Yoga In Saudi Arabia Dominated By Women: First Arab Recipient Of Padma Shri Award Nouf Marwaai
New Age Islam News Bureau
18 October 2024
· Yoga In Saudi Arabia Dominated By Women: First Arab Recipient Of Padma Shri Award Nouf Marwaai
· Malala Yousafzai OTT ‘Bread & Roses’ About Afghan Women Resistance Against The Taliban To Be Available To Stream Shortly
· Halaloween Event Presents Muslim Horror Films With A Feminist Lens
· Iran’s War on Women: Using Reproductive Healthcare as a Tool of Political Repression
· Founder Of Muslim Women's Coalition Discusses The Importance Of The Annual Muslim Film Festival
Compiled by New Age Islam News Bureau
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Yoga In Saudi Arabia Dominated By Women: First Arab Recipient Of Padma Shri Award Nouf Marwaai
First Arab Recipient Of Padma Shri Award Nouf Marwaai
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18 October 2024
Riyadh: The Saudis accepted yoga "unhesitantly" seven years ago and now this ancient Indian practice is quite popular in Saudi Arabia and is dominated by women, says the country's first certified yoga instructor and the first Arab recipient of Padma Shri award Nouf Marwaai. She says Saudis love anything that is good for health and well-being.
Marwaai played an instrumental role in introducing yoga in Saudi Arabia in 2017 and was awarded the Padma Shri by the Indian government in 2018. She now heads the Saudi Yoga Committee, established in 2021, and is the founder and president of the Arab Yoga Foundation. She says yoga today is dominated by women in Saudi ArabiaYoga Committee this January, there were 56 girls and 10 boys, she says. Marwaai was just 17 when she was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called Lupus Erythematosus.
"The doctors told my parents I won't live long. I was asked not to go to school and that is when I learnt yoga at home in Riyadh. My health condition surprisingly started improving.
Finally, I decided to go to India to learn more about yoga," she recalls her tryst with yoga. Asked how difficult it was to introduce yoga in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, Marwaai told PTI, "I think the Saudi people just needed to know that they were not practising something which was In ancient and something lived for thousands of years for humanity," she says. According to Marwaai, there was no opposition as such from Saudi people, but from those outside. "The Saudis love different cultures, they love to explore, they know their faith.
If something doesn't conflict, they are not very hesitant. And anything that is good for health and well-being, people in Saudi Arabia love it," she says. Last year, on the international day of yoga, we had 10,000 people including Saudis participating, she says, adding this year, in spite of the Haj vacation, there were 8,000 people who took part.
Source: deccanherald.com
https://www.deccanherald.com/world/yoga-in-saudi-arabia-dominated-by-women-padma-shri-nouf-marwaai-3238138
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Malala Yousafzai OTT ‘Bread & Roses’ About Afghan Women Resistance Against The Taliban To Be Available To Stream Shortly
Malala Yousafzai
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Oct 17, 2024
Bread &Roses, the documentary produced by Jennifer Lawrence and Malala Yousafzai, and directed by Sahra Mani, which chronicles the resistance of Afghan women against the Taliban, will be available to stream shortly. The digital streaming rights of the docu feature, which premiered at the Cannes International Film Festival in 2023, had been picked up by Apple Original Films earlier this year, and now, the streamer has set a date for when it will be available.
A little while ago, a trailer of Bread & Roses was released, which follows the events of Afghanistan’s 2021 fall to the Taliban, after US and UK forces withdrew from the country. Sahra Mani’s film is based on the perspective of three courageous Afghani women, who, despite the threat to their lives, resist the Taliban’s efforts to rid them of the autonomy they’d enjoyed until then. According to the trailer, Bread & Roses will begin streaming on November 22.
The official synopsis of the documentary reads, “Bread & Roses offers a powerful window into the seismic impact that the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in 2021 had on women’s rights and livelihoods. The film follows three women in real time as they fight to recover their autonomy. Sahra Mani captures the spirit and resilience of Afghan women through a raw depiction of their harrowing plight.”
The documentary also examines the fight against closing of schools for girls. Director Sahra has been quoted as saying that keeping these schools open is vital as children of educated mothers are difficult to indoctrinate and are less susceptible to becoming their future soldiers.
