Sotooda Forotan, A 15-Year-Old Afghan Girl Named In 2021’s Influential Women’s List
New Age Islam News Bureau
05 December 2021
• Sotooda Forotan, A 15-Year-Old Afghan Girl Named In
2021’s Influential Women’s List
• UK House Panel Reveals Pak Minority Women’s Pitiable
Condition
• Women Make Up 82 Percent Of Unbanked Population In
Pakistan
• The Supreme Court Of America Coming For Women’s
Rights After All
• World’s Tallest Egyptian Woman Dies From Kidney
Failure
• Turkish Court Rejects Jailing Of Former Officer
Convicted Of Raping Kurdish Woman
Compiled by New
Age Islam News Bureau
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/sotooda-forotan-afghan-/d/125901
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Sotooda Forotan, A 15-Year-Old Afghan Girl Named In 2021’s
Influential Women’s List
Sotooda Forotan, a
15-year-old Afghan student
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By Daily Excelsior
05/12/2021
KABUL, Dec 4: Sotooda Forotan, a 15-year-old Afghan
student, has been named among 25 influential girls/women from this year in an
international list of high achievers, at a time when the South Asian nation
landed back within the grip of the Taliban regime after two decades of
democratic rule.
The teenager was named in “FT’s 25 influential women
of 2021” after she took a stand against the Taliban government’s decision to
ban girls from schools in classes 7-12 after their takeover.
In September, the Government had allowed only boys to
attend the schools. They barred the girls saying they will have to wait for
their education until a proper structure was in place.
Speaking at an event organized to celebrate the
birthday of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) on October 21, Forotan fearlessly asked the
Taliban officials to reopen their schools.
“Today, as a representative of girls, I want to
deliver a message that is in our hearts. We all know that Herat is a city of
knowledge. why should the schools be closed to girls?,” TOLOnews had quoted her
as saying to an audience of around 200 during the ceremony.
The video of her speech had gone viral on social media
and attracted appreciation from people for taking such risk.
Source: Daily Excelsior
https://www.dailyexcelsior.com/15-year-old-afghan-girl-named-in-2021s-influential-womens-list/
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UK House Panel Reveals Pak Minority Women’s Pitiable
Condition
File photo of minority
population representatives protesting in Lahore.
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Abhinandan Mishra
December 4, 2021
New Delhi: Friday’s incident of the torture and
burning of a Sri Lankan Christian national in Sialkot, Pakistan, by fanatic mob
for allegedly indulging in blasphemy has led to a serious concern among the
non-Islamic countries having business interest in the country apart from
putting in spotlight the condition of minorities in the country.
Just days ago, the United Kingdom’s All-Party
Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Pakistani Minorities released a 67-page report
in the public domain that presented the deteriorating human right conditions of
the minorities living in the country.
The report has shocking details, including estimating
at least 1,000 religious minority women (Hindus and Christians) being abducted
and forcefully converted and spending the rest of their lives as “wives” of a
man who is already married. In most of the cases, the age of the abducted woman
is less than 18 years. The APPG has also recorded instances of girls as young
as 12 years being abducted, converted and married off.
Richard James Shannon, Chair, APPG for Pakistani
Minorities Chair, APPG for International Freedom of Religion or Belief, in the
report has written, “More than 70 years after the country gained its
independence, one of the most heart-rending issue its religious minorities face
is the abductions, forced conversions and forced marriages of girls and women
from their communities. The continuous and steady increase in these cases has
made this practice a national and international tragedy. Yet successive
governments have failed to take any effective action to prevent this tragic and
inhuman practice.”
As per the report, the cases of Christian or Hindu
girls between the ages of 12-25, abducted, converted to Islam and immediately
married to their abductors have been increasing steadily in recent years in
Pakistan. “Provisional estimates in a study ‘Forced Marriages and Forced
Conversions in the Christian Community of Pakistan’ suggest that up to 1,000
religious minority women and girls face this fate every year. However, the true
numbers may never be ascertained. All these cases meet with impunity. Usually,
after the abduction, the victim’s relatives plead with the local police to file
a First Information Report (FIR). The police are usually reluctant or fail to
investigate the cases properly. Instead, after a few days, the parents are often
handed the conversion certificate, as well as the marriage certificate, and
told that the girl has voluntarily converted to Islam, married and is living
with her new ‘husband’. In court, the issue is often portrayed as a religious
issue and the perpetrators’ lawyers appeal to the religious sentiments of
judges, by suggesting that the girls have voluntarily converted to Islam. In
the majority of these cases, the decisions will go in favour of the
perpetrators and the girls lose all contact with their families.”
