PERSONAL ESSAY | ‘Being Muslim, being a Muslim woman’ by Syeda Hameed
1 year, 10 months ago

PERSONAL ESSAY | ‘Being Muslim, being a Muslim woman’ by Syeda Hameed

The Hindu  

Published : Feb 23, 2023 10:50 IST As I brace myself to write this piece for Frontline, Mirza Ghalib’s lines flash in my mind: Dil mein zauq o vasl o yaad e yaar tak baqi nahin Aag iss ghar mein lagi aisi ke jo ttha jal gaya Mein hoon aur afsurdgi ki aarzu Ghalib ke dil Dekh kar tarz e tapaak e ahl e duniya jal gaya How do I feel as a Muslim woman when I look back at the past eight years when the country was swept by a massive wave of a right-wing regime? To mark that participation, my organisation, Muslim Women’s Forum, recently held an exhibition titled “Pathbreakers: 20th Century Muslim Women of India”. My cross-country public hearings culminated in what became the Government of India’s first Report on Muslim Women. Given the shortness of public memory, this government now wants Hindus, Muslims, men, and women to see it as the saviour of Muslim women.

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History of this topic

Way in the world: how Muslim women travelled from 17th-20th centuries
1 week, 5 days ago

Way in the world: how Muslim women travelled from 17th-20th centuries

The Hindu  

I began reading Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women chronologically, hoping rather ambitiously to read it from cover to cover, one essay at a time. They write: “On the face of it, the premise of this volume is simple: a comparative study of travel narratives by Muslim women who travelled the world before the ‘jet age’ transformed modern …

Book Review: Neha Dixit’s ‘The Many Lives of Syeda X’ is Uniquely Authentic and Eye-Opening in Portraying Working-Class Women
1 month, 1 week ago

Book Review: Neha Dixit’s ‘The Many Lives of Syeda X’ is Uniquely Authentic and Eye-Opening in Portraying Working-Class Women

The Hindu  

Published : Nov 13, 2024 09:33 IST - 7 MINS READ India has seen several monumental economic and political developments in the three decades since the 1990s. The Many Lives of Syeda X: The Story of an Unknown Indian By Neha Dixit Juggernaut Pages: 320 Price: Rs.799 Neha Dixit’s book is uniquely authentic and eye-opening. Syeda has to migrate, live, …

Book Review | Making sense of the ‘new reality’ of India
1 month, 1 week ago

Book Review | Making sense of the ‘new reality’ of India

The Hindu  

Published : Nov 12, 2024 23:12 IST - 5 MINS READ The political philosopher Antonio Gramsci once compared a hegemonic political project to an “orchestra” in which differently attuned political and social forces “come to life as a single instrument”. A Brief History of the Present: Muslims in New India by the political sociologist Hilal Ahmed is a sophisticated engagement …

India Slams Pakistan at UNSC Over Mischievous Provocation Points to Forced Conversions Marriages of Minority Women
Trending News
1 month, 3 weeks ago

India Slams Pakistan at UNSC Over Mischievous Provocation Points to Forced Conversions Marriages of Minority Women

ABP News  

India strongly condemned Pakistan's provocative statements at the UNSC, highlighting the plight of women belonging to minority communities, particularly Hindus, Sikhs and Christians. The Indian representative emphasized the deplorable conditions of women in the country, including forced conversions and marriages, and called for a comprehensive approach to sustainable peace that includes women's full participation in politics, governance, and economic recovery.

The tactically silent Indian Muslim voter
8 months ago

The tactically silent Indian Muslim voter

Hindustan Times  

Uttar Pradesh has just finished its first phase of Lok Sabha elections and several recent reports have shown that Muslims have observed a “tactical silence” in this election. First, we must reject historical essentialisation — a view of the community that assumes a special historical continuity between the Muslim monarchs of India and Muslims in India today. This view of …

The Hindu Lit Fest 2024 | Muslim identity in the age of anti-Muslim hate
10 months, 4 weeks ago

The Hindu Lit Fest 2024 | Muslim identity in the age of anti-Muslim hate

The Hindu  

The vitiating atmosphere of hate and scrutiny faced by the minorities in India, especially the Muslim community, particularly in the last 10 years since the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power were explored in the first session at The Hindu Pavilion in The Hindu Lit For Life 2024 here at Lady Andal school in Chennai on January …

