi’s Telegram channel
Thursday about UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk’s expression
of concern over the spike in the use of death penalty in Iran, said “Expressing
concern is not enough.”
The Islamic Republic which has the
highest rate of executions in the world after China has executed 90 people just
during December 22-January 21 this year.
Sixty-one female prisoners at Tehran’s
Evin Prison from various political backgrounds including Nobel Peace Laureate
Narges Mohammadi staged a one-day hunger strike Thursday in protest to the
regime’s increasing use of executions including those of political prisoners.
Some activists in Iran and abroad
including dissident rapper Toomaj Salehi and pop singer Mehdi Yarrahi, some of
the families of prisoners, and political prisoners, including ZeynabJalali who
is serving a life sentence at Yazd Prison, have joined the hunger strike in
solidarity with the prisoners at Evin.
Türk said in a statement on Wednesday
that he is alarmed by the sharp spike in use of the death penalty in Iran
including the two execution last Sunday. “This practice must be stopped
immediately,” he said.
UN experts on January 21 also strongly
condemned these recent executions and expressed serious concern at credible
reports that those executed had been denied access to lawyers during their
detention and trial.
The mothers of four death-row political
prisoners -- Mohsen Mazloum, Pezhman Fatehi, Vafa Azarbar, and Hazhir Faramarz
– have also pleaded with Al-Nashif to urge Iranian authorities to halt the
impending execution of their sons as well as other prisoners on death row.
The hashtag #NoToExecution has been
trending among Iranian social media users following the announcement of the
hunger strike and a tweet storm on Monday has been announced.
Source: iranintl.com
https://www.iranintl.com/en/202401269361
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Former Iraqi MP, Rizan Al-Sheikh Delir, Exposes
Sexual Harassment In Parliament During Live Broadcast
Former Iraqi
MP, Rizan Al-Sheikh Delir
------
January 26, 2024
LONDON: Former Iraqi Member of
Parliament Rizan Al-Sheikh Delir has addressed the issue of sexual harassment
in an on-air interview, shedding light on the experiences faced by Iraqi women
in various spheres, including the halls of parliament.
During an interview on popular Iraqi
program “Game of Chair” this week, Delir expressed her concern over widespread
sexual harassment, saying that even within the parliamentary setting female MPs
were subjected to verbal abuse and inappropriate jokes.
She said that the situation had been
escalating in many institutions in the country, with behaviors going unchecked
due to the lack of deterrents.
“Our society suffers from violence and
hatred. I come in second in such a society, who will listen to me?” she asked.
Delir said that the political viewpoint
of women in Iraqi society was to regard them as “weaklings” who were not up to
fulfilling their roles, and that women were treated as second-class citizens.
The problem of sexual harassment in Iraq
is widespread, as many women report facing incidents in markets, public
transportation, streets and workplaces, both in the public and private sectors.
A 2021 report from the European Union
Agency for Asylum revealed the deeply entrenched nature of violence against
women and girls in Iraqi society, exacerbated by discriminatory attitudes
within law enforcement and a lack of awareness of women’s rights.
Despite women legislators holding nearly
30 percent of parliamentary seats, an unprecedented milestone since the 2003 US
invasion of Iraq, there remains a disconcerting silence among women in
positions of power.
Reports from 2018 indicated that women
participating in elections faced intimidation, abuse and the publication of
explicit material to dissuade them from entering politics.
High-profile cases of violence against
women in the past two years have included the murder of 22-year-old YouTube
vlogger Tiba Al-Ali, who was allegedly strangled by her father, reigniting the
call for a domestic violence law.
However, attempts to pass legislation
since 2015 have faced vehement opposition in parliament, with arguments citing
violation of Islamic principles, divergence from “national values” and
incompatibility with Iraqi culture.
In the media sector, a survey
commissioned by the Press Freedom Advocacy Association in Iraq revealed that 41
percent of women journalists had experienced harassment.