The report has also highlighted the role played by
clerics, judiciary, politicians and even the Urdu media in keeping this
“practice” alive. “One reason why this practice is flourishing in the Sindh and
Punjab provinces is because of the many actors playing their part in keeping
the practice alive. For example, the clerics play a key role in the conversion
process and marrying the victims and the perpetrators within a short time
after. In the volatile politics of Pakistan any efforts to apprehend any
religious leader can be construed as an attack on Islam. For this reason, such
practices of the clerics are tolerated by government officials and politicians,
as confrontation could bring about further conflict amongst the wider public.
The Inquiry revealed that the issue of abductions, forced conversions, and
forced marriages of religious minority women and girls is a serious issue for
the vulnerable and marginalised Hindu and Christian communities in Pakistan.”
In 2017, Pakistan’s population was 207.7 million of
which Hindus constituted about 1.6%, and Christians about 1.59%, of the
population. The vast majority of Christian and Hindu women and girls live in
Punjab and Sindh. Most are either housewives or work in low jobs such as
domestic workers, labourers in brick kilns or agricultural lands, or sometimes
as bonded labourers.
“Belonging to religious minority groups, and with
lower socio-economic power, these women and girls are particularly vulnerable,
and an easy target for abductors for forced conversion and forced marriages
from the majority Muslim community,” the report reads.
Case Study-1: Hema Yohana, a 14-year-old Christian
girl, was abducted in October 2019 by a Muslim man named Aslam Jahangir. In
court, her parents produced a baptismal certificate and testimony from her
school that purported to show she was 14. Regardless, judges observed that
marriage between the two would be valid under Sharia law if she had had her
first menstrual cycle–and yet under the Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Act the
marriage was clearly illegal.
In this court, the Sindh High Court ruled that, as she
has had her first menstrual period, she was of marriageable age according to
precedent of the Sharia law.
Case Study-2: Kajal, a 14-year-old Hindu girl, was
abducted on her way to tuition on 2 September 2018. Her family, unable to find
her, filed the crime at the local police station. The family visited the police
station twice on September 3, 2018, but police said the investigation had not
yet commenced. With this, police authorities stated that if she had already
embraced Islam they would be unable to return her. The next day, police
informed Kajal’s family that she had converted to Islam and married a Muslim
man named Mohsan Asgar. The marriage certificate was shown to them. Kajal’s
father, Chandar, argued that the signature on the affidavit did not match his
daughter’s, and insisted on a court appearance and reopening of the
investigation. He also visited notable figures in the area for help.
Nevertheless, due to fear of Islamic clerics, who currently provided the
abductor protection, there was a general unwillingness to assist in such cases.
Case study 3: January 2020—A young Hindu woman,
Bhavani Bai, was kidnapped from her wedding ceremony—in Sindh—by unknown
assailants with the involvement of local police. According to reports, Bhavani
Bai was then forcefully converted to Islam by the Jamiat-ul-Uloom and married
to a Muslim man named Sheikh Rehman Gulam, who had led the kidnapping.
Case study 4: January 202—A 15-year-old student, Mehar
Kohari, was kidnapped and married to a Muslim man, Ahmad Riaz Sonari, in Sindh.
In a rare instance, a court later nullified the marriage on grounds of Mehar
being underage but did not address the religious aspect of the forcible
conversion. Moreover, Mehar was sent to a shelter home, rather than back to her
parents. She also received death threats from religious clerics after she
rescinded her prior statement saying she willingly accepted Islam.
Case study 5: March 2019—Two sisters Radha and Raksha,
both below 16, were kidnapped from their home in Sindh and converted to Islam.
The girls were then taken to Punjab province, where they were married to two
Muslim men at the headquarters of a religious political party, Sunni Tehreek.