News18 UCC Survey: Why I, a Muslim Woman, Am All For Uniform Civil Code - News18
1 year, 5 months ago

News18 UCC Survey: Why I, a Muslim Woman, Am All For Uniform Civil Code - News18

News 18  

The Uniform Civil Code is an embodiment of Article 44 of the Indian Constitution which seeks the implementation of a uniform set of laws, governing the personal affairs of citizens, pertaining to the institution of marriage and the ancillary rights arising out of the same such as inheritance, alimony, guardianship and adoption, amongst others with the sole object of national …

Indian Muslim women don’t need male ‘saviours’ – Hindu or Muslim
1 year, 5 months ago

Indian Muslim women don’t need male ‘saviours’ – Hindu or Muslim

Al Jazeera  

In India, Islamophobic propaganda from the right often capitalises on unfounded fears of a Muslim population expansion. Recently, a femo-nationalist narrative has also gained traction, where influential women linked with Hindu nationalist organisations have urged Muslim women to marry a Hindu man to find “freedom” from alleged oppression. “Saving” the Muslim woman has been an indispensable component of India’s Hindu …

A celebration of women writers from the Indian subcontinent
1 year, 9 months ago

A celebration of women writers from the Indian subcontinent

The Hindu  

Several women authors of the Indian subcontinent have made a mark with their bold and incisive writing. From the legendary Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, the first woman Muslim writer from colonial Bengal, who wrote about the oppression of women and their liberation at a time when it was unthinkable to the crusader-writer Mahasweta Devi, inspired by the ordinary Adivasi, Dalit …

Looking inward: Progressive Muslim voices struggle for space amid rise of Hindutva politics
1 year, 10 months ago

Looking inward: Progressive Muslim voices struggle for space amid rise of Hindutva politics

The Hindu  

Published : Feb 23, 2023 10:50 IST What does it mean to be a progressive Muslim in present times? As I began activism for Muslim women’s rights, I realised that this collision would last all my life. Yet, Muslim women were speaking out against triple talaq, polygamy, nikah halala and calling for reform in Muslim personal law much before Narendra …

EDITOR’S NOTE | The Indian Muslim
1 year, 10 months ago

EDITOR’S NOTE | The Indian Muslim

The Hindu  

Published : Feb 23, 2023 10:50 IST I was listening to “Madhuban mein Radhika naache re, Giridhar ki muraliyan baaje re” while driving to work, and I thought of how this playful song about Radha and Krishna’s leela was sung by Mohammed Rafi, written by Shakeel Badayuni, set to tune by Naushad, and picturised on Yusuf Khan and Mahjabeen Bano. …

Book Review: ‘The Hijab: Islam, Women and the Politics of Clothing’ edited by P.K. Yasser Arafath and G. Arunima
1 year, 11 months ago

Book Review: ‘The Hijab: Islam, Women and the Politics of Clothing’ edited by P.K. Yasser Arafath and G. Arunima

The Hindu  

Published : Jan 12, 2023 10:15 IST Of the 6,236 verses in the Quran, only four pertain to physical appearance. These two verses appearing in chapter Al-Nur addressed men and women respectively, urging them to “lower their gaze and guard their chastity”. I was hoping to find this spirited debate in The Hijab: Islam, Women and the Politics of Clothing, …

INDIA, THIS SIDE | Women who make us what we are
1 year, 11 months ago

INDIA, THIS SIDE | Women who make us what we are

The Hindu  

Published : Jan 12, 2023 10:15 IST Indian history is no exception to the unfortunate universal norm of ignoring women in historical narratives. It would be obviously impossible for one to mention all such women whose life stories one has seen unfolding before one’s eyes. Surekha, whose husband was lured away by a godman soon after her marriage, and whose …

Opinion: We Are All Mahsa Amini And Muskaan Khan
2 years, 2 months ago

Opinion: We Are All Mahsa Amini And Muskaan Khan

ABP News  

Iran and India are the top focus now all over the world, over two sides of an issue that has one demand at the core of it — women's right to bodily autonomy. The Hijab Conundrum In Iran People say a false sense of equivalence is being drawn between the hijab ban in India and the women who are fighting …

Book Review | Missed chance to bring nuance to the conversation on Islam
2 years, 2 months ago

Book Review | Missed chance to bring nuance to the conversation on Islam

Deccan Chronicle  

This is a book for our times. Its success depended crucially on getting right three distinct ideas — that India is a layered and diverse society in every sense of the word and was fed through migrations over the millennia; that the nationalism engendered through the anti-colonial struggle could only be of a civic variety and not one based on …

