Last Friday French police just outside of Paris clashed with hundreds of demonstrators, after police had asked a woman to remove her face veil to check her identity. The demonstrators claim that the police provoked them, and by Saturday night the riots were spreading to surrounding areas. French Interior Minister Manuel Valls has said that the government stands by the ban […]

A record number of Rohingya women and their children are fleeing Burma/Myanmar by boat, which is a very difficult journey with many hazards along the way. Female Rohingya refugees in Thailand are very vulnerable and often fall prey to human traffickers. Malala Yousufzai, the shot Pakistani schoolgirl, addressed the UN on her sixteenth birthday on July 12, […]

It is Ramadan and many news items featuring Muslim women are focused on the Holy Month. Muslim women in Florida, USA are providing local Muslim families in need with Ramadan care packages. An Islamic conference in Tanzania on Ramadan called on educated Muslim women to help other women for social development. Women spend nearly double the normal time […]

Iranian swimmer Elham Asghari swam 20 kilometres in open sea, which is a record breaking distance for Iranian women – but according to officials, her clothing was too revealing and they refused to register her record. A top female police officer, Islam Bibi, has been killed in Afghanistan’s Helmand province by unknown attackers. In Morocco, a […]

Feminist activists in Tunisia are working to frame women’s rights as “a social and political issue,” and call on Femen protestors to leave them alone. Index on Censorship highlights the work of thee Muslim women artists: painter Saba Barnard, filmmaker and stage performance artist Sabina England, and playwright Mediah Ahmed. Women activists in Aceh, Indonesia say […]

I apologise for a short list of links this week!  Please post anything I’m missing in the comments. Leading up to Iran’s presidential elections, NPR interviews four different Iranian women about their perspectives.  In related news, Iranian women are said to be using the upcoming vote as a way to advocate for themselves, although the presidential candidates themselves have different […]

Anneke is traveling this week and so am I, which means nobody was able to pull together the Friday Links for today.  But if any of you have come across some good (or horrible, or otherwise noteworthy) stories this week, please post them in the comments!

Rehana Kausar and Sobia Kamar are the first Muslim lesbians united in a civil ceremony in the UK; both women are from Pakistan and have applied for political asylum, claiming that they fear for their lives upon a return to Pakistan. A leading human rights advocate for Thai Muslims has said that the Thai government is […]

Reports about Syrian refugee women getting sold in marriage in Jordan remain rampant, especially young girls are considered to be desirable. In Egypt too, Syrian refugee women are often singled out by Egyptian men with propositions of marriage. Last weekend were the elections in Pakistan, for some women it was the first time in half a century […]

Pakistan will vote on May 11, and women, both as voters and as candidates, are the subject of many articles in the news last week. First there is the question of women voters: IPS speaks with several Pakistani women and asks them what women voters really want. But not all women get a chance to vote […]