Shabana Mahmood Becomes UK’s First Woman Muslim Lord Chancellor, Swearing Her Oath On the Holy Quran
New Age Islam News Bureau
16 July 2024
· Shabana Mahmood Becomes UK’s First Woman Muslim Lord Chancellor, Swearing Her Oath On the Holy Quran
· Iran Seizes Passport, Devices of Actress LeyliRashidi Who Supported 2022 Protests
· Video of Woman Denied Entry into London Pub Over Palestine Badge Goes Viral
· Black Women Employed by King County Report Lower Pay, Discrimination
· Six Iranian Women’s Rights Activists Face Rape Threats During Arrest: UN Special Rapporteur
·
Gambia Upholds Its Ban On Female Genital
Cutting
· MastercardLaunches ‘Her Voice’ Podcast Series inEgypt to Inspire the Next Generation of Female Changemakers
Compiled by New Age Islam News Bureau
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Shabana Mahmood Becomes UK’s First Woman Muslim Lord Chancellor, Swearing Her Oath On the Holy Quran
July 16, 2024
Shabana Mahmood
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LONDON: In a historic ceremony at the Royal Courts of Justice, MP Shabana Mahmood was sworn in as the first female Muslim Lord Chancellor of the United Kingdom.
The event marked a milestone in British history, with Ms Mahmood swearing her oath on the Holy Quran. By law, the Lord Chancellor is secretary of state for justice and the minister of the Crown responsible for the administration of the courts and legal aid in England and Wales.
Presiding over the ceremony, Dame Sue Carr, the first female Chief Justice, highlighted the multiple historic elements of the occasion. She noted: “Today marks a ‘triple first’: the first Lord Chancellor to swear on the Quran, the first female Lord Chancellor, and the first time a female Chief Justice has sworn in a Lord Chancellor. These milestones represent the ongoing evolution of our constitution to mirror the society it serves.”
Ms Mahmood, known for her “shrewd advocacy and deep knowledge of professional ethics”, expressed gratitude and commitment. She reflected on her journey from a young girl in Small Heath, Birmingham, working in her parents’ corner shop to her current role.
“Being the ‘first’ is both a privilege and a burden. Getting this right can open doors for future generations, showing that even the oldest titles of the land are within reach for us all,” she stated. She also noted that she is the first Lord Chancellor who can speak Urdu.
The event was attended by prominent figures, including Law Society President Nick Emmerson and Bar Chair Sam Townend KC, who praised Ms Mahmood’s dedication to justice and anticipated her positive impact on the legal system.
Ms Mahmood pledged to continue “defending the international rule of law and upholding human rights” as she was sworn in at a ceremony in London. She also said that the judiciary must make decisions “without political pressure and undue influence”, pledging to be a “champion for the rule of law” during the event at the Royal Courts of Justice.
Source: dawn.com
https://www.dawn.com/news/1846111/shabana-mahmood-becomes-uks-first-woman-muslim-lord-chancellor
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Iran Seizes Passport, Devices of ActressLeyliRashidiWho Supported 2022 Protests
JULY 16, 2024
This incident follows Rashidi's public
support for the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in 2022 when she posted a photo
of herself without the mandatory hijab on Instagram
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Iranian airport officials have confiscated actress LeyliRashidi's passport and electronic devices upon her return to Iran.
TezhamBorumand, Rashidi's mother, revealed in an Instagram post that her daughter's passport, mobile phone, and laptop were seized, and her belongings were thoroughly searched.
Borumand expressed frustration with the situation, stating, "I wish thieves and looters would be seen like this, I wish all our enemies were as dangerous as Leyli and her ilk."
She also sarcastically thanked the Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, Mohammad Mehdi Esmaili, for his recent claims of supporting artists and lifting bans on their activities.
This incident follows Rashidi's public support for the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in 2022 when she posted a photo of herself without the mandatory hijab on Instagram.
The confiscation of Rashidi's passport is the latest in a series of actions taken against artists who have supported protests following the death of Mahsa Amini in custody nearly two years ago.
Other prominent figures in Iranian cinema, including TaranehAlidoosti, KatayounRiahi, and PegahAhangarani, have faced similar pressures and legal consequences for their involvement in the protests and opposition to compulsory hijab laws.
Source: iranwire.com
https://iranwire.com/en/women/131838-iran-seizes-passport-devices-of-actress-who-supported-2022-protests/
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Video of Woman Denied Entry into London Pub Over Palestine Badge Goes Viral
July 15, 2024
LONDON: A video showing a woman arguing with a member of staff at a London pub after being denied entry because she was wearing a badge depicting the Palestinian flag is spreading on social media.