Yet Another Storm in A Teacup: How The Hijab Row in India Is A Manufactured Controversy - News18
2 years, 2 months ago

Yet Another Storm in A Teacup: How The Hijab Row in India Is A Manufactured Controversy - News18

News 18  

“Tell the believing men to reduce of their vision and guard their private parts. Indeed, Allah is Acquainted with what they do.” “And tell the believing women to reduce of their vision and guard their private parts and not expose their adornment.” Women using veils was a practice that pre-dates Islam and was a common practice among the elite in …

Moving out of the shadows, from silence to assertion
2 years, 3 months ago

Moving out of the shadows, from silence to assertion

The Hindu  

A Talaq-e-Hasan petition filed by a Ghaziabad-based woman, seeking to make the divorce pronounced by the husband at an interval of at least a month extra-judicial, was in the limelight recently when Justice S.K. It also marks the increasing propensity of Muslim women to stand up for their rights in marriage or otherwise, a clear departure from times when women …

What Muslim women want: Equality, equal opportunities and definitely not hijab
2 years, 10 months ago

What Muslim women want: Equality, equal opportunities and definitely not hijab

Firstpost  

True purdah resided in the heart and had little to do with its external observance. If the issue of hijab was a matter of life and death for those eight students in Karnataka, then why were there no protests across India when in 2019 Kerala-based ‘Muslim Education Society’ banned niqab across 150 of its educational institutes, thus affecting the ‘essential’ …

Right Word | Making veil a symbol of religious identity won’t do any good to Muslim women
2 years, 10 months ago

Right Word | Making veil a symbol of religious identity won’t do any good to Muslim women

Firstpost  

History would probably not judge those kindly who are promoting the use of veil by Muslim women in India as a symbol of their religious freedom and empowerment. Status of Muslim women in medieval era Sudha Sharma has underlined the damage done to Muslim women by purdah in her authoritative work, The Status of Muslim Women in Medieval India, “Purdah …

A relationship tied to Sharia law
3 years, 3 months ago

A relationship tied to Sharia law

The Hindu  

The recent political developments in Kabul are enough to justify that the so-called “new” Taliban’s approach to women is not going to be any different from the “old” Taliban that governed Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. It became apparent when Zabiullah Mujahid, its spokesperson, tied the issues of women’s freedom in the “new” Afghanistan with Sharia law while addressing the …

What lies at the root of the insecurities of Indian Muslims
3 years, 8 months ago

What lies at the root of the insecurities of Indian Muslims

Live Mint  

When Ghazala Wahab put down her first ideas for this book in 2017, it was conceived as a kind of counter-voice to the Zakir Naiks of the world. Events overtook Wahab’s writing at many points, forcing her to expand the idea of the book to encompass the peculiar politics of Indian society and Muslims’ place in it, culminating in the …

Book Review: Onus on the moderate Muslim to reclaim Islam's heterodox legacy
3 years, 8 months ago

Book Review: Onus on the moderate Muslim to reclaim Islam's heterodox legacy

Deccan Chronicle  

Had it not been for the bitterly-wrought Partition, Sufism, which had its origins in the Arabian peninsula during the Prophet’s lifetime but flourished in India in the 13th and 14th centuries, would have emerged as the signature model of inclusive and, as it happens, syncretic Islam. This is the thesis of Ghazala Wahab’s timely book that is simultaneously a ready-reckoner …

Marginalisation of women and the social exclusion discourse
4 years ago

Marginalisation of women and the social exclusion discourse

The Hindu  

Subjugation and arbitrariness masquerading as cultural practices, religious edicts and gender perception continue to be the existential issues facing women. To quote Raymond Murphy: “Social closure is a process of subordination whereby one group monopolises advantages by closing off opportunities to another group of outsiders beneath it which it defines as inferior and ineligible.” Max Weber used the term social …

Dialogic study of Muslim women
4 years, 2 months ago

Dialogic study of Muslim women

The Hindu  

N ing a premise of equality they promise and widespread reverence they carry, many religious books are now being read through the lens of feminist sensibility. Twenty scholars—including eight women belonging to fields such as English, Islamic Studies, Arabic, Wildlife, Women’s Studies, and Clinical Psychology—from Aligarh Muslim University, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad, Islamic University of Science and Technology, …

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