Of these, 15 percent were compelled to
leave their jobs, while 5 percent abandoned their profession altogether.
The association pointed out how, in most
cases, the victims were “criminalized, extorted and blackmailed” by media
outlet heads, a “phenomenon” that had led many successful women professionals
in the media to quit.
Source: arabnews.com
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2448721/offbeat
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Iran’s Chief Justice Orders Crackdown On
‘Organized Hijab Defiance’
January 27, 2024
Maryam Sinaiee
Iran's Chief Justice has ordered
prosecutors to take "decisive" action against those who are allegedly
encouraging defiance of hijab rules in an "organized manner."
GholamrezaMohseni-Ejei directed
prosecutors this week to act in the name of the public and identify those
"organized and foreign-affiliated elements" who oppose hijab rules.
They are to be put on trial and punished within the framework of the law with
the assistance of law enforcement.
This directive suggests a shift in focus
from merely not wearing hijab to charging individuals involved in
"organized" opposition to hijab with offenses such as "collusion
and assembly to act against national security." In recent years,
anti-compulsory hijab activists have faced fabricated charges, with some
sentenced to prison, like Vida Movahed, who received a one-year sentence for
her protest against mandatory hijab in 2017.
The 32-year-old woman had climbed a
utility box in a busy Tehran Street, removed her headscarf, tied it to a stick
and silently waved it in protest to mandatory hijab in Iran in 2017.
Mohseni-Ejei emphasized the Islamic
principle of "amr-e be maroufvanahyazmonkar," which urges Muslims to
encourage good deeds and discourage forbidden ones. However, he noted that not
all problems can be solved through preaching and called for legal action
against those with ties to foreign countries who resist Iran's values and
security.
“People who have ties to foreign
[countries] and intend to resist the people's values, their chastity, and
[harm] their psychological and physical security should be dealt with the sword
of justice,” he said.
Iranian authorities often use the tactic
of accusing dissidents of having ties to foreigners, in order to charge them
with security crimes, rather than just political offences.
In recent years, many Iranian women have
protested mandatory hijab, leading to arrests and imprisonment. Authorities
have also impounded thousands of cars and closed businesses for failing to
enforce hijab rules.
A police official in the religious city
of Qom, where most of Iran's Shiite seminaries are located, said last week that
in the past ten months owners of 74,000 cars had received warnings for hijab violations
with nearly 20,000 impounded and nearly 2,000 cases referred to courts.
These numbers showed a six-fold increase
in comparison to the same period last year, he said.
This move by the chief justice appears
to address criticism from high-ranking clerics and seminary teachers who have
expressed concerns about the perceived weakening of hijab enforcement. Grand
Ayatollah Hossein Nouri-Hamedani and a group of seminary teachers in Qom have
called for stronger measures to address defiance of hijab rules, expressing
fears that it could lead to "extensive immorality" and harm the
country's independence.
In a letter addressed to the president,
chief justice, and parliament speaker earlier this week, one hundred teachers
of Qom seminaries demanded decisiveness in dealing with what they called the
“phenomenon” of defiance of hijab.
The signatories of the letter insisted
on enforcing Islamic rules and alleged that the refusal of women to abide by
mandatory hijab rules could be used by “enemies” and “feminists”.
“Enforcement of the law and prevention
of [moral] corruption, of course, entails costs which we have to pay if we want
to implement Islam,” they wrote.
“One hundred have written a petition to
the heads of the state under the name of seminarians and complained about
everything, from cinema and women's sports to hijab, but said nothing about
inflation, the state of people’s livelihood, and the country's economy!”
dissident journalist Saeed Maleki tweeted, suggesting that after the upcoming
elections authorities will be taking tougher measures to address the concerns
of these clerics.
Source: iranintl.com
https://www.iranintl.com/en/202401256948
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Canvassing by women against sharia,
declare Kohistan clerics
January 27, 2024
MANSEHRA: A group of Kohistan clerics,
mostly members of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl, on Friday issued a fatwa
(Islamic decree) against canvassing by and for women election candidates and
declared the act un-Islamic.