After initially disregarding the girls’ family’s complaints, the police
registered a formal case and arrested twelve people. The Islamabad High Court,
however, eventually ruled against the family and found that the girls were above
the legal marriageable age of 16 and that the girls converted to Islam out of
their own free will.
Case study 6: August 2019—A Sikh girl, Jaswant Kaur,
was abducted by a Muslim man, who was a member of the fundamentalist
Jamaat-ud-Dawa organization. After the victim’s brother lodged a complaint with
the police, an Islamic mob attacked and vandalized the local Sikh holy site, in
January 2020.
“An attempt was made to outlaw forced conversions and
forced marriages by presenting the Protection of the Rights of Religious
Minorities Bill. The Protection of the Rights of Religious Minorities Bill
contained a series of measures to protect minorities. Among others, it
prescribed that hate speech and offensive material against religious minorities
must be removed from school textbooks. It prescribed that the government should
provide protection and assistance to persons who have been victims of forced
conversions, while sentences of up to fourteen years in prison were to be
imposed for the kidnappings and forced conversions of minor minority girls. In
addition, the Bill regarded marriage between a Muslim man and a minor of
another religion as “forced marriage” and therefore considered it “null and
void”, providing for penalties against those who organise such marriages. Hate
speech and violence against religious minorities carried a three year prison
sentence and a fine of 50,000 rupees, while discrimination against religious
minorities was deemed a crime punishable up to one year in prison and a
pecuniary fine. However, on 2 February 2021, the Senate Standing Committee on
Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony rejected it, claiming that it was not
needed as minorities enjoy religious freedom in the country.”
“In September 2021, a draft bill to prevent forced
conversions was prepared by the Federal Ministry of Human Rights and was sent
for consultation. However, the Council of Islamic Ideology and the Ministry of
Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony, returned it after raising objections
to the proposed 18-year age bar on conversions, as well as appearance before a
judge prior to conversion, claiming these proposals to be against Islam.”
“The perpetrators vary in their background and social
status, however, they are usually men belonging to the majority Muslim community.
In some cases, powerful men groom religious minority women and girls, and there
have been cases of opportunism where abductors take advantage of the fact that
these girls are often from a poor minority background and serious consequences
for abduction and associated abuse are therefore unlikely. This is illustrated
by many cases presented to the Inquiry.”
“After a kidnapping, conversion, and forced marriage
many girls are coerced by their abductors into making statements against their
parents when they are presented in Court. Due to life threats, the girls state
that they have come of their wills, such as in recent cases of Hema Yohana and
Aqsa Rana of Karachi, Sindh. The victims of forced conversion often take an
Islamic name, but at the same time are called such names as ‘‘Chuhri’’ (a
derogatory word for low caste and untouchable people). After four or five
months, these girls realise the reality behind their kidnapping. But now they
cannot think of going home due to guilt, social, and family pressure. After
some time, many are disappeared, murdered, or forcefully moved into
prostitution. When we challenge abductors about these girls, they have no
answer. 90% of girls do not want to disclose their reality because of guilt and
disgrace of their family or community. Further, if the victims get pregnant and
their new born is not acceptable by the abductor’s family and not acceptable in
society, their future is very bleak. If they give birth to a girl, then the
situation can be even worse. The victims are treated like slaves and if they
managed to return, no one else will marry them. If they refuse to convert in
order to marry, they are killed, as happened in the recent cases of Sorya Alam
Roshan from Rawalpindi, and Shaima & Abia from Lahore.”
The report had stated that there exists a clear
pattern in these cases. “A girl or young woman can be abducted on her way to
school or work, or even from her own home. After the abduction, she is
immediately taken to a mosque or religious institution to be converted to
Islam.”
The report further stated, “The psychological effects
of being abused at such an early age are also life changing. This violent and
inhumane act deprives the girl of her childhood, and the support systems she
had known all her life; her extended family, school and the wider community
suddenly disappear. In a completely new environment, unfamiliar with their new
religion and rituals, the girls usually feel lonely and isolated.”
“There have been drastic effects in these kinds of
cases, not only on the victims and their families, but at the community level
as well. Victims and their families suffer from the psychological and emotional
trauma of being separated from their loved ones on the pretext of conversion,
and later no whereabouts of the girls are shared with the girl’s/ victim’s
family.”
