Fundamentalisms

Fatwas Against Women in Bangladesh

This publication describes death sentences pronounced against women in order to obstruct women's development and education, those against women journalists, women who have been accused of sex outside marriage and cases of violence against women and situates these in the religious/political context of Bangladesh in the 1990s.

UK/India: One Year On - Remember Gujarat - Candlelight Vigil - Monday 3rd March 2003

One year after the Gujarat genocide, we are holding this vigil outside the offices of the British Charity Commission, because the organisations which financed the massacres and the continuing communal violence are still enjoying charity status in Britain.

India: Stand in solidarity with the women of Gujarat on 8th March

As you are probably planning activities around International Women’s Day, 8th March, WLUML strongly urges you to refocus international attention, protests and solidarity on the ongoing genocidal process taking place in the Indian state of Gujarat since late February 2002.

India: Stand in solidarity with the women of Gujarat on 8th March

Dossier 23-24: Algeria: Ordinary Fascism, Fundamentalism and Femicide

[31 July 2001] What started in Hassi Messaoud, Algeria on the night of July 13-14, 2001 is NOT one more crime/violence/violation in the wartime situation that our country has now become famous for. A qualitative change has taken place.

Dossier 23-24: Kosovo War, Feminists and Fascism in Serbia

[Belgrade, May 20th-August 5th, 1999]

The Kosovo crisis is at the heart of the decade long war drama of the late country that used to be called Yugoslavia. The symbolic sign of the scope of immensely shallow (mis)understanding of the dead country’s destiny is (for those of us who still remember) today painfully visible in CNN headlines: “War in Yugoslavia”.

What “Yugoslavia” the world is talking about today? The trick with people’s memory and amnesia is maybe unintentional, but it’s no less misleading.

Dossier 23-24: Words of Flora Brovina during her Trial in Nis, Serbia

9 of December ‘99

On 21st January 2000, Rajko Danilovic, Flora Brovina’s defence lawyer, filed an appeal against his client’ s twelve-year sentence. The appeal hearing was scheduled for 16th May 2000. The appeal called for the Supreme Court to either acquit Mrs. Brovina, or to release her on bail pending a retrial. Grounds for the retrial include violations of the due process during the trial hearings including a breach of the Serbian Code of Civil Procedure. On 7th June 2000 the Serbian Supreme Court has overturned the conviction of Mrs.

Dossier 23-24: What is your tribe? Women’s struggles and the construction of Muslimness

Abstract

Using the often scarce space available to them in very different political circumstances, women’s strategies in defence of their human rights range from entryism to internationalism.

While fundamentalists read all women’s strategies as equally significant of betrayal of their identity, liberals outside Muslim countries and communities - and increasingly inside too - select the entryist strategy as the only legitimate one insofar as it matches our “nature”.

While the women’s movement remains united in standing for the need to use

Dossier 23-24: Women in Iran Since 1979

Although all countries are unique, Iran may have claim to more surprising political changes in the past century than any other country existing continuously during that period. Among these changes have been notable alterations in women’s roles and status. The birth of urban mass politics during the constitutional revolution of 1906-11 saw women’s first political activism, which continued after World War 1, though that independence was eventually much diminished under the new Pahlavi dynasty of Reza Shah (1921-41) (Afary, 1996; Bayat, 1978; Paidar, 1995; Sanasarian, 1982).

Dossier 23-24: Chronology of Events Regarding Women in Iran since the Revolution of 1979

February 11, 1979
Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers take power after a revolution.

February 26, 1979
Khomeini announces that the Family Protection Law (1967) is abrogated.

March 3, 1979
Khomeini announces that women cannot be judges.

March 6, 1979
Khomeini announces that women are to wear hejab in the workplace.