“The women’s act of going from door to
door to solicit votes is against sharia [Islamic laws],” declared seminary head
Mufti Gul Shahzada after a meeting of clerics in the Kandia area of Upper
Kohistan district.
He said the fatwa against women’s
election campaign was issued by 30 authorised religious scholars and endorsed by
participants, including around 400 clerics from Kohistan region.
For the first time in Kohistan, three
women have entered the electoral arena.
They insist it is sinful to defy fatwa
They include the Pakistan
Tehreek-i-Insaf-backed Tehmina Faheem (PK-31 Kohistan-I) and Momina Basit
(PK-33 Kolai-Palas) and independent Sannaya Sabeel (PK-33 Kolai-Palas).
Cleric Shahzada claimed that it was
sinful to defy the fatwa.
He also said the sharia disallowed the
casting of vote along ethnic lines, so residents shouldn’t do so.
When contacted, women contender Tehmina
Faheem said she would respond to the decree after consulting her party’s
leadership.
The other candidates didn’t comment on
the issue.
NO SEAT ADJUSTMENT: Jamiat
Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl provincial emir and Senator Maulana Attaur Rehman on Friday
said his party didn’t make electoral alliance or seat adjustment with the
Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz for the Feb 8 general elections.
“The PML-N leaders are falsely
propagating that we [JUI-F] will withdraw our election candidate in favour of
their supreme leader, Nawaz Sharif, in Mansehra’s NA-15 constituency.
This is not going to happen as there is
no electoral alliance or seat adjustment between us,“ Mr Rehman told a public
meeting here.
The JUI-F leader said the PML-N feared
its leader’s defeat in the constituency and therefore, it had resorted to
“false propaganda.”
He said the party’s parliamentary board
led by central emir Maulana Fazlur Rehman fielded Mufti Kifayatullah as the
NA-15 candidate against Mr Sharif and it won’t withdraw him from the electoral
contest.
“Maulana Kifayatullah is the strongest
candidate in NA-15, so he will win the election convincingly,” he said.
The JUI-F provincial emir said Mr Sharif
publicly acknowledged that JUI-F emir Maulana Fazlur Rehman offered help to the
PML-N to form a coalition government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after the 2013
elections but the offer was rejected clearing the way of the PTI to power.
He said had Mr Sharif accepted Mr Fazl’s
offer, thecountry’s politics and economy would not have been shattered by the
PTI government.
Mr Rehman said his party was committed
to bringing about an “Islamic revolution” in the country through people’s
votes.
JUI-F candidates Mufti Kifayatullah,
Maulana Nasir Mehmood, Abrar Hussain Tanoli, Fahd Habib and SardarWaqarulMuluk
also addressed the gathering.
DIES: Senior lawyer and former principal
of the SM Law College Karachi Umar Farooq passed away here on Friday.
His funeral prayers were attended by
people from all walks of life, especially lawyers.
Mr Farooq was laid to rest at a local
graveyard.
Published in Dawn, January 27th, 2024
To find your constituency and location
of your polling booth, SMS your NIC number (no spaces) to 8300. Once you know
your constituency, visit the ECP website here for candidates.
Source: dawn.com
https://www.dawn.com/news/1808914/canvassing-by-women-against-sharia-declare-kohistan-clerics
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Hidden histories of British Muslim women
revealed
Vanessa Pearce
A collection of remarkable and often
hidden stories of Muslim women who helped shape the history of Britain have
been revealed and documented in a new book.
It covers the lives of women, from an
aristocrat to a cafe owner and World War Two spy, and reinstates them as
"actors, storytellers and story makers," the authors said.
"Muslim women were key contributors
not just to British Muslim history but to all of British history," said
sociologist Prof SariyaCheruvallil-Contractor, of Coventry University.
"If we are to understand who we are
as a society we have got to understand all of our contributions," she
added.
