New Age Islam News Bureau
11
September 2020
• First Woman Working at The Barbers of Babylon Shrugs Off Abuse
•
Queen Soraya Tarzi Of Afghanistan: Born in Exile, Died In Exile
•
Organization of Islamic Cooperation Discusses Ways to Empower Women in Science,
Technology, Engineering, And Mathematics
Compiled
by New Age Islam News Bureau
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/pakistan-celebrity-ayesha-omar-says/d/122838
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Pakistan Celebrity Ayesha Omar Says She Doesn't Feel Safe in Her Own Country
11
SEP, 2020
Pakistan
celebrity Ayesha Omar
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The
motorway rape incident has sparked a conversation on women's safety and
celebrities are also asking some important questions.
In
a post on the micro-blogging platform Twitter, Bulbulay star Ayesha Omar posed
the question as to what a woman was to do in case she didn't have a choice but
to step out of her house when it was late?
"What
if she or someone in her family needed medical help?" Omar asks.
And
goes on to add: "I can walk on the streets at 1 am in other parts of the
world and feel completely safe but just not in my own country, even inside a
car."
The
tweet was in reference to the motorway rape case and came hours after CCPO
Lahore Umer Shaikh came under fire for his comments, where the latter said that
the woman should not have been travelling on her own late at night. The officer
had also made assertions that our societies did not allow women to travel alone
at night and that this was to ensure women's own safety.
The
officer, who is leading the investigation of the case, is being criticised for
using language that tantamounts to victim-blaming.
https://images.dawn.com/news/1185765/ayesha-omar-says-she-doesnt-feel-safe-in-her-own-country
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First
Woman Working at The Barbers of Babylon Shrugs Off Abuse
11
Sep 2020
An
Iraqi hairdresser wearing a protective face mask cuts the hair of a customer at
a men's barber shop amid the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19), in the
city of Hilla, Iraq September 7, 2020. REUTERS/Alaa al-MarjaniREUTERS
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HILLA,
Iraq (Reuters) - Um Zeinab says she suffered insults and verbal abuse when she
started walking to work at the men’s barber shop and tattoo parlour in the
bustling capital of Iraq’s Babylon province.
But
she persevered, ignored the cat-calls and started building up her own group of
regular customers - an unprecedented achievement in a very masculine world.
Now,
as far as she knows, she is the first woman in southern Iraq to make a living
cutting men’s hair.
“I
am part of society, I am like any other woman. I went out to work, to support
my family,” she said in the Hook Centre for Hair in the city of Hilla.
Every
day she climbs up the salon’s neon-lit staircase and starts working, her head
covered in a conservative veil and her face covered in a mask against the
coronavirus.
The
mother of two young daughters also does tattoos and offers skin care regimes.
“When
I sit with my girlfriends I tell them you should not just sit at home,” said
the 32-year-old. “Go out, work, women are equal to men. And right now there are
not many work opportunities. So I wanted to help my family.”
The
salon’s owner, Sadiq Wila, said some locals complained when he took her on, but
he ignored them.
“Why
are we, here in Iraq, not letting women live up to the very important role they
should play in society?” Wila said.
https://in.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-iraq-female-barber-idINKBN2612S8
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Queen
Soraya Tarzi Of Afghanistan: Born In Exile, Died In Exile
JONATHAN
GORNALL AND SAYED SALAHUDDIN
September
10, 2020
As
royal consort, Soraya Tarzi pushed for equal rights and education, opening
Afghanistan’s first school for girls. She was forced to flee Afghanistan along
with the king in 1929. (Getty Images)
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LONDON/KABUL:
Born in exile, she died in exile. But during the 10 controversial years she
spent as queen of Afghanistan, Soraya Tarzi gave the women of her country a
tantalizing glimpse of an emancipated future which, a century on, has yet to be
fully realized.
Barely
remembered in the West, where she was once greeted by vast crowds during a
triumphant tour of European capitals in 1927-28 with her husband King Amanullah
Khan, earlier this year Queen Soraya was celebrated by Time magazine, in a
series honoring the forgotten female pioneers of world history.
For
72 years, Time had named a “Man of the Year.” In 1999 it changed this to
“Person of the Year” but, to recognize the women it had overlooked in the past,
in March Time created 89 new online covers spotlighting “influential women who
were often overshadowed”. The choice for 1927 was Afghanistan’s progressive
queen, who was driven into permanent exile in 1929.
“Soraya
was the first Afghan lady and queen who began to promote women, educate them
and try to give them their rights,” said women’s rights activist and MP Shinkai
Karokhail, Afghanistan’s former ambassador to Canada.
The
queen “began a great revolution and managed to implement it through the king.
She appeared in public and travelled extensively to inform women about their
rights and that they needed to acquire education.”
For
her time, “she was unique – a very strong and exceptional woman.”
TIMELINE
Queen
Soraya
Nov. 24 1899: Soraya Tarzi is born in Syria,
daughter of the exiled Afghan intellectual Mahmud Tarzi.
-
Oct. 1901: The new king, Habibullah Khan, invites the Tarzi family to return to
Afghanistan.