“Furthermore, after the abduction, forced conversion
and forced marriage, and in cases where the family pursues the matter with the
police and the court, the girl is sometimes threatened that her relatives will be
harmed if she does not state that she voluntarily left her family home with the
abductor. Some of the victims are subjected to threats, intimidation and
beatings. As a result, the victims often testify in favour of the abductor.
Their families may be approached by the abductors and told to drop their case,
also under the threat of harming the girls.”
“In the lower courts, religious lobbyists often crowd
the court buildings and intimidate the court, judiciary members and the girl’s
family. At the same time, the abductor’s lawyers try to play the “religious
card,” and imply that any judgement apart from handing the girl over to her
“husband” would be a betrayal of Islam. If the victim is sent to stay with the
abductor while the case progresses slowly, the victim again comes under immense
pressure to deny that she has been forced or coerced to convert and to state
that she married him willingly. Even if the victim is sent to sheltered
accommodation for the duration of the court hearing, the victim might still
come under pressure from the abductor or others to affirm that she voluntarily
converted and married.”
“Another unfortunate aspect of this crime is the
breakdown of contact and communication between the victim and her family. The
family is not allowed to get in touch with the victim, on the pretext that the
parental family is kafir (infidel), even when parents accept their daughter’s
new religion and merely want to keep in touch with her: “Once a Hindu woman is
converted, there is no going back as it would be considered apostasy by Muslim
practitioners and would mean a death sentence. In many cases the converted
women are told that their families are ‘Kafirs’ and they cannot meet them after
becoming Muslims. This impedes their access to justice as they remain in the
clutches of powerful men. No one hears from these women directly after they
‘elope’.”
“Vinaya, a 12-year-old Hindu girl, was abducted from
outside her home in September 2018, in Sindh. When Vinaya’s family and
neighbours were unable to find her, they turned to the police. According to
Samesh, the father of the victim, the police were not cooperative, due to the
family’s religious background. Then, two days later, the police told father
that Vinaya had converted to Islam by choice and handed him the certificate of
proof. Her family believes that an Islamic religious leader has abducted, raped
and forcibly converted her. When the family requested to arrange a meeting with
their daughter at the magistrate’s office, Vinaya was absent. Her family has reason
to believe that the abductor has killed her. An investigation is being held but
no legal action has been initiated.”
“The often derogatory treatment of the victims, their
parents and their lawyers by the police and the judiciary further embolden the
perpetrators and give them the reassurance they need that they will be granted
impunity for their actions.”
The APPG found that the attitude of police officers
towards the family of the victim is not only unsympathetic and condescending
but sometimes even hostile. The influence of the religious lobby, societal
discrimination against minorities and pressure from the influential abductors
makes them quasi aiders and abettors of the abductors. This discriminatory
attitude of the police towards the victims’ families is consistently confirmed
by the families in both Punjab and Sindh.
The justice system does not protect the victims from
their abductors. When kidnapped girls are produced before a court, they are
still in the custody of their abductors, and often the kidnappers are in the
courtroom when the victims deliver their testimonies. Under duress, these girls
tend to cave in to the pressure of their abductors and give false statements in
court claiming that they willingly converted to Islam and married their captors.
This is due to fear that the abductor will exert revenge on the girls
themselves or their family members.
Even the local media, particularly the Urdu media,
have tended not to highlight these cases, partly out of the misplaced concern
that publicising such cases harms the image of the country. Even more
worryingly, sometimes they are reported as “romantic love stories”, the report
reads.
Source: Sunday Guardian live
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Women make up 82 percent of unbanked population in
Pakistan
By Our Correspondent
December 05, 2021
ISLAMABAD: At least 82 percent women in Pakistan are
unbanked -- people without a bank account, according to a non-profit firm,
leaving them without basic financial services, and putting their social rights
at risk.
Inez Murray, CEO Financial Alliance for Women said access
to a bank account in Pakistan has grown from to 18 percent in 2020 from 4
percent in 2008.
