Europe

Walking a Tightrope: Women and Veiling in the United Kingdom by Ayesha Salma Kariapper examines the ways in which public debates over the headscarf and the full-face veil have shaped the strategies of women from Muslim communities, strategies developed to deal with the limitations imposed on them in the name of religion, culture, tradition and identity within the community, and with racism and exclusion from mainstream society. You can now download the book for free!

 

Exciting news.

Deeyah Khan's fascinating documentary about the Council of Ex-Muslims in Britain and the discrimination they have faced in the UK and abroad has been shortlisted for the Asian Media Awards in Investigative Journalism.

Marieme Helie Lucas 

July 2, 2017

2017. This year, Saudi Arabia will defend women’s rights in the Commission on the Status of Women, and UN Women will support the right to disappear women behind a veil. Aren’t we lucky?

From its official Twitter account, UN Women tweeted an article posted online on Jul 2 2017, 4:17pm at:

‘Hijab Day’ in Paris 2016

by Lalia Ducos and Zazi Sadou, Algerian feminists

Introduction by Marieme Helie Lucas

April 24, 2016 

May 18, 2015

An interview by Peace is Loud with Karima Bennoune, University of California-Davis Professor of Law, author of Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism, and Peace is Loud speaker

From 1991 through 2001, a series of conflicts, including the Bosnian War, were fought on the territory of the Former Yugoslavia. During that time, ethnic, sexual and economic violence against women was rampant and rape was used as a tool for “ethnic cleansing”. Neither international nor domestic trials adequately addressed these multiple forms of violence against women, and neither was focused on the interests of victims. It was evident that a court designed by and for women was needed in order to develop a feminist approach to justice in this context.

Huda Jawad is a WLUML networker based in London, United Kingdom.  She recently spoke at the Inspiring Migrant Women Conference in London.  Below is the text of her speech, which drew partly upon the reflections she wrote for our 16 Days of Activism in 2013.  The text of the speech was originally published on Huda’s website www.hudajawad.org

Text of Migrant Woman Conference Speech 2 May 2015 Huda Jawad ©

I was born in Baghdad and left Iraq at the age of two. I grew up in the United Arab Emirates and Syria before coming to settle as a teenager in London in the late eighties. My parents were political activists during the time of Saddam Hussein and fled Iraq after the death sentence was imposed on them in absentia. We travelled throughout the Middle East and seemed that we were constantly on the move.

By Marieme Helie Lucas, Algerian sociologist, founder and former International Coordinator of Women Living Under Muslim Laws

Sarajevo, Bosnia – May 8, 2015 - Yesterday May 7, the Women’s Court on war crimes against women during the war in the 1990’s formally started in Sarajevo, Bosnia.

Women have come together from all the corners of the former-Yugoslavia to participate in the Women’s Court in Sarajevo, to demand justice for the crimes committed against them during the wars and the enduring inequalities and suffering that followed.

Along with the other members of the Women's Alliance for Kurdistan, Iraq and Syria, Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) condemns the terrorism charges against Silan Ozcelik for allegedly trying to join the fight against ISIS.

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We are facing a political threat, a totalitarian Islamist threat that manifests in terrorism. Journalists are defending something which is elementary to our democracy: our freedom to breathe and to laugh.

Pen against kalashnikov: courage against atrocity. People of Muslim heritage call for combatting Islamist ideology by political means and mass mobilisation.

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