Noor Bee, Solo Hijabi Biker Rides Past Stereotypes, Eyes Bengaluru-Mecca Trip
New Age
Islam News Bureau
05 August 2023
Noor Bee,
Solo Hijabi Biker Rides Past Stereotypes, Eyes Bengaluru-Mecca Trip
‘Space Is
The Limit’: G20 Representative Highlights Saudi Success At Women’s Empowerment
Summit
Saudi Women
Taught Traditional Skills For Making Leather Goods
Iran Proposes
Long Jail Terms, AI Surveillance In Harsh New Hijab Law
Influential
Iranian Women: Shahnaz Azad (1901-1961)
Compiled by New Age Islam News Bureau
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/solo-hijabi-biker-bengaluru-mecca/d/130390
-----
Noor
Bee, Solo Hijabi Biker Rides Past Stereotypes, Eyes Bengaluru-Mecca Trip
Saw all of
India; Next is Mecca; Hijabi bike rider Noor prepares for a solo trip from
Bengaluru to Saudi
-----
Aug 5, 2023
BENGALURU:
Nothing slows Noor Bee in “breaking stereotypes” as she covers mind-boggling
distances with her head covered in a hijab. Not even a barrage of rather
condescending questions while on the road and criticism online deterred this
30-year-old motorcyclist who rode solo across India, starting from Bengaluru.
Unfettered, the HR professional is planning her next road trip, once again
alone, this time taking on a bigger challenge across international borders.
Noor is saving up for a new motorcycle and is simultaneously chalking out plans
for a solo ride from Bengaluru to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, next year. “I want to
break the stereotype that women, especially from my faith, can’t take road
trips alone across the globe. Some have done it and I want to be the first from
south India,” she said.
For her,
motorcycles have always been first love. “I come from a background where women
aren’t exposed to biking. I wanted to break that barrier. Owning a motorcycle
had been on my mind since college days and as soon as I found a job with an IT
firm in Bengaluru, I started working towards it,” said Noor, who hails from
Pallavaram in Chennai.
In mid-2021,
Noor purchased her dream bike. “I managed to buy a used 2012 model, a
Karnataka-registered Royal Enfield Classic 350, and some basic riding gear with
the money I had saved up and finally set out on my dream an all-India solo
motorcycle trip,” she recalled.
Noor
quit her job and started from Bengaluru on November 14, 2021, keeping the road
trip a secret from her family. Later, she broke the news from a highway in
Lonavala, Maharashtra.
Clad in
her riding gear, 5.5-foot-tall Noor attracted attention all along the way, not
just for being a woman riding solo, but primarily for her hijab. “I rode
through Maharashtra and Daman and Diu, Gujarat, Rajasthan and then entered
Delhi,” Noor recollected.
Noor,
who calls herself ‘Nomadi Hijabi Rider’, was on the road on a shoestring budget
and adhered to a few basic safety rules: No riding after 5pm and keeping all
interactions with those extra-inquisitive men on the way to the bare minimum.
Like
many other riders, she took night shelter at petrol stations and places of
worship. “I was so overwhelmed by the people, mainly at places of worship such
as gurdwaras, temples and ashrams in northern India. They welcomed me with food
and accommodation, despite me telling them that I’m from a different faith,”
she said.
She rode
on with grit through UP and Uttarakhand. “Nepal was also part of my itinerary
and I did ride through the beautiful country before exiting through the Raxaul
border and crossing into Bihar,” said Noor. Sadly, her journey was cut short
due to an accident in mid-May 2022. Injured, Noor was forced to ship her
damaged motorcycle to Chennai on a train, which she too tearfully boarded at
Danapur, near Patna. “I recovered by July 2022 and returned to Bengaluru to
join my new job. I was forced to sell my motorcycle to arrange a fat advance
for the flat I took on rent in (Bengaluru’s) Yeshwantpur,” Noor said.
Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/30-year-old-solo-hijabi-biker-rides-past-stereotypes-eyes-bengaluru-mecca-trip/articleshow/102435523.cms?pcode=462
----------
‘Space
Is The Limit’: G20 Representative Highlights Saudi Success At Women’s
Empowerment Summit
Dr. Maymouna Al-Khalil, secretary general of the Saudi Family Affairs
Council, speaks at the Ministerial Conference on Women’s Empowerment. (Family
Affairs Council)
----
August
04, 2023
NEW
DELHI: Saudi Arabia’s representative has highlighted the Kingdom’s success in
implementing policies to empower women at a G20 Empower conference, which
wrapped up on Friday.
