Middle East

Bindi Morphs into Hip Accessory.  [India] The bindi, the traditional dot on the forehead of Indian women that once was a symbol of a woman's marital status, is rapidly turning into a must fashion accessory that comes in a mind-boggling variety of shapes, colors and designs.  Women are wearing bindis adorned with diamonds, crystals, pearls, gold or silver, sometimes done with traditional handcrafting, and in shapes that are increasingly intricate.  These tend to rely basically on ethnic Indian designs - like the mango or peacock, flowers, leaves and creepers.  At the lower end of the price market, the round shape is most common, with some ovals or stars, and in more traditional colors like red, maroon, black and brow.
India's First Female Bomber Strikes .  [India< span style="font-family:Arial">] As other militants lay down their arms to help earthquake victims, a female suicide bomber blew herself up near an Indian army convoy, the first such attack by a woman in the Kashmir region.  While this is the first female bomber, women have been active in the insurgency, often carrying weapons and explosives for the militants.  It is easier for women to pass the security forces because they are not checked as thoroughly and often hide arms under the full body coverings, traditionally worn by Muslim women, said one senior police official, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak on the subject.
Are Men and Women From the Same Planet?  [India] Why men don't listen and women can't read maps?  What turns men on and what puts off women?  Why do men talk to exchange information, while women talk to express feelings?  Only John Gray can answer these questions, because he has decoded their genes in his bestselling novel, Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus.  A relationship and communications guru to most, John Gray's focus is to help men and women understand, respect and appreciate their differences in both personal and professional relationships.  Eureka!  Right?   You can get to hear more such pithy aphorisms as John Gray will be in India from Nov 11-13 in Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai for Indiatimes Strategy Summit, to talk about the various aspects of improving relationships.
Women Rage at High Court Nod on Child Marriage.  [India] groups today reacted angrily to a judgment by Delhi High Court that marriage of a girl of 15 was legally valid if it was at her own free will, saying it defeated efforts to stop child marriage and asked the Centre to appeal against the decision.  "There should definitely be a rethink on this court order and the government should appeal against the decision," National Commission for Women (NCW) chairperson Girija Vyas told reporters.  Speaking on the sidelines of a national consultation on the draft Prevention of Sexual Harassment of Women Bill, 2005, she said the Commission will write to the Centre to appeal against the court order.  "Child marriage is a big problem in our country.  You should see the plight of child widows. In such a scenario, the court order is a matterof serious concern," Vyas said.
Indian Women Face Peril of HIV.  [India] India already has over five million HIV-positive people.  Global progress towards the UN Millennium Development Goal of halting and reversing the spread of Aids by 2015 is minimal, and India is likely to find it particularly hard to fulfill.  Currently 39% of HIV-positive Indians are women.   The government here says it is trying to promote awareness.  But health workers fear unless there is a massive campaign to combat the widespread ignorance of HIV, especially among women, the situation will soon get much worse.
Thomas L. Friedman: Sinbad the Martian.  [Iraq] In trying to bring some democracy to Iraq, America is not just challenging the dictatorial-tribal political order there, but the male-dominated culture as well.
Amid Negotiations, Iraq’s Women Fear Being Left Behind.  [Iraq] As in all wars, Iraqi women have largely retired to the dark corners, forced to yield the centre to men waving guns.  Saturday’s vote will not improve their lives, Milla and her colleagues say; at this point, they cannot imagine anything that would.  They just hope it won’t make things any worse.  As the constitution was being drafted, women were never treated as more than aside issue, even with US President George W. Bush depiction of women’s rights as one of the reasons Americans are fighting in Iraq.  The draft going before voters Saturday specifies equality regardless of gender and reserves 25 per cent of the seats in the National Assembly for women.   But it also gives each Iraqi household the option of using religious law to decide family issues such as inheritance, divorce and alimony.  Rights advocates have said they fear women will be coerced by male relatives into accepting the least favor-able interpretations of religious law.
Time Ebbing for 6 Foreigners in Libya AIDS Case.  [Libya] In 1998, at a time when her country was mired in hyperinflation, Valya Chervenyashka left her rural Bulgarian village and went to work as a nurse in Benghazi, Libya, for $250 a month, to pay for her daughters' college education.  Today, Chervenyashka and four other Bulgarian nurses, as well as a Palestinian doctor, are under death sentence in a Libyan jail and facing a firing squad, accused of intentionally infecting more than 400 hospitalized Libyan children with the AIDS virus - in order, according to the initial indictment, to undermine Libyan state security.