“While this is a very positive trajectory, it means
that 82 percent of women in Pakistan still do not have access to a formal bank
account,” Murray said at a online workshop on ‘Financial Inclusion Gender Data
in Pakistan: Today and Tomorrow’
During the workshop, findings of a recent study
conducted by Geneva-based ConsumerCentrix (CCX), a consulting firm, to map
national ecosystem related to gender data on financial inclusion were also
shared.
“Women’s financial inclusion is well established
globally to be one of the most powerful levers for bringing households out of
poverty,” Murray said.
She said women’s financial inclusion has been one of
the top priorities of the National Financial Inclusion Strategy (NFIS) and was
reinforced by the newly developed Banking on Equality
policy, which was launched in September, and has
introduced measures for embedding a cross cutting gender lens in policies and
practices of financial institutions.
“These include promotion of gender diversity in
financial institutions and their access points, introduction of women centric
products and targeted outreach, establishment of women champions at all touch
points, and formation of a policy forum on gender and finance,” she added.
“One other important pillar of this policy is
collection of robust gender-disaggregated data and setting targets for
financial institutions.
I am glad that this study will supplement SBP’s
fundamental focus on gender disaggregated data, emphasized under our Banking on
Equality policy.”
Dr. Shamshad Akhtar, chairperson Karandaaz said the
case for including women in the formal financial system is not based on a
social or moral argument alone but also on the fact that women present a viable
business proposition for service providers.
According to a Boston Consulting Group study, women
control more than $20 trillion in consumer spending globally and are
increasingly becoming a major force as entrepreneurs running small and medium
enterprises.
Source: The News
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/914147-women-make-up-82-percent-of-unbanked-population-in-pakistan
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The Supreme Court Of America Coming For Women’s Rights
After All
Arwa Mahdawi
05-12-2021
Looks like those “hysterical” women were right after
all. For the past few years anyone worried that civil rights in America would
be gutted by a right-leaning supreme court has been dismissed as a fear monger.
The supreme court was above partisan politics, we were told. Upstanding
“carpool dad” Brett Kavanaugh had no interest in reversing Roe v Wade, we were
told. The fact that People of Praise, the Christian community where Amy Coney
Barrett previously served as a “handmaid” (their term for a female leader) was
virulently anti-abortion and would expel members for gay sex wouldn’t affect
her decisions on the supreme court, we were told.
We were told, as was always obvious, a pack of lies.
On Wednesday, the US supreme court considered the most important abortion case
in a generation. Its final ruling, due in June 2022, could overturn Roe v Wade
and put an end to the constitutional right to an abortion in the US. If that
happens, and it seems an increasing possibility that it will, more than 65
million US women would immediately lose access to an abortion in their home
state, thanks to “trigger laws” 20 states have in place. But don’t worry,
Justice Barrett has said, forcing women to give birth isn’t barbaric at all: if
you don’t want to be a mother you can just put the kid up for adoption! Easy
peasy.
The rightwing assault on US reproductive rights isn’t
taking place in a void. Countries around the world are escalating attempts to
coerce women into having children. A new report, Welcome to Gilead, by a
UK-based charity called Population Matters, warns that women’s rights around
the world are under attack “because of a pervasive, political push for women to
have more children, no matter the cost”. The percentage of countries with
pro-natalist policies grew from 10% in 1976 to 28% in 2015, according to UN
data cited by the report.
Pro-natalist policies, of course, can be a good thing.
No one is arguing with policies that make it easier to have children, such as
affordable childcare and parental leave. The problem, as the report notes, is
the fact that “a growing number of politicians are embracing a new, de facto
coercive strategy to boost birth rates: making it difficult for people to
access sexual and reproductive healthcare.” Poland, for example, enacted a
near-total abortion ban last October. Now, according to the Associated Press,
women’s rights activists are worried the government is trying to track every
pregnancy in a national database that could be used to help prosecute women
whose pregnancies don’t end in a live birth. The Polish parliament is also
hearing a proposal to create a “Family and Demographic Institute” that could
restrict divorces in an attempt to increase Poland’s birthrate. The head of the
institute would have access to pregnancy data and have the power to approve a
divorce. Welcome to Gilead, indeed!
A number of factors are feeding into global
pro-natalism policies. There’s good old-fashioned misogyny, of course. But as
the Population Matters director, Robin Maynard, has noted: “Coercive
pro-natalism is not simply a manifestation of patriarchy or misogyny but can be
a product of political and economic forces entirely indifferent to women, for
whom they exist simply as productive or non-productive wombs.”
