This week, a hijabi runs for office in Italy, imprisoned daughter-in-law’s fight back in England, and the status of women scholars around the world grows, from India to Egypt.
Italy’s first hijab wearing Muslim candidate, Maymouna Abdel Qader, will run for local office in the city of Perugia.
Three imprisoned daughters-in-law were praised for their “immense courage” for coming forward to the police about the abuse they suffered at the hand of their mother-in-law in Blackburn, England. 63 year-old Naseebah Bibi is to serve three-and-a-half years in prison.
A nursing program for women opens in Anbar, a highly conservative and war-ravaged province of Iraq where there is a shortage of nurses. A challenge faced by the Irai and U.S officials is the resistance of the patients to be seen or touched by health workers of the opposite sex.
The Moroccan Murshida training program wrapped up its visit to the US with State Department officials last week. The program is part of a movement to raise the status of Muslim women scholars and leaders around the world. Other formal designations and programs are coming to attention around the Muslim world including, vaizes, Turkish women preachers working in mosques, and women appointed to lead Turk groups to complete the Hajj. In Egypt, Al-Azhar University approved the printing and distribution of Quranic interpretation written by a woman. Also, from India to Syria, women are becoming muftis, authorized to issue fatwas.
Shazia Riaz is Associate Editor of Altmuslimah.