The
Ministerial Conference on Women’s Empowerment under India’s G20 presidency took
place in Gandhinagar, Gujarat on Aug. 2-4.
Ministers
and other top officials from G20 members responsible for gender equality and
the empowerment of all women and girls discussed actions to accelerate progress
on achieving gender equality in accordance with the Sustainable Development
Goals.
Saudi
Arabia was represented by Dr. Maymouna Al-Khalil, secretary-general of the
Family Affairs Council, who shared with the meeting’s participants the
Kingdom’s best practices that in the past few years have made it a country with
one of the world’s highest shares of women entrepreneurs.
“Women
are partners alongside men in realizing the targets of Vision 2030. They are
considered important contributors to reach a thriving economy, to be part of an
ambitious nation,” Al-Khalil told Arab News.
“To play
their roles, they are educated, they are aware, they are skilled, they have
much to offer in terms of their expertise.”
Female
employment levels have soared since the launching of Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Salman’s Vision 2030 diversification and transformation plan in 2016.
A 2021
report by London-based Global Entrepreneurship Monitor showed Saudi Arabia had
the third-highest percentage of women holding entrepreneurial roles.
“The
numbers speak volumes. Women now are leading 45 percent of (small and
medium-sized enterprises) in the Kingdom and they make up 17.7 percent of those
who are engaged in entrepreneurial activity,” Al-Khalil said.
“The
Kingdom is also aware of the need to prepare future women leaders and to
empower the current women leaders.”
During
her speech at the G20 women’s empowerment conference, the Saudi representative
presented a series of initiatives undertaken under Vision 2030 to close the
gender gap in all sectors.
“Saudi
Arabia has nearly closed the gender gap in (women’s) participation in the
sectors of health and education,” she said.
“In the
information and communication technology sector, a women’s empowerment program
was launched in order to build a digital ecosystem that attracts, embraces, and
develops talented women in technology who are capable of contributing to the
digital transformation agenda in the Kingdom.”
The
objectives of the program were to increase women’s participation in IT and to
raise digital awareness among them, which for Al-Khalil remains “a common
challenge for all nations.”
As a
result of its programs to address it, Saudi Arabia has enrolled more than
47,000 women in programs for digital reskilling and upskilling, which
contributed to women making up 33 percent of the Kingdom’s information and
communications technology sector.
“As the
Kingdom continues to build a future where women stand shoulder-to-shoulder with
men, united in their shared pursuit of a thriving and prosperous nation, it
remains committed to the G20 priorities for (women’s) empowerment,” Al-Khalil
said.
One of
the most recent examples that she gave from the Saudi experience was of
astronauts RayyanahBarnawi and Ali Al-Qarni who in May joined the International
Space Station.
Barnawi
made history as the first-ever Arab female astronaut to go to the ISS.
“The
sky, or space, is the limit,” Al-Khalil said. “Empowering women is not just a
matter of justice, it is an economic imperative for driving growth, innovation,
and sustainable development. By realizing the full potential of women, we
unlock the doors to prosperity for all.”
Source: arabnews.com
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2349776/world
--------
Saudi
women taught traditional skills for making leather goods
August
04, 2023
NAJRAN:
A group of Saudi women have been taking part in a training program aimed at
passing on the traditional craft of making leather goods.
Fifteen
women from Najran were taught production skills as part of a regional scheme
organized by the Herfah Institute — that specializes in the training of
inherited handicrafts — and the Lar Association for Productive Families.
The initiative
has been designed to preserve the Kingdom’s ancient crafts and national
heritage for future generations.
Trainer
Intisar Al-Rashid said that the women who participated in the program learnt
about the main types of leather used in the industry, and were shown basic
production skills.
These
included the correct shearing, sewing, detailing, and pressing methods and
techniques for burning and drawing on leather.
