Politics

Mehrunisa Qayyum, in her blog PITAPOLICY, which covers politics and analyses development in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, assessed the most recent list of the top 100 Arab women by ArabianBusiness.com, noting the growing impact of “women who have transformed their business entrepreneurial skills into social entrepreneurship….”

My interest in political and human rights and social media started recently with the revolution in Egypt. Before January 2011, politics and human rights never interested me. But like many other Arab youth, the changes in the Arab world opened my eyes and mind to a new world. And there is no turning back.

Descriptors like “visionary,” “game-changer” and “innovative” are commonplace in all the tributes being written and posted about Apple guru Steve Jobs. For me personally, the word I choose to describe Steve Job’s life’s work, in relation to me and my family, is possibility. Glorious, wondrous, hopeful possibility.

For the contemporary American woman, Islamic wealth distribution system is like a fairy tale from a far away land. It’s a tale that they are not supposed to hear. Yes, the inheritance I received from my father was half of what each of my brothers received, but it was all mine. I am not responsible for anybody or anything, and my husband is still responsible to provide my bread and butter. << From the AltMuslimah Archives >>

Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai was an extraordinary woman. As the world mourns an indefatigable champion of human rights, democracy, and the environment, I am heartbroken at the loss of the woman I most admired, the woman from whom I learned some of life’s most valuable lessons.

In December 2010, in a small house located in Sarbande Chakush village in the Juzjan province of Afghanistan, a 14-year-old girl named Aziza was abruptly awakened by loud banging on the front door in the middle of the night.

A group of armed men, headed by Haji Daadullah, one of the most influential and powerful figures in her village, awaited Aziza’s father as he opened the wooden door. The men attacked her father, entered the house and kidnapped Aziza.

Erum al-Howaish, like many young women from conservative Saudi Arabia, expects King Abdullah’s watershed decision last Sunday to allow women to vote and run in elections to be the start of a new phase of women’s rights reforms.

When Saudi student Sarah Abdul- Mohsen asked the salesman for a nude, 32C padded bra, she didn’t expect an argument about her cup size. After all, Abdul-Mohsen was wearing the mandatory black cloak and veil that disguise her shape, in a kingdom where custom forbids men from looking intimately at women. “He told me, ‘No, you’re not a C,’” Abdul-Mohsen, who was buying the bra for a cousin, said in an interview at a Ramadan meal for women in Riyadh. “I felt disgusted. It felt very degrading.”

This past May, a Kuwaiti activist named Salwa al-Mutairi ignited a firestorm of controversy by suggesting a radical solution to her country’s growing concern about adultery and premarital sex: why not import “sex slaves” to satisfy lustful Muslim men? Her proposal drew a torrent of criticism, but al-Mutairi remained undeterred, and even went a step further by claiming that her idea was Islamically legitimate. Muslims across the world fiercely rejected her proposal, insisting that al-Mutairi was not only wrong, but also ignorant of the basic tenets of Islam. In truth, however, her idea is not nearly as “un-Islamic” as its critics suggest, and their response reflects a widespread inability to engage with the Islamic tradition.