Catégorie : Civil Society

Women living under Muslim laws WLUML

Homepages: français, arabic, russian, english.

Linked with Sharla Musabih – United Arab Emirates, and with the City of Hope.

News and Views;
Calls for actions;
Publications;
Publications webshop;
Contact (scroll down);
Links.

Women Living Under Muslim Laws is an international solidarity network that provides information, support and a collective space for women whose lives are shaped, conditioned or governed by laws and customs said to derive from Islam. For more than two decades WLUML has linked individual women and organisations. It now extends to more than 70 countries ranging from South Africa to Uzbekistan, Senegal to Indonesia and Brazil to France. It links:

  • women living in countries or states where Islam is the state religion, secular states with Muslim majorities as well as those from Muslim communities governed by minority religious laws;
  • women in secular states where political groups are demanding religious laws;
  • women in migrant Muslim communities in Europe, the Americas, and around the world;
  • non-Muslim women who may have Muslim laws applied to them directly or through their children;
  • women born into Muslim communities/families who are automatically categorized as Muslim but may not define themselves as such, either because they are not believers or because they choose not to identify themselves in religious terms, preferring to prioritise other aspects of their identity such as political ideology, profession, sexual orientation or others.

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the City of Hope

Linked with Sharla Musabih – United Arab Emirates, and with Women living under Muslim laws.

The group will be permitted to have an own website only when the government has given them an official recognition (statement in a TV documentation on the french channel odyssee, showing the city of hope).

The City of Hope – an organization founded in 2001 by Sharla and two other women, Lena Mustapha and Margaret Greeney – has served as a refuge for hundreds of abused women and children. Its establishment, says Sharla, was in direct response to a growing need that has been neglected during the UAE’s stunning infrastructural and cultural transformation … The police and other social agencies, says Sharla, found it hard to cope with the sudden rush of an incoming multinational population. Their systems – designed with the customs of the UAE in mind – began to crack … According to figures released by the human rights section of the Dubai Police, some 45 cases of family problems were reported in the city last year, only four of which were cases of violence against women. At the time of the report’s publication, Sharla dismissed the statistics as a gross underestimate, blaming the police system for mishandling domestic abuse situations. Abuse victims are often sent back home ‘after the police ask the husband to sign a statement promising not to harm his wife again’. Despite this, her relationship with the Dubai Police is good – she was officially honoured by them late last year. ‘Gaining official status from the UAE Government [should] protect me and allow me to work in safety. And building more shelters would allow us to cope with the results of an ever-increasing multinational population. This country must never be allowed to live in denial [of the needs] of a [foreign] population which they have invited.’ (full text).

While the Dubai police department runs a « Caring for Victims » program aimed at helping women and children who have been victims of crime and abuse, the program only offers legal, psychological, and financial help, but refers women who seek refuge from abusive husbands or employers to Dubai’s sole women’s shelter, known as « City of Hope. » The « City, » or better known as Villa 18, however, is not officially licensed, and has over the past few years come under attack by many locals, mainly men, who believe that its mere presence contradicts UAE culture. The shelter, set up in 2001 by Sharla Musabih, who is originally from the United States and has been married to a local for over 20 years, houses tens of women and children at any given month. Musabih has tried for years to get the shelter officially licensed, but her requests always fell on deaf ears. (full text).

Arms Control Association

Linked with Judge C. G. Weeramantry – Sri Lanka, with Arms Control Today, and with Weeramantry International Centre For Peace Education and Research.

The autoritative Source of Arms Control:

The Arms Control Association ACA ( http://www.armscontrol.org/ ), founded in 1971, is a national nonpartisan membership organization dedicated to promoting public understanding of and support for effective arms control policies. Through its public education and media programs and its magazine, Arms Control Today (ACT), ACA provides policy-makers, the press and the interested public with authoritative information, analysis and commentary on arms control proposals, negotiations and agreements, and related national security issues. In addition to the regular press briefings ACA holds on major arms control developments, the Association’s staff provides commentary and analysis on a broad spectrum of issues for journalists and scholars both in the United States and abroad.

The Publiction;

Become a Member & Subscribe to Arms Control Today;

Links to the Treaties (full text and additional docs);

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Weeramantry International Centre For Peace Education and Research

Linked with Judge C. G. Weeramantry – Sri Lanka, with Arms Control Today,
and with Arms Control Association.

« Promoting Peace Through Intercultural Understanding« . Founder and Chairman of the Board: Judge Christopher Gregory Weeramantry. The Centre is founded on the philosophy that peace education is the most urgent need of the hour if the world is to be saved from violence and war. Misunderstanding and cross cultural ignorance are the root causes of war, and an urgent program of peace education is the only means of averting a global catastrophe. To this end the Centre has launched a series of projects ranging from school level to the level of professionals and academics both nationally and internationally. Established as recently as 2001 the Centre already has a substantial record of achievements as well as an ambitious program of future activities. (text).

Activities; one exemple – Multicultural Youth Camps: Youth camp for fifty, (50) children from multi-ethnic and multi-religious backgrounds was organised in association with the Institute of Integral Education, Piliyandala August 2002. Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim children were taught about each other’s cultural traditions for two days, placed in each other’s houses for five days and brought together again for two days. This was a great success and the children have expressed the view that they are friends for life. (text and photo).

The Project Gutenberg

Picked up on Weitzenegger’s Website for International Development Cooperation, and its Newsletter. l

Project Gutenberg is the first and largest single collection of free electronic books, or eBooks:

The word free in the English language does not distinguish between free of charge and freedom. Free of charge means that you don’t have to pay for the book you received. Freedom denotes that you may do as you like with the book you received. This distinction is immaterial if you just want to read a book privately, but it becomes of utmost importance if you want to work with the book:

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