Egypt recently passed a new Child’s Law. One of the most controversial parts of the law was the criminalization of female circumcision, or FGM. I just did a story on this for yesterday’s edition of The World.
One things I discovered is that while the figure that’s commonly mentioned is that 96% of women in Egypt [...]

I was sent this image in an email forward.
The text says: “You can’t stop them, but you can protect yourself.”

Two obvious (and rhetorical) questions: Can we really not stop harassment? And does veiling really “protect” you?

This NYT piece on the relationship between Courageous Reformist Arab Personalities (CRAP) Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji seizes the non-relevance of these people to the problems of the Islamic world yet, admitting that, continues to find them enthralling.
First there is this paragraph:
Yet though they are allies on one level, their approaches to Islam [...]

Hannah has a great post about a very coquette (and courageous) Shia Tikriti woman:

How on earth, I asked her, does a Shiite Tikriti living under control of the Mahdi Army get away with dressing as she does when these days even Christian women have begun to cover their hair to deflect attention?
K replied that she [...]

I can’t find it online, so I am republishing below this fine op-ed by Mona al-Tahawy where she makes the obvious yet crucial point that Saudi Arabia’s medieval practices (only one manifestation of its backwards ideology) have been tolerated far too long:
Gender Apartheid
by Mona Eltahawy
NEW YORK — Once upon a time, in a country called [...]

‘Polygamy’ soaps irk feminists in Egypt:
Cairo: Egyptian pro-women groups are disappointed that several TV serials being shown on local and Arab TV feature polygamy as a recurrent theme.
“I have been working in the field of women’s welfare for more than 20 years and I have never seen so many polygamists in Egypt as portrayed in [...]

Saudi Religious Police Attacked by Girls:
Dammam, Asharq Al-Awsat - Members of Khobar’s Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice were the victims of an attack by two Saudi females, Asharq Al-Awsat can reveal.
According to the head of the commission in Khobar, two girls pepper sprayed members of the commission after they had [...]

Saudi Women Petition for Right to Drive:
DHAHRAN, Saudi Arabia, Sept. 23 — For the first time since a demonstration in 1990, a group of Saudi women is campaigning for the right to drive in this conservative kingdom, the only country in the world that prohibits female drivers.
After spreading the idea through text messages and e-mails, [...]

This is a (very long overdue) announcement that the Arabist family has added another member. Please check out the blog Hatshepsut, which has been up and running for some time now, waiting to be officially unveiled. It contains some gems.
Hatshepsut is dedicated to covering women’s rights and issues, the history of feminism in Egypt, and [...]

Ever since I read this New York Times article a few days back about the identitarian fashion issues of Muslim American women I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what bothers me about it. It’s not just the article’s utter naiveté (the New York Times discovers that Muslim women–even veiled ones–care about fashion!) or the [...]

Completely ridiculous story — while Arab women fight to have such measures removed from their own legal system, a German judge refers to the Quran to justify domestic abuse:
German judge invokes Qur’an to deny abused wife a divorce
A German judge who refused a Moroccan woman a fast-track divorce on the grounds that domestic violence was [...]

I’m not trying to make fun of this — people can wear what they want — but why call it burqini? A burqa is a rather extreme form of fundamentalist gear that is not found in much of the Muslim world outside of Afghanistan and, to a much less degree, India and Pakistan. Is the [...]

Remember the woman who was attacked and nearly raped by police officers at Sadat metro station in Cairo a few days ago?
Well apparently she has withdrawn her complaint under pressure from relatives of the police officers in question.

I got hold of a press release from Dar al-Iftaa saying that the Mufti was not in fact against women being president. The fatwa in fact referred only to barring women from being caliphs — which is hardly relevant to modern politics. Or at least, if the Caliphate is ever restored, whether women can hold [...]

My friend Maria Golia, author of the most excellent Cairo: City of Sand, has written a review essay on two recent books that deal, broadly speaking, with women and Islam. One is Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s popular and controversial The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam and the other is Shattering The Stereotypes: [...]

This al-Masri al-Youm report highlighted by Hossam is truly terrifying:
Two police corporals are currently under investigation for attempting to rape a woman in Tahrir Square’s underground metro (Sadat Station) on Wednesday, Al-Masry Al-Youm reports.
The woman approached a police corporal inside the underground station, asking him for directions to the nearest exit to KFC at 1:30pm. [...]

Joseph Mayton writes about them in the Middle East Times:
Leading the charge is a young Egyptian female - preferring to remain anonymous due to the nature of the campaign - who has started an Arab-language feminist blog called Atralnada (morning dew). In a country where Islamic fundamentalism is on the rise, and the status of [...]

UNDP’s Arab Human Development Report 2005 has been launched this week – this year it focuses on women in the Arab world. Next to a lot of valuable data and figures, it discusses progress and continuous discrimination of women. It makes some interesting points – for instance arguing that moderate Islamic groups with their [...]

For a follow up, click on the photo below…

Activists are organizing a sit in at the Press Syndicate, 12 noon, on 9 November, to protest the sexual assaults against women during Eid. The activists are demanding the resignation of General Habib el-Adly, the Interior Minister whose security forces stood by watching the assaults without intervention.