She has worked with co-editor and
historian Dr Jamie Gilham to curate stories from a range of contributors, often
from "very scarce source material," she said.
"These women came from communities
that experienced precarious and difficult challenges - racism, prejudice
towards their marriages and children, wars, financial insecurity, patriarchy
and the problematic citizenship status of their husbands," she explained.
"Preserving their records and life
histories was perhaps the last thing on their minds."
The publication tells the stories of
those who lived in Britain between the mid 19th and mid 20th Centuries, before
immigration profoundly affected the size and composition of Britain's Muslim
communities.
In the book, Muslim Women in Britain,
Prof Cheruvallil-Contractor writes about the life of Olive Salaman, helping
shed light on the contribution of working class women.
Olive was 15 years old when she moved
from a small town in the Rhondda Valley to Cardiff to train as a nurse.
One afternoon, trying to find her way
home after a cinema trip, she stopped to ask a young Yemeni sailor for
directions.
"We started talking and I think we
fell in love there and then," she told a BBC documentary in 1968.
The man she had asked directions of was
Ali Salaman, a young chef working in his own cafe in the Tiger Bay area of the
city.
After they married in 1937, she
converted to Islam, lived through WW2, had 10 children of her own and fostered
and adopted many more, becoming known as the "mother of the Cardiff
Yemenis" and a legendary anchor of her community.
The couple ran the area's popular Cairo
Cafe, which became a hub for community life.
Her story was an "important
one", said the academic, who had gathered information using the BBC
interview and oral history recordings.
"Mixed ethnicity marriages were not
commonplace, they were frowned upon significantly in those times."
Her social class had "added another
layer of invisibility, further cloaking these women's lives," she added.
"It was amazing when I started
digging into these histories, I found not only were they alive and kicking and
really active in their communities."
Two of the first British mosques
"had women at the very centre of their establishment," she said.
"The one in Woking was funded by a
woman and one in Liverpool a woman, Lady Fatima Cates, was its founding
treasurer."
One of the first known female converts
to Islam in Britain, Cates's story was "often cited" in discussions
about the early Liverpool Muslim community, "yet very little has been
written about her life," said contributor Hamid Mahmood.
In the book he charts her life from a
strict Christian household, her route to Islam at the the Abdullah Quilliam in
Liverpool via the Temperance Movement, until her death in 1900.
Her grave in the city's Anfield Cemetery
lay unmarked until Mr Mahmood, who founded a madrassah school named after her
in London, revealed it.
"Fatima's life and struggle against
persecution, violence and Islamophobia more than a century ago is now being
rediscovered by British Muslims," he writes.
In 2022, a stone was finally placed on
her unmarked grave, commemorating her life and significance.
"It's much harder to find resources
about women and it was important to get their stories out," explained Prof
Cheruvallil-Contractor.
"But if women were from the middle
or upper middle classes there tended to be archival sources - their families
hold material, their letters," she said.
"A case in point is Lady Evelyn
Cobbold - her mother used to be lady in waiting to the Queen.
"We know a lot about her now, how
she converts to Islam, a few years later performs the Hajj [pilgrimage to
Mecca], writes a book about it. Now we know a lot about her but 15 years ago we
knew nothing.
"Her family still has two big boxes
full of letters, but a women like Olive Salaman - her family had existential
crises, they didn't know on occasion where their next meal was going to come
from, and so archives were the last thing on their mind."
Dr Gilham, who has been researching the
history of Islam for more than 20 years, tells the story of quite a different
aristocratic Englishwoman Gladys Milton Brooke.
Her unusual religious conversion
ceremony - in 1932 above the English Channel on a flight between London and
Paris - made headlines around the world.
She subsequently explained why she had
become a Muslim in the press and on public radio and wrote articles about her
faith for Islamic journals, using her celebrity to challenge traditional
Western views about Islam.
The life of one of the most famous
Muslim women, writer and spy Noor Inayat Khan, has previously been
well-documented, the authors said.
