Women's eNews (https://womensenews.org/tag/religion/page/2/)
While spending time with her in-laws in a remote village in Nepal, Elizabeth Enslin saw local women press their rights. In this excerpt from “While the Gods Were Sleeping,” some decided to plant trees instead of throwing rocks and breaking windows.
This cultural innovation is part of why 2014 will go down in Indian history as a year when society began cherishing girls and women and overcoming denigrating traditions. Reason to celebrate the U.N.’s International Day of the Girl Child on Oct. 11.
Since 2012, up to 150 French women have joined the ranks of the Islamic State or Al Nusra Front. Here the family of a 14-year-old describes how her departure has left them stunned and wondering why the government isn’t doing more.
Skeptics wrinkle their brows at the Ayatollah’s push for larger families and the government’s efforts to restrict family planning and provide incentives for childbirth. Iran’s youth want to be free, says a scholar of the Iranian women’s movement.
The LGBTQ Muslim community is gaining notice in the arts, but mainstream acceptance in their communities lags behind, particularly at mosques. “I don’t go because of that feeling that I cannot be my full self,” says one queer Muslim.
Unmarried women are becoming a powerful new voting bloc in the United States. Also this week, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered lower courts to rehear any cases in which companies had sought to deny coverage for any type of contraception after the Hobby Lobby case ruling.
France expresses no concern over cyclists who race naked or sunbathe naked on certain beaches, yet is concerned by women who wish not to show their skin and face? I call that a blatant double standard.
First buffer zones, then Hobby Lobby. After these back-to-back negative Court rulings, the pro-choice side needs to fight speech with speech and find a corporation to fight corporations.
“I used to think that wearing a scarf on my head was my highway ticket to paradise,” says one woman. But then she found it weighing her down with role-model pressures. For Ramadan, she and two others reflect on a personal nexus of culture and religion.
A social media project launched last year asks Muslims to compare the space their mosques offer women and men. Its founder says that every mosque she’s visited in the United States, Canada and Europe has a side or back entrance for women.