Author: Ophelia Benson

Tahir Aslam Gora suggests an outline for the new Islam.

Women in Algeria were slaughtered in the thousands by fundamentalist armed forces throughout the nineties, because they refused to be forcibly covered.

Sura 40 says that those who reject the scriptures will have iron collars and chains placed around their necks, be dragged into scalding water and burnt in the fire.

To mark international women’s day 2004, International Pen Writers in Prison Committee focused on al-Huwaider.

Countless women in DRC have been raped and mangled, then shunned.

Political change in Iran is necessary, but it must not be achieved by foreign intervention.

Fundamentalists want to impose a religious identity on all citizens, by virtue of their birth place rather than by choice, thus denying freedom of thought, freedom of religion, freedom of consciousness.

AIDS denial plays a corrosive role in the health policies of many countries, but nowhere has the damage been as extreme or as enduring as in South Africa.

The scientific evidence is overwhelming and has been published in peer-reviewed medical journals, the way science is supposed to be done.

We Have No Orders To Save You.

Emboldened by their growing political power, religious conservatives are once again storming the barricades of science education.

What is so good about having faith when you don’t have evidence? What is the real advantage to that? Why is this something that we want to encourage?

“Every day women are sacrificed for their family or tribe,” Nilab Mobarez tells me angrily.

Reasons not to talk about stampedes where “several” poor Third-World Muslims died.

It is estimated that as many as 74,000 women in the UK have had FGM and that every year a further 7,000 are at risk.

Across rural India, it’s easy to find people who revere sati as the ultimate demonstration of womanly honour, devotion and piety.

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

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

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

Gay rights are part of the Orientalist project.