The people of the whole valley feel themselves hostage to the firebrand Maulana Fazlullah … Read the rest

‘We are moving against the tide in order to establish family and gender roles as described in God’s word for the home and the family,’ seminary president said.… Read the rest

Does a religion have the right to impose its religious taboos onto the public domain?… Read the rest

This is a popular trick of totalitarian movements: Label any critique or call for debate as an insult and punish the offenders. … Read the rest

Ben Goldacre asks: Where’s your ethics committee now, science boy?… Read the rest

She was locked in a room for a year for refusing a forced marriage, spent five years living in shelters hiding from her family.… Read the rest

Bridget Prentice and Jasvinder Sanghera discuss on Woman’s Hour.… Read the rest

WHO study shows FGM exposes women and babies to significant risk at childbirth.… Read the rest

Confirming the universally unacceptable harm caused by FGM, and issuing an unqualified call for the elimination of this practice in all its forms.… Read the rest

The state cannot protect women and ensure that they can go about their work safely. … Read the rest

Shukria Barakzai, founder and editor of a newspaper for Afghan women, was named Worldpress.org’s 2004 International Editor of the Year. … Read the rest

‘If the pupils are looking up, the demons in possession are scorpions. If looking down, they are serpents.’… Read the rest

against the publishers of Jewish Free Press and the Western Standards for sighting [sic]hate against Muslims… Read the rest

She was to be mutilated at the behest of a man who wanted to make her his fourth wife.… Read the rest

Despite evidence that contradicts the story of a prelapsarian gynecocracy, and a glaring lack of evidence to support it, many people continue to subscribe to it. … Read the rest

The Inca were imperialists too, and the treatment of such peasant children may have served to instil fear and facilitate social control over remote mountain areas.… Read the rest

Gay rights are part of the Orientalist project.… Read the rest

The documents leave uncertain the degree of involvement of Benazir Bhutto but they trace the pervasive role of her husband.… Read the rest

In their hearts these people were with us, but they were scared to show this. … Read the rest

The use of cultural evidence risks a dangerous balkanization of the criminal law.… Read the rest