This Blog is intended for use by students in the Islamic Middle East course at Northfield Mount Hermon School and guest students and teachers from other participating schools.
Pakistan has begun looking into the “honor” killings of five women who were beaten, shot, then buried while still breathing. “Honor” refers to family honor, or rather the loss of it when women choose marital partners families do not approve of, or become pregnant outside of marriage, etc. Pakistani officials estimate there are hundreds of [...]
Foreign domestics are committing suicide in high numbers in Lebanon. Similar concerns have been raised about the conditions under which foreign domestics work in Jordan, among other countries.
Story at BBC
In yesterday’s (Sunday) New York Times Magazine, one will find excerpts from an interview Deborah Solomon conducted with Lebanese born Christian writer Brigitte Gabriel. Gabriel emigrated to the United States. She is a vociferous critic of radical Islam.
Go to Article
In June, a French court denied citizenship to a Moroccan woman on the grounds that the niqab (”veil”) she chose to wear (a full veil with a narrow slit for the eyes) was inconsistent with French values such as equality of the sexes. The ruling was supported by France’s Urban Affairs Minister, Fadela Amara, herself a [...]
Here is a link to a recent piece in the Turkish Daily News about how a women’s group has mobilized to protect women’s rights in Turkey.
Safak Timur, “Women Mobilize in a Men’s Country,” Turkish Daily News, June 21, 2008
A Paris doctor reports he performs two to four hymenoplasties per week (operations to repair women’s hymens). Muslim women living in the West are requesting the surgery in order to “restore” their virginity and thus avoid bringing dishonor on themselves or their families when they marry.
See: Elaine Sciolino and Souad Mekhennet, “Muslim Women and Virginity: [...]
A Northfield Mount Hermon colleague today called my attention to a recent case in Afghanistan where a student was sentenced to death for downloading a report on women’s rights.
Story from The Independent
Barry Gewen profiles Irshad Manji and Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the “Week in Review” section of today’s New York Times. Both women are feminists and strong critics of Islam. Ali, who was born in Somalia, rejected Islam and became an atheist. Manji, born in Uganda but raised in Canada, remains a Muslim, but, is advocating “an [...]
Muslim clerics in Algeria, a country where a civil war raged between the government and Islamists in the 1990s, are protesting a government ban on the wearing of veils and beards in passport pictures.
Story from BBC
In the New York Times Book Review for Sunday, April 6, Fareed Zakaria (who spoke at NMH a few years back) reviews a new book completed by Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto shortly before she was assassinated.
Go to review
BBC Middle East