In the footage, apparently filmed on Saturday, the woman is in a heated argument with the employee at the entrance to The Red Lion in Westminster, while a security guard blocks the door and listens to their exchange.
The woman points to the Palestine flag on her jacket and says: “If I was wearing an American flag or an English flag or a Ukrainian flag, you would not ask me to remove it — that would be considered offensive.
“If I was wearing a rainbow flag or a pride flag, you wouldn’t stop me. No, you wouldn’t.”
The staff member repeatedly replies: “Yes, I would.”
The Red Lion, which is close to Downing Street and the Houses of Parliament, is said to be a popular venue with politicians and civil servants.
A spokesperson for pub told the Daily Mail newspaper: “The location of this pub, on Whitehall, means it is frequently on the route of protests from all sides of the political divide.
“We are a place that is open to all and we want to ensure that everyone is equal inside the pub and that we remain neutral.
“Therefore, the management team in the pub took the decision, some years ago, to ask customers to remove all flags, badges and overt political slogans, whatever the cause, before entering the pub itself.”
Source: arabnews.com
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2550381/world
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Black women employed by King County report lower pay, discrimination
July 15, 2024
Black women working at King County see widespread disparities in pay and promotions, and regularly experience microaggressions and discrimination, a new report found.
The report, produced by the county’s Black/African Women’s Affinity Group, found persistent inequities despite years of effort by King County to root out racism, injustice and bias in its policymaking, services and workplace.
The group’s co-chairs said the report, which analyzed survey responses of workers across racial groups and a decade’s worth of income data, serves as concrete evidence that validates the anecdotes they’ve heard from the county’s Black female employees of regularly being disrespected and overlooked.
“I actually felt a sense of relief, because the data correlates to my experience,” said co-chair Ebony Frazier, who has worked at the county 17 years and co-founded the affinity group in 2020. “This is real, it’s not just one Black woman’s experience. It’s all of us collectively having this experience.”
County Executive Dow Constantine said in a statement he appreciated the work of employees who researched these issues over three years outside of their regular duties, and said it will be taken into consideration as the county updates its Equity and Social Justice Strategic Plan.
“This report shows that we still have work to do to see the gains we’ve made extend equitably across our workforce. It also shows that we value uplifting hard truths. Only by acknowledging what’s not working can we improve for our employees and for the public,” he said in a statement.
As of September 2022, about 1,000 Black women work in regular, temporary or term-limited positions at the county, which employs a total of more than 16,000 people, according to the report.
Fifty-five percent of Black women who filled out the survey said they have experienced race-based discrimination in the workplace, compared with 5% of white respondents. Black female employees also reported frequently hearing offensive, embarrassing, hurtful and isolating comments while at work, the report found.
Many Black women employed by King County said they feel stymied professionally, with 40% saying they strongly disagree or disagree with the statement “I feel supported in my career growth at King County or in my department,” compared with 21% of white employees.
More than half of Black female employees said they feel the ideas and contributions of workers from other racial groups are more valued, and nearly half said they feel there were hurdles to training and development because of their background or identity.
“We heard over and over a common theme: ‘I’m doing these higher level duties, or I’m filling in for someone, I’m good enough to do it in the short-term, but when hiring for a full-time equivalent position … they’re hiring in someone outside,’ ” said Natasha Jones, director of customer service for the King County Executive and the project’s communication lead.
Using human resources data from 2012 to 2022, the report found white employees receive a higher pay rate than all other ethnic groups analyzed. The median hourly rate for Black women is $38, compared with $46 for white men, the report found.
Notably, disparities exist regardless of education levels and despite similar tenure levels across racial groups, said Frazier, who works in the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention.
Among employees with a high school equivalent education, Black employees made a median income of about $68,000 a year, while white workers earned about $75,000.
For those with master’s degrees, Asian workers had the highest median income of about $108,000 a year, white employees earned about $103,000 annually and Black employees were paid about $101,000.
In addition to pay gaps, the report found that Black employees, and particularly Black women at the county, struggle to secure promotions or languish in temporary positions, leaving them in financial precarity.
Black employees made up about 10% of approved requests for reclassification — typically a promotion bumping up a worker on the salary scale based on increased work responsibilities — between 2015 and 2020, while making up 17% of the total county employees, the report found. About 63% of approved reclassification requests were among white employees, who make up 51% of total county employees.
In departments such as Public Health – Seattle & King County, Community and Human Services and Metro Transit, Black women are overrepresented in temporary and limited-term positions, which are often lower-paying and have inherently less job security.