Barbie Pushed Aside in Mideast Cultural Shift. [ Syria] In the past year or so, Barbie dolls have all but disappeared from the shelves of many toy stores in the Middle East.  In their place is Fulla, a dark-eyed doll with, as her creator puts it, "Muslim values."  Fulla roughly shares Barbie's size and proportions, but steps out of her shiny pink box wearing a black abaya and a matching head scarf.  Fulla is not the first doll to wear the hijab, a traditional Islamic head covering worn outside the house so a woman's hair and the shape of her body cannot be seen by men outside her family.  Mattel markets a group of collectors' dolls that includes a Moroccan Barbie and a doll called Leila, designed to represent a Muslim slave girl in an Ottoman court.  Though Fulla will never have a boyfriend doll like Barbie's Ken, a Dr. Fulla and Fulla as a teacher will be introduced soon.  "These are two respected careers for women that we would like to encourage small girls to follow.”
How to Reconcile Islam, Sexuality and Liberty?   [Middle East] For Seyran Ates, a Turkish-born German lawyer, the central problem of Islam is sexual.   "We have to deal with Islam's attempt to control the sexuality of women, its refusal to accept that women have their own sexuality and want to make their own choices," she said.  Ates, who practices law in Berlin and visited New York this week, speaks with conviction.  Many of her clients are battered Muslim women, mainly Turkish immigrants in Germany.  They come to her because the men in their lives insist on control of their sexuality - that they remain virgins until married, that they agree to arranged marriages, that they do as bidden once wed - and react with violence when denied.   Six recent "honor killings" in Berlin, where about 10 percent of the 2.5 million Turks in Germany live, have focused attention on a culture of violent male repression of women in some Muslim immigrant communities in Europe.
Women's Place at Home their Undoing in Kashmir Quake.  [Pakistan] In rural Pakistan , conservative Muslim values and tradition mean women are seldom seen or heard outside their own homes.  Girls are married off in their early teens and spend the rest of their lives out of sight of strangers.  For a majority of Pakistani women, life is raising children and looking after the home -- where they are almost idolised by the males of the family and treated as queens of their domains.  But this life spent almost in purdah -- an Urdu word meaning "behind the veil" -- condemned thousands of Pakistani women to death when Saturday's deadly South Asian earthquake struck.  Officials say the majority of the estimated 40,000 victims of the 7.6 magnitude quake were women and children.
Selling Turkey.  [Turkey] Umit Boyner, < st1:country-region>Turkey's new spin-doctor-in-chief, defies the stereotype of the traditional Turkish woman.  She is more likely to be seen wearing a Chanel scarf than a head scarf.  She is adept at number-crunching as well as kickboxing.  And she helps run Boyner Holding, Turkey's biggest retail empire.  Eager to shed Turkey's image as a poor agrarian country that will drag down Europe's struggling economies, Turkey Inc. has chosen Boyner, 42, to engineer its biggest public relations campaign ever: a decade-long sell job to convince a skeptical continent that Turkey should be a part of the European Union.  Boyner, a straight-talking mother of five who worked as an oil executive before turning to corporate finance, says she is undeterred.  Boyner's background has prepared her to become Turkey Inc.'s unofficial ambassador.  The daughter of a wealthy industrialist, she grew up in a house where political debate flowed as much as raki, a popular Turkish alcohol.  After studying politics and economics at the University of Rochester, in the United States , she met her husband, Cem, at a kickboxing class.  Her husband, a businessman and popular Turkish heartthrob, at the time was the leader of Turkey's New Democracy Party, a progressive party that championed minority rights.  Boyner campaigned with him across the country, traveling to Turkey's most remote areas.  Today, they are nationally recognized figures, featured regularly in the glossy pages of lifestyle and glamour magazines.

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