Bread & Roses is the latest addition to Apple Original documentary films, which also includes Academy Award winner Davis Guggenheim’s STILL: A Michael J. Fox Movie, Emmy Award-nominated Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me, among others.
Source: ottplay.com
https://www.ottplay.com/news/bread-and-roses-ott-release-date-when-and-where-to-watch-documentary-about-afghan-women-resistance-against-the-taliban/0df40a243e619
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Halaloween Event Presents Muslim Horror Films With A Feminist Lens
by Delilah Dakis
October 17, 2024
The tale of a woman with a village of otherworldly beings living inside her was just one of many scary stories shared during this year’s Halaloween event, hosted by the University of Michigan Global Islamic Studies Center. Halaloween, an annual Muslim horror film festival hosted by GISC and many other departmental sponsors screens a selection of international films and short films that are made by, for or about Muslim people at in-person theaters and online.
GISC director Aliyah Khan told The Michigan Daily that while they prioritized a diverse selection of movies from across the globe, all of this year’s films have a feminist lens.
“One is from Azerbaijan, one is from Jordan, one is from Morocco and one is from Palestine,” Khan said. “They’re not necessarily related, except they all have a kind of vaguely feminist theme. They are centered around the perspectives of Muslim women and girls.”
Halaloween also included an in-person lecture and discussion led by the Jerusalem-based Palestine Fiction Council (مجلسالخيال) and its founder Ahmad Nabil on jinn, Islamic beings common in Muslim stories, myths and legends. Khan defined this type of Islamic being in an interview with The Daily as something similar to humans but living in a parallel dimension. They are commonly depicted in Muslim horror films, including at the Halaloween festival.
“Islamically speaking, there are three types of sentient beings,” Khan said. “There are human beings, angels and jinn. Amongst those, the only two kinds of beings that have complete free will are human beings and jinn. (Jinn) live in a parallel world to us where they have lives, they marry, they are Muslim or not Muslim. The worlds aren’t supposed to cross with each other. Some (jinn) are evil and some are good and some are neutral, like people.”
Nabil elaborated on this idea in his lecture, explaining how there are different types of jinn, which act and impact people differently.
“(Jinni) are a rank of jinn that likes to mess with little human children,” Nabil said. “They tickle them, they make them laugh, they make them smile. Al’ana is the jinn that actually lives within the people. Shaytan are satan and they’re powerful. There are more powerful, which are Marid. Ifrit are the highest, most powerful ever.”
At the Fiction Council event, audience members shared their own jinn stories and supernatural experiences. LSA sophomore Ayah Dagher, who shared a story at the event, wrote in an email to The Daily that she did not grow up with a heavy emphasis on jinn but is curious about them and the encounters other audience members had with jinn.
“When I think of jinn, it’s mainly me wondering about their sociology, as funny as it sounds,” Dagher wrote. “Considering how prevalent jinn are in Muslim horror movies, I think they can be a common fear of Muslims who’ve heard stories of (or even experienced!) jinn phenomena. There’s also the aspect of the superstitions being passed down through generations; I noticed many of the audience’s jinn stories were ones they’d heard from older relatives.”
Dagher went on to write that, as a Muslim person, she experiences existential anxiety: the fear regarding the promise of eternal life in Islam. Dagher wrote that she did not feel this fear was sufficiently addressed in the films presented at Halaloween.
“I’m actually surprised that few of them seem to touch on existential horror,” Dagher wrote. “While I hope that heaven is as lovely as it sounds, it still doesn’t erase that underlying fear of eternity and the unknown … I certainly can’t speak for all Muslims in regard to our individual mindsets, but I do think that jinn and existentialism are present fears and fascinations within our community.”
Khan said Halaloween is significant for its ability to educate the University and Ann Arbor community about Muslim culture and communities.
“(Halaloween) showcases the breadth of the Muslim communities around here,” Khan said. “We also understand things about the rest of the world. We’re not just a little silo called Michigan. It is a way of reaching out to the very large Arab and Muslim community in Southeast Michigan and inviting them to come to campus events that are relevant to them and might appeal to them. It is part of our mission as the GISC to welcome the community because a lot of students are from that community as well.”