The disparities illustrate the reality of Black women consistently doing “shadow work” without the corresponding pay or benefits, said Black/African Women’s Affinity Group co-founder and co-chair Miesha Vaughn. Black women at the county are also least likely to have managers advocating for reclassification, Vaughn said, making the possibility of promotions even more challenging.
“They come to us for help with a request or for emotional or mental support [because] they know you’re a great thought partner,” said Vaughn, who’s worked at the county for nine years and works in the Office of Risk Management Services. “At the end of the day, you did all that great work and the other person doing the work gets all the credit, even though you’ve made all these contributions.”
The group has presented their findings to county department leaders and has been met with a generally positive response, Jones said.
“You can’t fix something if you don’t acknowledge it, and all seem committed to make this better not only for Black women in the department, but also their workforce” at large, she added.
Among a number of recommendations, the affinity group strongly advocates for a more thorough investigation into what factors contribute to the pay disparities among county employees.
It also recommends the county develop an equity and social justice policy manual that outlines a clearer system for performance reviews and raise requests, training for managers to follow guidelines and removing opportunities for bias in the hiring process.
Source: seattletimes.com
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/black-women-employed-by-king-county-report-lower-pay-discrimination/
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Six Iranian Women’s Rights Activists Face Rape Threats During Arrest: UN Special Rapporteur
15-07-24
According to a UN Special Rapporteur, six Iranian women rights advocates who are serving lengthy prison sentences, reportedly faced torture and threats of rape and death when they were violently detained.
Publishing the news in a post on X, Mary Lawlor, the UN expert on Human Rights Defenders, called on Iranian authorities to release the women immediately.
Dubbed as the “Gilan 2023 Case” by observers, the activists were arbitrarily sentenced and subsequently transferred to Lakan prison this past Saturday, located in the province of Gilan in northwestern Iran.
Alongside five other activists, these six women’s summary sentences were upheld on May 28. They were sentenced to serve over 60 years in prison collectively.
ForoughSaminia, Shiva Shahsiah, NeginRezaei, AzadehChavoshian, and MatinYazdani have each been sentenced to six years in prison. JelvehJavaheri, on the other hand, received a one-year sentence.
The other activists sentenced include ZohrehDadras, Zahra Dadras, Sara Jahani, Yasmin Hashdari and Houman Taheri.
Tagging the Iranian state’s Permanent Mission to the UN, Lawlor also called on the authorities to end the suppression of women human rights defenders in the country.
Women rights defenders charged with ‘disrupting national security’
Local rights group, Hyrcani Human Rights Media previously reported that the arrests of the six women rights defenders were made without an official summons notice and only by phone announcement.
Charges against the activists include "membership in organizations that aim to disrupt national security" and "assembly and collusion to act against national security."
According to the human rights group, Front Line Defenders their activism included advocating for various human rights issues including women’s rights, children's rights, and access to health and education in a healthy and enabling environment.
In May this year, Branch 11 of the Rasht Revolutionary Court of Appeals, headed by Judge Mohammad Sadegh Iran Aghideh, confirmed the verdicts of all the defendants in this case without holding a court session, according to Bidarzani.
Last week, on July 10, 2024, two of the activists, Zahra Dadras and ZohrehDadras, were arrested without prior summons or notice and transferred to Lakan Prison to serve their prison sentences.
The eleven activists in this case were first detained during mid-August 2023 raids at their residences.
They were kept in solitary confinement, with their location undisclosed due to being denied legal representation and limited phone communication.
They were ultimately released on bail from Lakan prison on various dates between September 16 and October 1, 2024.
Source: iranintl.com
https://www.iranintl.com/en/202407139121
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Gambia Upholds Its Ban On Female Genital Cutting
Lawmakers in the West African nation of Gambia on Monday rejected a bill that would have overturned a ban on female genital cutting.
The attempt to become the first country in the world to reverse such a ban had been closely followed by activists abroad.
The vote followed months of heated debate in the largely Muslim nation of less than 3 million people. Lawmakers effectively killed the bill by rejecting all its clauses and preventing a final vote.
The procedure, also called female genital mutilation, includes the partial or full removal of girls' external genitalia, often by traditional community practitioners with tools such as razor blades or at times by health workers. It can cause serious bleeding, death and childbirth complications but remains a widespread practice in parts of Africa.
Activists and human rights groups were worried that a reversal of the ban in Gambia would overturn years of work against the centuries-old practice that's often performed on girls younger than 5 and rooted in the concepts of sexual purity and control.
Religious conservatives who led the campaign to reverse the ban argued the practice was “one of the virtues of Islam.”