Source: arabnews.com
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2349806/saudi-arabia
--------
Iran proposes
long jail terms, AI surveillance in harsh new hijab law
Aug 05,
2023
Just
weeks before the one-year anniversary of the major protests caused by Mahsa
Amini's death, Iranian authorities are preparing a new Bill on hijab-wearing
that experts fear would put unprecedentedly harsh punitive measures into law,
according to CNN.
The
70-article draft law sets out a range of proposals, including much longer
prison terms for women who refuse to wear the veil, stiff new penalties for
celebrities and businesses who flout the rules, and the use of artificial
intelligence to identify women in breach of the dress code.
Experts
said the Bill, which has yet to be passed, was a reminder to Iranians that the
regime will not back down from its stance on the hijab despite the country's
enormous protests last year, according to CNN.
The Bill
was submitted by the judiciary to the government for consideration earlier this
year, then forwarded to the parliament and subsequently approved by the Legal
and Judicial Commission. It is set to be submitted to the Board of Governors
this Sunday before it is introduced on the floor of parliament, state-aligned
news agency Mehr reported Tuesday.
Iran’s
parliament would work on finalising the text and voting on the Bill “in the
next two months,” Mehr said.
Amini, a
22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman, died last September after being detained by
the regime’s infamous morality police and taken to a “re-education centre,”
allegedly for not abiding by the country’s conservative dress code, CNN reported.
While
not officially disbanded, the morality police had largely pulled back following
last year’s protests, which have gradually waned. But earlier this month,
police spokesman General Saeed Montazerolmahdi said the morality police would
resume notifying and then detaining women who are caught without the Islamic
headscarf in public.
The
hijab has long been a point of contention in Iran. It was barred in 1936 during
leader Reza Shah’s emancipation of women until his successor lifted the ban in
1941. In 1983 the hijab became mandatory after the last shah was overthrown in
the Islamic Revolution of 1979, CNN reported.
Iran has
traditionally considered Article 368 of its Islamic penal code as the hijab
law, which states that those in breach of the dress code face between 10 days
to two months in prison, or a fine between 50,000 to 500,000 Iranian rials,
what is today between USD 1.18 to USD 11.82.
The new
Bill would reclassify failure to wear the hijab as a more severe offence,
punishable by a five-to-ten-year prison sentence as well as a higher fine of up
to 360 million Iranian rials (USD 8,508).
That
fine is far beyond what the average Iranian could pay, as millions are below
the poverty line, Hossein Raeesi, an Iranian human rights lawyer and adjunct
professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, told CNN.
Another
section states that in order to enforce the new law, Iranian police must
“create and strengthen AI systems to identify perpetrators of illegal behaviour
using tools such as fixed and mobile cameras.”
Earlier
this year, state media reported that cameras would be installed in public
places to identify women who violate the country’s hijab law, CNN reported.
Under
the new draft law, business owners, who do not enforce the hijab requirement,
will face steeper fines, potentially amounting to three months of their
business profit, and face bans on leaving the country or participating in
public or cyber-activity for up to two years.
Source: hindustantimes.com
https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/iran-proposes-long-jail-terms-ai-surveillance-in-harsh-new-hijab-law-101691190489995.html
--------
Influential
Iranian Women: Shahnaz Azad (1901-1961)
AUGUST
4, 2023
SHADYAR
OMRANI
When
Shahnaz Azad (née Roshdieh) published a sharply-toned article on the necessity
of women’s education in the autumn of 1920, with the above as the opening
sentence, she was only 20 years old. This passionate young woman, whose
newspaper, Women’s Epistle, appeared more than 100 years ago, lit a bonfire
under the deadwood of Iran’s patriarchal and misogynistic society.
She went
on to serve as editor-in-chief of the fourth Iranian women’s newspaper,
targeting hijab as the most significant cause of Iranian women’s “backwardness”
and insisted that women remove it, at a time when no woman was even allowed to
leave her house without chador, veil and the permission of her male guardian or
husband. Above its logo, her newspaper bore the legend “Women are Men’s First
Teachers.” Beneath, it said: “This newspaper is to awaken and redeem the rights
of deprived and oppressed Iranian women.”