Source: michigandaily.com
https://www.michigandaily.com/news/academics/halaloween-presents-muslim-horror-films-with-a-feminist-lens/
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Iran’s War on Women: Using Reproductive Healthcare as a Tool of Political Repression
OCTOBER 17, 2024
Criminalization of Abortion, Lack of Contraceptive Services Target Marginalized Women
October 17, 2024 – As part of an accelerating state assault on women’s freedom and autonomy, the Islamic Republic has weaponized women’s access to basic reproductive healthcare in Iran, criminalizing abortion, severely restricting family planning services, and channeling women seeking reproductive healthcare—especially those in marginalized regions—to anti-abortion centers that have been heavily shaped by the country’s security agencies, the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) has learned.
In-depth discussions CHRI has conducted over the last month with lawyers and activists in Iran reveal that these measures will particularly harm women in the less developed provinces, intensifying the intersectional discrimination minority women face in Iran.
“The Islamic Republic continues to use women’s bodies as a tool to advance its repressive political agenda,” said Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of CHRI.
“The Iranian authorities are stripping women of their autonomy, endangering women’s lives, and perpetuating the Islamic Republic’s oppression of women and minorities, as these reproductive healthcare policies will especially harm women in marginalized areas,” Ghaemi added.
CHRI calls on the UN, governments worldwide, human rights organizations, and international medical associations to demand that the authorities in Iran:
Repeal legislation that severely restricts access to abortion, contraception, voluntary sterilization services and information, and end the criminalization of abortion;
Provide comprehensive family planning services to all Iranian citizens, including full contraception and abortion services;
Ensure that these services are available to all, regardless of income level, and therefore available in public as well as private health clinics.
“You will never see such activities in areas where middle-class or rich people live.”
CHRI has learned that the anti-abortion centers that have been established in over 200 cities in Iran as part of the “Nafas” (or “Breath”) Institute, and which are designed to stop women from terminating their pregnancies, have been targeted to concentrate on marginalized areas, and have been heavily shaped by the Islamic Republic’s security agencies.
A human rights lawyer inside Iran told CHRI:
“Their methods [establishment of the Nafas Institute and other measures restricting women’s reproductive healthcare] can never advance because they derive from the ruling security establishment. Mechanisms such as those deployed by the Nafas group are based on ideas taken from the security and police forces in order to have effective control over the people. It should be noted that these measures are usually implemented among the vulnerable sections of society with financial incentives in order to make people agree to follow such policies. You will never see such activities in areas where middle-class or rich people live.”
An experienced female activist in the field of women’s rights in Iran, with in-depth knowledge of the Nafas Institute, told CHRI:
“The important point is that the groups and organizations that work under Nafas in this project are not real NGOs. Even charitable groups and grassroots women’s organizations have refused to participate in [the Nafas] project. The national headquarters for NGOs basically had no knowledge of it. The fact is, there are a series of special groups [that are close to the ruling establishment] operating under this [Nafas] organization, mainly in the east of the country in Khorasan-Razavi and South Khorasan provinces. These special groups have been part of the government’s strategy for years. They sometimes do not even have the necessary permits to operate as an NGO and yet they engage in activities to advance their desired political goals.”
Anti-Abortion Centers Use Relatives to Pressure Women, Deeply Violating Privacy
In an interview with the Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA) on the anti-abortion centers, Saber Jabbari-Farouji, Director of the Rejuvenation Center at the Ministry of Health, said relatives, neighbors, or fathers can “alert” authorities to a woman’s intention to abort, initiating efforts by the group to establish an “emotional connection” with her and advise against the procedure. He added that around 60 percent of women reconsider their decision after these “interventions.”
The identification of women seeking abortions through health centers and information from relatives deeply violates women’s rights to privacy and healthcare.
The anti-abortion centers collaborate with other semi-official organizations, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Basij organization, which is a voluntary militia under the authority of the Guards that has a history of unlawful and violent vigilante activities against women.
On September 10, 2024, Jabbari-Farouji said at a national conference on maternal health: “According to the edicts of all senior religious authorities, the fetus has life from the moment it plants itself on the mother’s womb, and aborting it is considered to be murder. Many people, when they realize that aborting a fetus under four months is equal to killing a child, they refrain from it.”