“It's such a huge sense of relief,” one activist and survivor, Absa Samba, told The Associated Press after the vote, as she celebrated with others in front of parliament. “But I believe this is just the beginning of the work.”
FatouBaldeh, another activist and survivor, said she woke up that morning crying.
“Why have we been put through this for 11 months?” she asked, her voice shaking. “Why have we been forced to relive our traumas? Just because men didn’t believe that female genital cutting harmed us.”
She added: “And right now, girls are still being cut. I hope this time it is not just a law for decoration.”
In Gambia, more than half of women and girls ages 15 to 49 have undergone the procedure, according to United Nations estimates. Former leader YahyaJammeh unexpectedly banned the practice in 2015 without further explanation. But activists say enforcement has been weak and women have continued to be cut, with only two cases prosecuted.
Even now, “it was widespread and there was public promotion of it,” Samba said. She called for more public education about the health consequences of the practice.
UNICEF earlier this year said some 30 million women globally have undergone female genital cutting in the past eight years, most of them in Africa but others in Asia and the Middle East.
More than 80 countries have laws prohibiting the procedure or allowing it to be prosecuted, according to a World Bank study cited by the United Nations Population Fund earlier this year. They include South Africa, Iran, India and Ethiopia.
“No religious text promotes or condones female genital mutilation,” the UNFPA report said, adding there is no benefit to it.
Long term, the practice can lead to urinary tract infections, menstrual problems, pain, decreased sexual satisfaction and childbirth complications as well as depression, low self-esteem and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Source: africanews.com
https://www.africanews.com/2024/07/15/gambia-upholds-its-ban-on-female-genital-cutting/
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Mastercard launches ‘Her Voice’ podcast series in Egypt to inspire the next generation of female changemakers
15/07/2024
Mastercard has announced the launch of its award-winning podcast series ‘Her Voice’ in Egypt, marking a significant step in its efforts to empower women entrepreneurs and small businesses in the country. ‘Her Voice’ seeks to amplify the stories of female entrepreneurs and innovators in business, social impact, culinary arts, travel, retail and e-commerce.
In a region witnessing an upsurge in female entrepreneurship, ’Her Voice’ emerges as a pivotal platform that not only highlights the exceptional women at the forefront of innovation but also reinforces the transformative power of female-led enterprises.
“At Mastercard, we believe in the immense potential of women and the pivotal role they play in the global economy. ’Her Voice’ stems from our desire to provide a space where women’s voices resonate, their stories inspire, and their innovations unlock untapped opportunities. We envision the podcast series as a catalyst for change, igniting a spark in every listener that drives them to contribute positively to their communities. We look forward to seeing the domino effect of ’Her Voice’ on the future of women-led businesses in Egypt,” said InjiBorai, VP and Country Manager, Egypt, Mastercard.
Launched July 2nd, the podcast series spotlights the triumphs of female pioneers, aiming to motivate individuals to unlock their full potential while uplifting one another through compelling storytelling and shared wisdom. Each episode presents listeners with a unique blend of inspiration, insights and perspectives from women who dared to break the mold, reshaping Egypt’s landscape over the past decade in terms of women’s empowerment.
Hosted by the renowned Egyptian actress Mariam El Khost, each episode interviews the inspiring journey of a unique female guest. Featured speakers include AsmaaKhattab, founder of cultural tourism company Walk Like an Egyptian, Laila Sedky, founder of NOLA and artist, Dina El Mofty, founder of INJAZ Egypt, Mounaz and AyaAbdelraouf, co-founder of Okhtein, and Rania Ayman, founder and CEO of Entreprenelle. These female trailblazers share their stories in their own voices, discussing their personal inspiration, motivation and their vision for an inclusive future.
Moreover, Mastercard partnered with Entreprenelle, a social and business development organization that supports, connects and trains women entrepreneur, to offer the opportunity for two remarkable entrepreneurs to receive a year-long membership and be featured in their very own episodes of the series.
In 2020, Mastercard redoubled its commitment to financial inclusion as a pathway to broad-based prosperity, including a specific focus on providing 25 million women entrepreneurs with solutions that can help them grow their businesses. By harnessing technology, philanthropy and its network of partners, the company has reached 25 million women entrepreneurs, with more work and support to continue. Mastercard has also partnered with Women Choice to launch the Social Innovation Incubator (SII) For Women’s Employment. The program will help create one million jobs for women across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), supporting inclusive economic growth in the region.
Tune into the Her Voice season one: https://www.priceless.com/hervoice
Source: arqam.news
https://arqam.news/360649/
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URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/shabana-mahmood-holy-quran-oath/d/132720