Azad was
the eldest daughter of Mirza Hassan Tabrizi, the founder of modern education in
Iran who became known as Hassan Roshdieh. Originally a native of the city of
Tabriz, he went to the Ottoman Empire to continue his education. There, he
became familiar with modern elementary schools called Roshdiehs which, contrary
to the traditional schools in Iran, taught the alphabet to children aged six to
nine years old.
At that
time, Tehran’s Dar ol-Funun was the only modern Iranian modern school and was
aimed at children who were already literate. Children were taught elementary
literacy at the old traditional schools called maktabs, with the teacher’s cane
as the main pillar of their education. These schools were run in a haphazard,
non-standardized way, and the only alternative to them was the Christian
missionary schools which the Iranian children rarely attended.
Mirza
Hasan spent a few years researching educational methodology. Uponreturning to
Iran, he set up a school in Tabriz with a similar system to the Turkish ones.
The owners of the maktabs and reactionary mullahs attacked and damaged the
building, forcing Mirza Hasan, now calling himself Roshdieh, to move to
Mashhad.
The
second school in Mashhad and the next schools in Tabriz were similarly attacked
by mullahs and closed down by order of the clergy. Finally, after seven failed
attempts to open a school, Roshdieh went to Tehran in 1897 and established the
first elementary school in the vicinity of Darvazeh Qazvin.
In
contrast to his previous schools, this one had the good fortune to survive with
to the support of Ali Amin-ol-Doleh, the Iranian prime minister at the time.
Roshdieh School, as it came to be known, is considered the first step in the
establishment of broad elementary education in Iran. However, it was only for
boys, and girls remained deprived of the right to education. When Roshdieh’s
daughter Shahnaz was born in 1901, he decided to educate his daughter himself.
In the
same year when Shahnaz’s father began teaching her, the first rumbles of the
Constitutionalist Movement were heard. Shahnaz’s education coincided with the
signing of the Constitutional Order by the Shah and other historic events which
later encouraged her to join progressive women’s associations at a young age.
Shahnaz’s
father went further than mere homeschooling. He took her and her sister,
disguised in boys’ clothing, to school and made them promise not to disclose
that they were girls. Their clandestine study behind the boys’ desks at the
school where their father was the principal lasted for several years, until
finally, by the efforts of Bibi KhanoomAstarabadi and later Tuba Azmudeh,
girls’ schools were established and Roshdieh’s daughters took their places
there instead.
Shahnaz
was just 16 years old when she married a famous journalist, Abolghasem Azad
Maraghei. Because her husband was an intellectual, the marriage did not hinder
her further education or social activities.
Abolghasem
had abandoned the seminary school in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf as a young
man. He studied elementary modern sciences in Tehran before traveling to Europe
to learn French and English, while writing for Hablol-Matin, one of the most
important Persian-language political journals during the Iran Constitutional
Revolution. By the time he returned to Iran he was fluent in eight living
languages, as well as some ancient scripts. He accepted a job at the Ministry
of Science where he came to know Roshdieh’s family and married Shahnaz despite
their nearly 20-year age difference.
The
marriage gave Shahnaz the freedom she needed to become more active in political
and journalistic spheres. Together with Abolghasem, she founded the Women’s
Epistle newspaper, a radical and progressive publication that criticized the
patriarchal society. Shahnaz, who was only 19, wrote the editorials. In the
inaugural issue, she wrote: “What is there that hinders us to see with our own
eyes, hear with our own ears, and walk on our healthy feet on the highway of
progress? Hijab, delusions, and the shackles of fogeyism.”
“To be
frank, European women work much better than Iranian men. It is surprising that
Iranians have still not realized that if women are not educated, men will not
become the kind of men they should be. Aren't women their life-companion? In
that case how can he allow his house, his life, his properties, his respect and
dignity, to fall into the hands of an illiterate woman?”
“Women’s education,” Azad concluded, “is more
imperative than men’s because men’s knowledge depends on women’s knowledge, and
not otherwise. In all countries, women number more than men. If they do not see
women’s education as necessary, then half the world will be out of the sphere
of humanity, and the rest, men, will also be out as a result of their mothers’
ignorance."
Source: iranwire.com
https://iranwire.com/en/women/119182-influential-iranian-women-shahnaz-azad-1901-1961/
--------
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/solo-hijabi-biker-bengaluru-mecca/d/130390