There’s capitalism’s need for cannon fodder, for
example: it can be hard to grow your economy if there isn’t a steady supply of
cheap labour. And ethnonationalism is also fueling pro-natalism: Hungary’s
populist prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has repeatedly invoked the far right’s
“great replacement” theory to push “procreation, not immigration”. Orbán has
promised that women who have four or more children will never pay income tax
again and stated: “We want Hungarian children. Migration for us is surrender.”
In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has gutted abortion rights, has
said that he believes “a woman is above all else a mother” and condemned
attempts to promote birth control as “unpatriotic”.
Once again, what’s happening in the US isn’t happening
in a vacuum: it’s part of a global assault on women’s rights. Earlier this
year, former US vice-president Mike Pence told a summit on demographics in
Budapest that “plummeting birth rates” represent “a crisis that strikes at the
very heart of civilization”. “It is our hope and our prayer that in the coming
days, a new conservative majority on the supreme court of the United States
will take action to restore the sanctity of life at the center of American
law,” Pence said. The right has been planning for this moment for a very long
time. They are coming for your “non-productive wombs” and they’re not going to
stop there.
Source: The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/04/supreme-court-abortion-pro-natalism-policies
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World’s tallest Egyptian woman dies from kidney
failure
ARAB NEWS
December 05, 2021
DUBAI: The world’s tallest Egyptian woman Huda
Abdel-Gawad died in Egypt’s Sharqiyah province at the age of 27 after suffering
from kidney failure, according to local reports.
Abdel-Gawad was the holder of three titles in the
Guinness World Records: the largest hand of a living woman with a length of
24.3 cm, the largest foot at 33.1 cm and the widest arms of a surviving woman
at 236.3 cm.
Huda, as well as her brother Mohammed Abdel-Gawad,
have been bullied for their physical appearance due to a defect in their
pituitary glands, which affected their weight and height.
Mohammed Abdel-Gawad, 33, got two Guinness World
Records: the widest arms of a living man at 250.3 cm, and the widest hand of a
surviving man at a length of 31.3 cm.
Source: arabnews
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1980986/middle-east
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Turkish court rejects jailing of former officer
convicted of raping Kurdish woman
Karwan Faidhi Dri
05-12-2021
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A Turkish court in Siirt
province rejected a request to jail a former specialized sergeant convicted of
raping a young Kurdish woman causing her death. The court sentenced the man
instead to ten years of house arrest.
Ipek Er, 18, shot herself in July 2020, after she said
Musa Orhan abducted and sexually abused her for twenty days in the southeastern
province of Batman. Dying in hospital over a month later, the young woman left
behind a letter detailing the incident. Er had filed a complaint and had been
given a deposition on July 7 same year at Siirt Chief Public Prosecutor’s
Office. Orhan has been briefly arrested more than once since then.
The man was removed from his position as a specialized
sergeant by the Ministry of Interior after news of his involvement broke.
At the final hearing of the case at the Siirt First
Heavy Penal Court on Friday, the court decided to sentence the former officer
to ten years but rejected demands from Er’s family to jail him. He will instead
be under court control and cannot visit abroad during this period, reported
Hurriyet news outlet.
“I think I am innocent. I am sorry for Ipek Er's
death. I demand my acquittal,” Orhan, who attended the hearing from Ankara via
video conference, was quoted by the outlet.
Er’s case, especially the fact that the alleged rapist
is not behind bars, has caused public anger in Turkey. The pro-Kurdish Peoples’
Democratic Party (HDP) condemned his freedom on Friday, saying the country’s
women will punish the former officer “with their struggle and organization.”
Turkey’s interior ministry rejected claims last year
that it had influenced the court’s decision to release the accused, saying “it
is not possible” for them to intervene in judicial affairs.
This is not the first time Turkish officers have been
accused of rape. A group of 27 people, including police officers, were
allegedly involved in the rape of a 15-year-old Kurdish girl in Batman province
last year.
Source: rudaw
https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/turkey/04122021
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URL: https://www.newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/sotooda-forotan-afghan-/d/125901