Khan was a wartime British secret agent
of Indian descent who was the first female radio operator sent into
Nazi-occupied France by the Special Operations Executive (SOE).
She was arrested and eventually executed
at the Dachau concentration camp in 1944, and posthumously awarded the George
Cross five years later.
The book had taken a fresh approach to
her life with a chapter on her written by Noor's direct descendant, and drawing
on family oral history, said the authors.
"We decided this wasn't the final
word on the subject by any means, it's just introductions to springboard for
further research," added Dr Gilham.
"Our hope is that it inspires more
research using archival and, where possible, oral history methods to shed light
both on those women who actively helped to build British Islam."
Muslim Women in Britain, 100 Years of
Hidden History is published by Hurst.
Source: bbc.com
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-67568782
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India celebrates ‘power of women’ on
75th Republic Day
January 26, 2024
India celebrated its 75th Republic Day
on Friday, shining a spotlight on women in its armed forces with a parade
featuring for the first time a female tri-service contingent.
Republic Day marks the anniversary of
India officially adopting its constitution on Jan. 26, 1950, after gaining
independence from British colonial rule in 1947.
Themed “Nari Shakti” (the power of
women), the parade was led by President Draupadi Murmu — the second-ever woman
to serve as Indian president — who was joined by this year’s special guest,
French President Emmanuel Macron, as she unfurled India’s national flag at
Kartavya Path in Delhi.
Over 100 women artists playing classical
Indian music and performing traditional dances, were followed by an all-women
contingent of the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force, which for the first time
flew and marched in the parade that culminated at the Red Fort — a 17th-century
fort that had served as the main residence of India’s Mughal emperors.
For the Indian women who watched this
year’s Republic Day celebrations, their female-centric theme was a way to
strengthen women’s empowerment efforts.
“It’s a recognition and acknowledgement
of the fact that if India has to develop as a strong and developed country,
empowered women and participating women in the workforce and respectful
position of women in society is mandatory,” said SinietaOjha, a Delhi-based
lawyer, who was among over a million viewers who watched the Republic Day
parade live.
“I think by celebrating Republic Day as
women empowerment will bring the focus on women and their achievement and their
space in the society.”
Equal rights for men and women are
enshrined under the Indian constitution and India was the second country in
modern history to have a female leader, with Indira Gandhi taking the office of
prime minister in 1966 — after another South Asian state, Sri Lanka, elected
Sirimavo Bandaranaike as prime minister in 1960.
“To me as a woman, the 75th Republic Day
being celebrated with a female-centric theme is truly a testament of
empowerment and recognition of women and their contributions to the community
and the nation,” ShangitaNamasivayam, a professional dancer specializing in
traditional South Indian dance, told Arab News.
“As the theme suggests, ‘shakti’ (power)
represents an omnipresent energy that is constantly in manifestation and is
revered as the birth giver, the nurturing mother and a courageous leader.”
Anika Singh, who runs Voyce, an
organization focused on art activism, the parade was an acknowledgment of
women’s contributions to Indian society.
“Even from an economic point of view, we
can be an equal participant in taking the country forward,” she told Arab News.
“The decision to dedicate the day to
women comes from the perspective of empowering them. It’s like making society
more inclusive.”
Sabina Rehman, founder of Aabnoos
Couture, a clothing line based in Delhi, was a “dynamic and evolving process”
as while India has ratified key international conventions to end discrimination
against women and has been taking measures on human development, its global
standing on gender equality remains low.
India was ranked 127 out of 146
countries in terms of gender parity in the annual Gender Gap Report, 2023 of
the World Economic Forum.
“Despite progress, challenges persist
including gender-based violence, unequal representation in decision-making
roles and cultural norms that may limit women’s autonomy,” Rehman said.
“We need to persistently challenge
stereotypes, foster awareness, and promote a supportive environment for women
in various spheres.”
Source: arabnews.com
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2448606/world
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URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/nobel-peace-laureate-shirin-ebadi/d/131600