PROGRAMMES

Human Rights and Women-Centred Islamic Perspectives
In January and February 2020 WLUML carried out a series of consultations with Afghan women leaders, many of whom have remained connected to our network since the 1990s. They anticipated that the US-Taliban negotiations, and subsequent agreement, would lead to the reversal of their rights and the hard-won gains for gender justice within Afghanistan. They requested that WLUML use its experience and expertise to generate women-centred interpretations of Quranic verses and Islamic texts, producing arguments for women’s rights from an Islamic lens. Their key demands were for knowledge production and international solidarity-building, to be targeted at various levels. From scholarly community and advocates, to an interested general public, as well as directed towards policy makers, and official decision-makers. Following the recent fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban, 15 August 2021, WLUML again consulted Afghanistan’s women leaders. They suggested that we adapt this to support Afghan women who will continue to argue for women’s rights within Afghanistan against the Taliban’s extreme ideology. WLUML will use its extensive network and expertise to generate arguments in support of women’s rights from an Islamic lens. We will develop accessible educational materials, workshops, and training pedagogy modules improving understanding of women’s rights and constitution-making. These are designed to support education on women’s rights and women’s involvement in constitution-building. And, to support typically secular arguments for women’s rights using Islamic discourses, bridging the gap between secular and religious debates.
 
RELATED PROJECTS
Women’s Machineries Webinar 
Quranic Kit

Transformative Feminist Leadership Institute
WLUML’s Transformative Feminist Leadership Institute (TFLI) is an educative programme for young women leaders from Muslim contexts who are interested in gender equality, women’s human rights, and feminism. The Institute has been a fundamental pillar of WLUML’s activities since 1998. The TFLI’s goals are to enhance the effectiveness of the participants’ advocacy for gender justice and equality, to capacity-build through the sharing of knowledge and experiences, and to encourage and enable a new generation of active networkers. The institute is also part of WLUML’s wider aim to challenge the rhetoric that feminism is a western invention and to emphasise feminism’s rich history within Muslim contexts.
‘Transformative’ – The institute is ‘transformative’ because it is designed to stimulate an internal change in perception, and in understanding of the sources of gender discrimination. Participants are encouraged to think critically and engage with the world using feminist prisms of understanding.
‘Leadership’ – The term ‘leadership’ is applied broadly. While a leader is usually considered a person who wields public influence, for the purposes of the TFLI, a leader can also be someone who applies their influence in the private sphere through everyday acts.

 RELATED PROJECTS
Feminism in the Muslim World Leadership Institutes

Women Reclaiming Public Spaces
Access to public spaces as a matter of course for women and men is a significant reflection of gender practices and  the degree of gender equality in a given society. Since the presence of women in public spaces is to varying degrees limited in most societies, women’s public presence has both symbolic and actual value, indicating flexibility, openness, ‘tolerance’ and democratization, particularly in many Muslim contexts, where public spaces have been assumed to be primarily male spaces. Women have learned through centuries of struggle that public visibility is the first step in establishing their rights as citizens.  Thus since the early twentieth century women have been contesting their limited access to public spaces and taking steps to claim their rightful place in public arenas. 
In many post-colonial Muslim and non-Muslim contexts constituencies of women politicized in the course of anti-colonial movements demanded access to public space, pushed for refashioning women’s roles and for their incorporation  in public life. To varying degrees the newly established states supported these demands on the assumption that modernity required women’s presence in public life. However since the end of 1970s with the ascendance of  political Islamist to state power, sexual politics has emerged more pronouncedly at the centre of debate on women’s rights in everyday matters. From Algeria to Egypt, Nigeria, Iran, and even Indonesia and Malaysia where historically women enjoyed significant freedom of movement and access to the public sphere, conservatives and political Islamists claim religious dictates require the exclusion of women from public space and the imposition of restrictive dress codes and gender roles. 
It is in this context that WLUML, at the behest of its networkers, launched this collective research on various forms violence and harassment of women in public spaces.
 
RELATED PROJECTS
Conference: Women, Religion, and Politics in the Middle East: Negotiating Marginalisation and Representation
Film: Our Space, Girls of Dhabas 
Women’s Sport as Politics in Muslim Contexts 

16 Days of Activism
Since it was first launched in 1991, the 16 days of Activism Against Gender Violence international campaign has mobilized more than 4,100 organizations in 172 countries, raising awareness and educating the public worldwide about the pervasiveness of gender-based violence.  it has intended to a) raise awareness about gender-based violence against women as a human rights issue at the local, national, regional and international levels. b)  Strengthen local work around gender-based violence against women by sharing their stories and their strategies. c)  Establish links between local and international advocacy to end gender-based violence against women. d) Provide a forum in which organizers can develop and share new and effective strategies. e)  Demonstrate the solidarity of women around the world working against gender-based violence against women. F) Create tools and information to allow governments to implement commitments to eliminate gender-based violence against women. 
WLUML had participated in 16 days of activism from the year it was launched and has hosted a number of transnational actions in connection with the annual 16 Days Campaign against Gender-Based Violence. Indeed a search on its publication indicates the varieties of issues that it had tackled over the years during its 16 Days of Activism. Over the years exposing the ration between militarism and violence against women has been WLUML focus, each year has taken a different approach to its 16 days of activism.
 
RELATED PROJECTS
Some of the WLUML network’s 16 Days initiatives include: 
In 2010, national partners of the VNC campaign in Indonesia, Pakistan, Sudan and Senegal carried out a series of actions to highlight feminist resistance against CVAW; 
In 2012, the network highlighted 16 blogs and op-eds by and about members who have engaged in urgent activism, including Sudan, Iran, Mali, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt; 
In 2014, WLUML coordinated a blogging series by young women activists in the WELDD ‘Public Square’ platform – writing on the theme, ‘From Peace in the Home to Peace in the World: Let’s Challenge Militarism and End Gender-Based Violence,’ bloggers came from the Philippines, Somalia, Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sudan, and Tunisia. WLUML also finished this year’s campaign with a Twitter teach-in on culturally-justified violence against women. 
In 2022, WLUML’s #activismthroughmusic campaign shared the work of inspiring women musicians and rappers using music as an activism tool in Muslim contexts. See interviews with musicians here.