-
Aug. 30 1913: The king’s son, Prince Amanullah, and Soraya Tarzi are married.
-
Feb. 20 1919: Prince Amanullah becomes king.
-
May 3, 1919: King Amanullah invades British India, triggering the Third
Anglo-Afghan war and securing Afghanistan independence.
-
December 1927 - July 1928: King Amanullah and Queen Soraya travel in Europe.
-
Nov. 14 1928 - Oct. 13 1929: Afghan civil war.
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Jan. 17, 1929: King Amanullah abdicates. He and Soraya settle in Rome.
-
Apr. 25, 1960: Amanullah dies in Switzerland, aged 67.
-
Apr. 20, 1968: Soraya dies in Rome, aged 68.
In
1926, on the seventh anniversary of Afghanistan’s independence, Soraya
delivered a characteristically provocative and inspiring speech.
Independence,
she said, belonged “to all of us … Do you think that our nation from the outset
needs only men to serve it? Women should also take their part as women did in
the early years of our nation and Islam … we should all attempt to acquire as
much knowledge as possible.”
Following
their European tour, the king and queen returned to Afghanistan in 1928
determined to modernize their country. But, says Zubair Shafiqi, a Kabul-based
journalist and political analyst, they moved too fast.
“She
and the king began to bring changes, reforms and freedoms after their joint
trip to Europe, where both were influenced by what was going on there,” he
said.
“But
they had not comprehended the backwardness of Afghanistan, a traditional and
conservative society. They both acted hastily, which provoked people and led
ultimately to revolt.”
After
a year-long civil war, in 1929 King Amanullah abdicated and fled with his queen
to British India.
The
king is remembered as a great reformer, but Soraya was the driving force behind
his agenda. Born on Nov. 24, 1899, in Damascus, where her family had settled
after being exiled from Afghanistan in 1881 following the rise to power of
Abdur Rahman Khan, she inherited her progressive thinking from her father,
Mahmud Tarzi.
Tarzi
was an Afghan intellectual whose liberal and nationalist ideology sat uneasily
with Khan, who had been installed as ruler by the British in 1880 following the
defeat of his predecessor in the Second Anglo-Afghan War.
As
an exile, Tarzi’s travels in Europe and life in Turkey had broadened his
horizons and he was determined to do the same for his country. His chance came
in 1901 with the death of Khan and the accession to the throne of his eldest
son, Habibullah Khan, who invited Tarzi and other exiled intellectuals to
return to Afghanistan.
As
a member of the government, Tarzi embarked on an ambitious program of
modernization. His daughter Soraya, meanwhile, met and fell in love with
Amanullah Khan, the king’s son, and on Aug. 30 1913, the two were married.
On
Feb. 20 1919, Habibullah Khan was assassinated. After a brief family struggle
Prince Amanullah claimed the throne. Soraya was now queen and her reforming
father, Mahmud Tarzi, became foreign minister.
Events
moved quickly. On May 3, 1919, King Amanullah, determined to pursue the
nationalist policies advocated by Tarzi, took the audacious step of invading
British India.
The
Third Anglo-Afghan War, better known in Afghanistan as the War of Independence,
was all over by August. Britain, drained of men and resources by the First
World War, agreed to an armistice and at Kabul on November 22 1921, Tarzi and
Henry Dobbs, chief of the British mission, signed a treaty committing the two
nations to “respect each with regard to the other all rights of internal and
external independence.”
Afghanistan
had finally thrown off the shackles of British imperialism. Tarzi set up
embassies in a series of European capitals and, with the enthusiastic support
of the king and queen, pressed on with modernizing his country.
As
Time’s tribute in March recalled, “in the face of opposition,” the king and
queen “campaigned against polygamy and the veil, and practiced what they
preached.” The king rejected the traditions of taking multiple wives and
maintaining a harem, while his queen, “a fierce believer in women’s rights and
education … was known for tearing off her veil in public.”
The
first primary school for girls, Masturat School, was opened in Kabul in 1921
under the patronage of Queen Soraya, who in 1926 was named minister of
education. More schools followed, and in 1928 15 students from Masturat Middle
School, all daughters of prominent Kabul families, were sent to Turkey to
further their education.
It
was a provocative move.
“Sending
young, unmarried girls out of the country,” wrote the academic Shireen Khan
Burki in the 2011 book of essays “Land of the Unconquerable: The Lives of
Contemporary Afghan Women,” “was regarded with alarm in many quarters as yet
another sign that the state, in its efforts to Westernize, was willing to push
against social and cultural norms.”
The
king’s gender policies “were completely divorced from the social realities of
his extremely conservative, primarily tribal, and geographically remote
country.”
The
final straw for many came in December 1927, when the king and queen embarked on
an expensive six-month tour of European capitals.
In
England the couple were met at Dover by the Prince of Wales and ferried by
royal train to London, where they were greeted at Victoria station by King
George and Queen Mary. The royal party then travelled in open horse-drawn
carriages to Buckingham Palace through streets thronged with cheering crowds.
Their
reception in other European capitals – and in Moscow, a pointedly political
stop for the King and Queen of a country seen by the British as a buffer
against Soviet ambitions in the region — was equally rapturous.
