Kohistan Clerics Say Pakistan NGO Women Won't Be Allowed To Mingle With 'Na Mahram' Men
New
Age Islam News Bureau
05
November 2023
• Kohistan Clerics Say Pakistan NGO Women Won't Be
Allowed To Mingle With 'Na Mahram' Men
• Two Iran Women Taekwondokas Bag Medals In Pakistan
• Anti-Hijab Protests
'Changed Iran's Society, Prisons', Says Fariba Adelkhah, Freed Academic
• More Australian Young Women Are Choosing A Career In
Agriculture
• ‘The Noble Guardian’ Documentary on Afghan Activist,
Mahbouba Seraj, Eyes Oscar Chances
Compiled
by New Age Islam News Bureau
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/kohistan-clerics-pakistan-ngo-namahram-mahram/d/131048
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Kohistan Clerics Say Pakistan NGO Women Won't Be
Allowed To Mingle With 'Na Mahram' Men
Photo: Pakistan Today
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Nov 5, 2023
KOHISTAN: A group of clerics in Pakistan's Kohistan on
Saturday announced that women working with non-governmental organisations
(NGOs) would not be allowed to mingle with "na mahram" men in public
and that doing so would require them to follow specific directives, depending
upon their marital status, Dawn reported.
In Islam "na mahram" stands for the
women/men that you are allowed to marry. It includes all women/men other than
mahram( including cousins).
The clerics, a group of 12, said that if a married
woman was found accompanying a na mahram man, she would be expelled from the
area. If a woman is single, the accompanying man must enter into a marriage
with her.
Kohistan's Pattan area's Assistant Commissioner,
Muhammad Bilal, dismissed the "announcement" and pledged that it
would not be permitted to be enforced.
On the other hand, a cleric, calling himself Maulana
Karimdad, also posted the same "decision" on his Facebook account and
claimed that a local station house officer had also been informed about the
decision, as per Dawn.
Karimdad on speaking to Dawn said, "We cannot
endorse non-religious activities in Kohistan, and these NGO women are in breach
of our customs by participating in such activities."
"If they were to operate under religious laws, we
would safeguard and back them, but transgressing our customs, which are not
permitted by Sharia, cannot be tolerated," he added.
"NGO women who disregard our directives should
consider leaving Kohistan voluntarily; otherwise, we may take measures to
either remove them or facilitate their marriages with the colleagues they are
seen with."
He pointed out that the non-profits had been operating
in the area for eight months and the clerics never complained. "It appears
to be a form of blackmail and nothing else," he said, as per Dawn.
Source: Times Of India
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Two Iran Women Taekwondokas Bag Medals In Pakistan
Photo: Mehr News Agency
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Nov 4, 2023
On the second day of the tournament being held in
Islamabad, two female taekwondo practitioners from Iran stood on the winners'
podium.
In the weight class of -53kg, two Iranian fighters met
at the finals.
Nahid Kiani of Iran defeated her country woman to
claim a gold medal while Mobina Ne'matzadeh ranked second.
Led by Mino Fallah, Iran's squad has started its
fights from yesterday in Islamabad, Pakistan.
Source: En.Mehrnews
https://en.mehrnews.com/news/207938/Two-Iran-women-taekwondokas-bag-medals-in-Pakistan
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Anti-Hijab Protests 'Changed Iran's Society, Prisons',
SaysFaribaAdelkhah, Freed Academic
November 04, 2023
Tehran, Iran: The protest movement that erupted in
Iran last year has transformed the country both outside and also inside prison,
a French-Iranian academic, who returned to Paris last month after being held in
the country since 2019, told AFP.
FaribaAdelkhah was finally allowed to leave Iran in
October after a four-and-a-half-year ordeal that began with her sudden arrest
in 2019 and saw her spend years in Tehran's notorious Evin prison.
But there she was also able to witness the courage of
her fellow women inmates, who included this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner
Narges Mohammadi, amid the "Woman. Life. Freedom." protests.
Female political prisoners have often sung together in
a show of defiance, Adelkhah, who was released from prison in February but
remained unable to leave Iran for months, told AFP in an interview in Paris.
The movement, calling for the end of Iran's imposition
of a headscarf on all women and clerical rule, was sparked by the death in
Iranian custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September 2022.
Iranian security forces have cracked down on the
protests in the country, killing hundreds, according to rights groups, and have
executed seven men in cases connected to the protests.
Adelkhah said that in Evin the resistance movement
brought together people from all walks of life -- including rights activists,
environmentalists, political opponents, and representatives of religious
minorities.
She herself was arrested on June 5, 2019, at Tehran's
airport, where she was waiting for her companion Roland Marchal. Neatly-dressed
security agents "very respectfully" asked her to follow them, she
said.
The researcher was eventually sentenced to six years
in prison. A five-year term was handed down for "colluding with foreigners"
and one for "propaganda against the Islamic Republic," she said.
Marchal, a French sociologist specialising in
sub-Saharan Africa, was arrested together with Adelkhah. He was released in
March 2020 as part of a prisoner exchange between Tehran and Paris.
