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26/10/2009
The Constitution of Afghanistan

Since 2004 the Afghan Constitution has provided women with equal protection before the law. However, many discriminatory practices are disguised as 'Islamic' and, therefore, lawful. These include husbands deciding whether their wives should work, and a father having the right to prohibit his daughters from attending school or forcing them into marriage, all of them based on conservative interpretations of the Quran.

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3/5/2006
Sultana’s Dream (Farsi)

The first Feminist utopia to be published in the sub-continent this novel, which was first published in 1905 in Bangla by Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain, a Bengali Muslim novelist and social reformer, uses gender role reversal to highlight the absurdity of the position of women in society. This is the translation into Farsi of the classic work.

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28/2/2003
The Women’s Movement in Iran: Women at the Crossroads of Secularisation and Islamization
The paper thus outlines the social and political conditions that have led not only to the development of secular feminist perspectives in Iran, but to the emergence of woman-centred Islamists and their strategies which aim, thus far with considerable success, to fundamentally challenge conventional gender visions often presented as "Islamic." This analysis of the gender debates in Iran, and by extension elsewhere in the Muslim world, reiterates that Islam, particularly as a political ideology, is far from static and unchanging; it is a dynamic and evolving ideological force that
3/2/2003
Dossier 17: Women’s Rights in the Current Political Backdrop of Afghanistan
Introduction:

Violence against women is one of the sharp indicators of the subordinate position of women in the society. Violence exists in different forms, different levels from personal to physical violence to structural violence, justified by religion, culture and laws. Most of the steps taken from the protection of women against violence tend in addressing the women rather than men. These steps don’t enforce laws or take action against men.

The women issues are political issues. The social paradigms don’t recognize this.
30/1/2003
Dossier 17: Stretching The Limits: A Feminist Reading of the Shari’a in Post-Khomeini Iran
Women’s issues are now an integral part of modern Islamic discourses, as evidenced in the plethora of ‘Women in Islam’ titles in religious publishing projects all over the Muslim world.[1] In practice, this has entailed re-readings of the old texts in search of solutions - or more precisely, Islamic alternatives - for a very modern problem, which has to do with the changed status of women and the need to accommodate their aspirations for equality and to define and control their increasing participation in t
30/1/2003
Dossier 17: Afghanistan goes to absurd lengths to implement Islamic laws
The innumerable bans imposed by Taliban renders everyday life a veritable punishment.

The latest orders for regulating the life of Afghans came into force yesterday. Their severity reveals the determination of the Taliban, out to capture the parts of the country that have so far evaded them.

In Kabul, life has become a never-ending punishment. Since the enforcement of law on "the commandment of the good and interdiction of the evil", whose latest measures are applicable as of yesterday, everything is forbidden. For the Taliban government, gaiety is suspect.
30/1/2003
Dossier 17: Kabul, ban on women working, the cold, the misery and trading in human remains
The seizure of power by the Taliban has reduced the Afghan capital to a ghost city. Half of the men are out of work, the women find themselves forbidden from the work place. To top it all, winter is particularly trying.
30/1/2003
Dossier 17: Statement by the Afghan Women’s Network
Who we are

We are a group of Afghan women and their supporters who live in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In a country where over 90% of the women and girls are illiterate, we are a group of women who were encouraged by their families to become educated. Many of us have university degrees. Many of us previously worked in Afghanistan as lawyers, engineers, professors and doctors. Now we are working with NGOs (non governmental organizations), UN agencies and schools. Some of us are widows. Many of us are the sole support of our families.
30/1/2003
Dossier 14-15: The Hidden Politics of Cultural Relativism
Editor’s note

Women migrants in Europe or North America have long started to denounce the dangerous softness with which oppressive laws, customs and practices against women, imported from our countries and cultures, are tolerated or encouraged in the host countries, - in the name of tolerance, of respect of the Other, of the right to difference, of putting at par different cultures or religions, etc...

Like our own governments, governments of the countries of immigration are prepared to sell out the well being, the human rights and the civil right
29/1/2003
Dossier 14-15: Women in Iranian Civil Law 1905-1995
Only the blind overlook the worsening condition of women under the Islamic regime.