KUWAIT CITY // When Bedoor al Mutairi waited for an hour for a lift from her brother after getting a flat tyre in the summer of 2008, she began to question Kuwait’s cultural aversion to women riding in taxis. “If I was riding in a cab, other people would see me and say: ‘Oh my [...]
Since her 2007 album Dans ma Bulle (Inside My Bubble) debuted at the top of the charts by selling 50K copies in its first week, Diam’s has become the hottest emcee in France. Not the hottest female emcee, but the hottest emcee in general. Diam’s is known as a feminist rebel who spits rhymes about war, racism, poverty, and [...]
THIS year’s Short+Sweet festival will feature 160 well-crafted plays, from the humorous to the controversial, including Rosemary Chance’s exploration of Australian anxieties of women who wear the hijab, Wearing the Veil. Play director Denise Sivasubramaniam has worked on a number of productions and said directingWearing the Veil had been one of her greatest experiences. “The [...]
A new boutique sets out to provide Muslim wear that is classy and fashionable, yet strictly appropriate. SHOPPING for Muslim clothing and prayerwear can sometimes be such a hassle, as one often has to go to predominantly Muslim areas like Shah Alam or Jalan Masjid India in Kuala Lumpur. Now, women who want to shop [...]
Burkas and other face-covering veils should be banned, says the UK Independence Party. But the Party’s proposals have been criticised by Luton Council of Faiths, which aims to ‘encourage and promote tolerance, respect and mutual understanding among all faiths and cultures’. On the BBC’s Politics Show on Sunday, ex-UKIP leader Nigel Farage said burkas were [...]
Race relations are again under scrutiny, and the question remains: what must be done to heal the wounds left by so many ugly acts. Rick Feneley reports. You can’t see the bridge from Bankstown to Cronulla, but it’s there. The community bridge builders got to work soon after the Cronulla riots of December 2005, when [...]
The Egyptian Islamist theoretician Sayyid Qutb believed the West — in particular the United States — posed an existential threat to Islam. He feared that globalization, spearheaded by the American colossus, might eventually destroy Islam by tempting pious Muslims with freewheeling capitalism, the separation of religion from government and the unleashing of decadent “animalistic desires.” Qutb, [...]
New Delhi, Jan 22 (IANS) The Supreme Court Friday deferred hearing on a plea to prohibit display of photographs of burqa-clad Muslim women in the voters’ list. A bench of Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan and Justice Deepak Verma deferred for a fortnight the hearing on the petition and asked petitioner Ajmal Khan, a Madurai resident, [...]
To straighten or not to straighten? Women’s hairstyles have become a hot topic for Indonesia’s Muslims after calls from some Islamic clerics to have the procedure banned on the grounds that it invites moral danger. On Wednesday, the Fatwa Commission from the Indonesian Council of Ulama (MUI) said it had received a request from a [...]
By Suleiman Al-Nabhani ONAIZA – As debate rages in the Kingdom over the pace and manner of women’s entry into the workplace, a young woman and her mother have taken the initiative to start their own business, with the help of the government. Razan is a young Saudi electronics geek who operates her own software [...]