“A tool to create fear among medical workers so that they don’t help women.”
The establishment of these anti-abortion centers follows what the UN described as “crippling” anti-abortion legislation passed in Iran in 2021, the “Rejuvenation of the Population and Support of Family” law, which effectively banned abortion, with very few exceptions, and prohibited public health services from offering family planning, including contraceptives and voluntary sterilization procedures.
The law also shifted the decision-making power for therapeutic abortions—terminated pregnancies due to threats to the woman’s life or fetal anomalies—from the pregnant woman and her physician to a panel consisting of a judge, medical doctor, and forensic doctor.
In addition, Article 61 of the law states that if carried out on a large scale, abortion would fall under the crime of “corruption on earth” and thus would carry the death penalty.
SaeidDehghan, a prominent Iranian human rights lawyer, told CHRI:
“The anti-abortion centers and restrictions on women’s access to healthcare not only contravene international legal obligations, such as the right to health under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), to which Iran is a party, but also conflict with Iran’s own constitution, which guarantees the right to life, human dignity, and equal protection under the law (Articles 22, 29, and 20). Article 61 [of the anti-abortion legislation], which says that if carried out on a large scale, abortion would fall under the crime of ‘corruption on earth’ and thus carry the death penalty, shows the involvement of the government and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in these political decisions; it is a tool to create fear among medical and health workers in the country so that they don’t help women.”
In response to the 2021 law, UN human rights experts said: “It is shocking to see the extent to which the [Iranian] authorities have applied criminal law to restrict women’s fundamental rights.”
The UN experts noted that the law, which “is in direct violation of women’s human rights under international law,” will “effectively force many women and girls to continue unwanted pregnancies to term which would be inherently discriminatory… [and] will disproportionately impact women in situations of marginalization and victims of sexual violence.”
Iran’s policies regarding reproductive healthcare followed a 2014 decree by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, labeling the declining birthrate a national security issue and encouraging Iranians to have more children.
A Legal and Health Crisis for Women
These measures have left Iranian women—especially those in marginalized and underprivileged areas—with few legal options to access reproductive healthcare, further entrenching a policy of forced childbearing and institutionalized, gender-based discrimination.
As a result, underground abortion services have proliferated, putting women at significant risk of health complications and death.
“These restrictions raise serious concerns not only from a human rights perspective but also under Iranian legal principles. Iran’s laws should prioritize the protection of women’s health, dignity, and autonomy, and respect their right to access essential healthcare,” said human rights lawyer Dehghan.
“The assault on women’s reproductive rights in Iran denies women the power to shape their own futures and is a stark reflection of the systemic discrimination and violence that women face in the Islamic Republic,” Ghaemi added.
Source: iranhumanrights.org
https://iranhumanrights.org/2024/10/irans-war-on-women-using-reproductive-healthcare-as-a-tool-of-political-repression/
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Founder of Muslim Women's Coalition discusses the importance of the annual Muslim Film Festival
Oct 18, 2024
By: Stephanie Brown
MILWAUKEE — The Milwaukee Film Festival has a powerful lineup of films curated for its 9th annual event.
A selection of eight films illustrates the thought-provoking voices and journeys of various Islamic stories. The festival’s mission is to promote understanding, empathy, and unity through the lens of diverse experiences.
The films showcase the shared human spirit that organizers say unites us.
Watch: Founder of Muslim Women's Coalition discusses the importance of the annual Muslim Film Festival
Each film is followed by a discussion where attendees can share reactions and gain a deeper understanding of the film.
"I think what we have found in our ninth year is that most people are genuinely curious and interested in learning. They generally leave the film excited that they've learned something new," says Janan Najeeb, founder and executive director of the Muslim Women's Coalition.
Standout films include the opening-day feature Pain and Peace and a coming-of-age story about a young camel jockey in the Middle East titled Hajjan.
The festival starts Thursday, Oct. 17, and runs through Sunday, Oct. 20, at the Oriental Theatre on Milwaukee’s East Side.
Source: tmj4.com
https://www.tmj4.com/news/milwaukee-county/founder-of-muslim-womens-coalition-discusses-the-importance-of-the-annual-muslim-film-festival
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