[Lukongsimi]

In my latest interview, prominent Malaysian leader, activist and Muslim feminist, Zainah Anwar, talks about her inspiration to co-found Sisters In Islam:
Women told us how they went to the religious authorities to complain about their marital problems and were told that it was their husband's right to take a second wife, to beat them, to demand obedience, to demand sex... They were told to go home and be good Muslim wives and their husbands would then treat them better. Women were confused and upset with the kinds of messages they heard over radio and television and in talks on Islam they attended at private homes and mosques. That you can never say no to your husband's demand for sex, even if it's on a camel. That even if your father is dying and you are just upstairs with your husband and he forbids you from being at your father's bedside, even if he is calling for you in his dying breath, you must obey your husband and stay upstairs. That no matter if you have licked the puss oozing from your sick husband from head to toe, you still would not have done enough for him. That hell is full of women because they have disobeyed their husbands and have left their heads uncovered.
Misogyny that's carried out in the name of Islam isn't limited to Malaysia. Acclaimed Yemenite photographer, Boushra Al Moutawakel, gives a nuanced portrayal of women's plight in her haunting Hijab series. In the first photograph, a mother and daughter sit smiling at the camera. The daughter is holding a doll. The mother is wearing a colorful headscarf. The daughter is too young still to cover. As the series progresses, however, the mother and daughter are both covered in black veils -- and so is the doll! Neither is smiling. Soon, even their faces are hidden behind burkhas. Finally, they disappear.
In our interview for Muslima, when I asked Dr. Sima Samar, Chairperson of the Afghan Human Rights Commission, to name an abuse she continues to see, she said, "the lack of dignity and equality ... that people still view women as vulnerable, weak, and soft." In Afghanistan, women are forced to wear the burkha even at the high price of their own health. Dr. Samar says that "most of the women in Afghanistan are suffering from osteomalacia," a softening of the bones due to poor nutrition and lack of sunlight.
In 2002, Dr. Samar served as the Minister of Women's Affairs in Afghanistan but was forced to resign when she received death threats for questioning conservative Islamic laws (an unfortunate fate that seems to plague many of the leading female reformers I've interviewed).