While in jail Adelkhah, along with another prisoner,
Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert, staged a hunger strike that lasted 50
days.
They were among some two dozen Western passport
holders held in Iran in what activists and some governments have termed a
deliberate strategy of hostage-taking.
Some have now been released, including all the
American detainees, but around a dozen Europeans are still believed to be held,
including four French nationals.
In the jail, located in the hills of northern Tehran,
female prisoners are bareheaded when they are among themselves, but are
required to cover themselves if a man enters or if they have to go to the
hospital.
On Wednesday, Iranian prison authorities have blocked
the jailed rights activist Mohammadi's hospital transfer for urgently needed
care over her refusal to wear the compulsory hijab, according to her family.
Adelkhah praised the 51-year-old journalist and
activist, seen as one of the women spearheading the uprising who has been
repeatedly jailed and has been imprisoned again since 2021.
She said Mohammadi has turned prison into "a
space of combat, of protest par excellence", adding that she was
"more heard" in jail than when she is outside.
The researcher was still in Iran when Mohammadi was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in early October. She said she saw
"smiles" in the streets.
While the government quashed the daily protests with
its repression, the slogan "Woman. Life. Freedom." has become part of
Iranian culture, she argued.
Today like-minded Iranian women greet each other when
they go out without their headscarves. Before it was "unthinkable,"
said the researcher.
Source: Www.Ndtv.Com
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More Australian Young Women Are Choosing A Career In
Agriculture
November 5, 2023
It was an interest in food that first sparked
TirzaWinarta’s love of agriculture, and now she’s gearing up for a career in
the egg industry.
The 22-year-old university student from southern
Sydney who is studying for her masters degree in food and agribusiness, was
born in Indonesia.
Not only is she part of a growing number of young
educated women choosing agriculture as a career, she’s also part of a more
culturally diverse workforce.
It found there’s been a 42 per cent jump in young
female workers aged 25 to 34 over that time, while nearly half of the women in
that age group are university qualified.
More than half of the 20 to 39 age group come from a
non-European background. That compares to less than 20 per cent in the 60 to 69
years age bracket.
“Agriculture is a significant contributor to our
national economy and it is vital that we continue to grow and attract a
pipeline of talent to this important industry.”
While the census shows 80 per cent of people who work
in agriculture live in regional areas the Westpac researchers noticed that
demographic is shifting.
“There are so many different career opportunities,
which means that people from the cities or from the coast can certainly have a
great career in ag.”
The 24-year-old is examining sustainability in the
livestock industry for her PhD while working part-time in the soil carbon
sector.
“Studying agriculture doesn’t just mean going and
working on a property, which is still a great option, but there are a lot of
other really exciting opportunities – from working in labs to working on
policy.”
The two women have both been identified as potential
agricultural leaders as past recipients of the Agrifutures Horizon Scholarship.
“I would encourage looking at the breadth of
opportunities, and finding leaders and mentors that you can look up to within
the industry,” Ms Ash says.
Source: Ozarab.Media
https://ozarab.media/more-young-women-are-choosing-a-career-in-agriculture/
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‘The Noble Guardian’ Documentary on Afghan Activist,
MahboubaSeraj, Eyes Oscar Chances
By Jenelle Riley
05-11-2023
In August 2021, as the U.S. withdrew forces from
Afghanistan and the Taliban took power, many people fled the country. But
despite having U.S. citizenship, the then 73-year-old MahboubaSeraj stayed. The
journalist, activist and co-founder of Afghan Women’s Network had been forced
to leave her country once before, but this time she would remain.
“If you educate one woman, you educate her whole
family,” Seraj explains. “And the women of Afghanistan are absolutely dying for
education.”
Anna Coren, an Emmy-winning journalist for CNN, soon
learned of Seraj and set out to tell her story in the documentary short “The
Noble Guardian,” which recently won best documentary at the 2023 L.A. Shorts
Intl. Film Festival and is eligible for the 2024 Oscars. Coren was there to
capture the joy when the schools reopened to girls for the first time in months
— and the devastation when they were shut down hours later.
Born into royal lineage, Seraj and her husband were
imprisoned by the Communist Party in 1978 and eventually moved to the United
States, before returning to Afghanistan in 2003.
The film marks Coren’s directorial debut, and she knew
early on she wanted it to be a film rather than a news segment. She and her
director of photography had covered Afghanistan for years and were looking for
a way to tell the story. The first time she had a Zoom call with Seraj, she
knew she had her way in. “It was just electric,” Coren recalls. “I just had
goosebumps, the hair on the back of my neck was standing up and I knew: this
woman was a documentary.”
Seraj admits she wasn’t initially comfortable being
the center of attention, particularly as the film goes into private details of
her life she hasn’t discussed publicly. But talking to Coren convinced her.
“The way she talked to me, I realized that if there is any time in my life that
I’m going to share this story with the people of Afghanistan and the women of
the world, this is the time to do so.
Source: Variety.Com
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URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/kohistan-clerics-pakistan-ngo-namahram-mahram/d/131048