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Sunday, March 8, 2009

Musawah - Equality

Excerpts from an article by Nimah Ismail Nawwab in Arab News:
"Meeting with a cross-section of women scholars and activists including Afghan, Moroccan, Sudanese, and Indonesian at a conference in Malaysia, held on Feb. 13-17, that witnessed the start of a global movement for equality and justice in family laws, aptly called Musawah (equality in Arabic), shed light on the every day struggles of women simply surviving another day with the threat of lives rent asunder in war-ravaged countries, of child marriages, honor killings, domestic abuse, forced marriages and abusive family situations, and of female mutilations in the name of culture and abiding by the existing norms.

For Muslim women this is further aggravated by the various local interpretations of religious texts without a need for a consensus reform where judges discuss precedents and share case studies, where legal counsel is hard to come by and where even asking for help is a major hurdle that if it crosses the victims’ mind — just that first painful step — is hampered by resources, and methods of implementation and recourse."


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