But
upon their return to Afghanistan in July 1928 it quickly became clear that the
great European tour had been a terrible mistake. “In a matter of months the
progress that Soraya had made was relinquished,” said Mariam Wardak, an analyst
and advocate for gender inclusion in Afghanistan who co-founded Her
Afghanistan, an organization dedicated to the advancement of young Afghan
women.
As
the king tried to appease his critics, “secular schools, including girls
schools, were closed, family laws banning polygamy and granting women the right
to divorce were repealed, secular courts were disbanded for sharia courts and
much more.”
It
was in vain. By November 1928 Afghanistan was engulfed by a civil war, with
opposition forces led by Habibullah Kalakani, the so-called bandit king. In
January 1929 Amanullah abdicated and fled the country.
Kalakani
held on to power for just 10 months. On
Oct. 13 1929, he was overthrown and executed by Nadir Shah who, with the help
of the British, installed himself as king.
To
this day many in Afghanistan believe that the British government had a hand in
the overthrow of Amanullah and that, to sabotage his reign, it mounted a covert
campaign of fake news against his wife.
“While
accompanying King Amanullah on his overseas trips, she represented the young
modernity of Afghanistan and the new era both wanted to broaden and consolidate
at home,” said historian Habibullah Rafi. “But our evil enemy, the British
empire at the time, having failed in Afghanistan and in order to avenge its
defeat, began spreading false information about her goals as it wanted to block
progress here.”
The
British, he says, distributed doctored photographs showing the queen abroad
with bare legs – a shocking sight for many back home. Britain, said Rafi,
“could not afford to see a free and prosperous Afghanistan, as India, which was
under its firm occupation, would have been inspired by our freedom and progress
and would have also revolted. That is why Britain did all it could to undermine
the then government, and especially the queen.”
Whether
or not the British did mount a dirty-tricks campaign against Amanullah and his
wife, once-secret cabinet papers seen by Arab News reveal that Britain
enthusiastically backed Mohammed Nadir Shah, Amanullah’s successor as king.
Britain’s
main concern at the time was the protection of India, the jewel in the empire’s
crown, which it felt was threatened by Amanullah’s increasingly close
relationship with the Soviet Union. To the alarm of the British, in May 1921
Amanullah had signed a treaty of friendship with the Soviets.
In
1932 Amanullah’s successor asked the British for assurances of help in the
event of a feared Soviet invasion, and one paragraph in a telegram sent to
London by the British government of India on Sept. 10, 1932, confirms the
empire’s meddling in Afghanistan’s internal affairs.
The
Afghan government, wrote the anonymous author, was “aware that their internal
position is very unstable owing to pro-Amanullah propaganda [and] the
assistance received from us by Nadir in securing throne.”
In
exile King Amanullah and Queen Soraya travelled to Italy, where they spent the
rest of their days in Rome. Amanullah died in April 1960. His wife lived for
another eight years. After her death at the age of 68 in April 1968 her coffin
was given a miltary escort to Rome airport and in Afghanistan she received a
state funeral.
Today,
the former king and queen lie together with Emir Habibullah in the family’s
mausoleum in the Amir Shaheed gardens in Jalalabad.
Oct.
11 is International Day of the Girl Child, held to raise awareness of the
obstacles that girls all over the world face. This year, Education Cannot Wait,
the organization established at the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016, is
highlighting those obstacles by focusing on the plight of girls in Afghanistan.
“More
than three decades of conflict have devastated Afghanistan’s education system
and completing primary school remains a distant dream for many children,
especially in rural areas,” according to ECW.
It
says that in Afghanistan between 3.2 and 3.7 million children aged 7 to 15, 60
percent of them girls, remain out of school, while drop-out rates are high.
Ninety
years after her attempt to liberate Afghan girls and women ended in revolt and
a return to a time-honored system of repression, Soraya would be saddened to
see how little progress has been made in her country since then.
“I
admire Queen Soraya’s efforts,” said Wardak, the advocate for gender inclusion
in Afghanistan, “but I believe she could have been more effective if she had
adopted a more subtle approach on how to advance women's rights.
“Today,
we struggle with many rights of women to be practised, underage marriage still
exists and people still give and receive dowry.”
Nevertheless,
Wardak said, “I believe the vision of Queen Soraya still lives in many young
leading women today and will stand strong in generations to come, if we
continue to educate our society. Education is key.”
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1732666/world
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Organization
of Islamic Cooperation Discusses Ways to Empower Women in Science, Technology,
Engineering, And Mathematics
September
11, 2020
JEDDAH:
Plans to step up the provision of science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics (STEM) education for women and girls were on Thursday discussed at
a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
During
a virtual workshop, members of the body’s general secretariat looked at ways of
improving access to learning for women and girls in OIC countries. The OIC
event was held in cooperation with the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), the
Islamic World Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (ICESCO), and
the Standing Committee on Scientific and Technological Cooperation.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1732751/saudi-arabia
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URL: https://www.newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/pakistan-celebrity-ayesha-omar-says/d/122838