For almost two years, a group of dedicated young women in a conservative neighborhood of Pakistan has been working to beat the odds and change the culture around them. The women are doing it by cycling. VOA’s Ayesha Tanzeem reports from Pakistan’s largest city Karachi
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Today she travels the world, attends a red-carpet movie premiere and sits on panels with astronauts, former presidents and feminist icons.But in the years after 9/11, Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, center, sits at the Islamic Center of New York University during Friday prayers, Dec. 27, 2019. At 17, she and a group of friends started the blog Muslimgirl.com in response to anti-Muslim bullying they experienced after 9/11.A decade later, her She was 9 when the airliners struck the World Trade Center towers, and she remembers the warning of her Jordanian immigrant father: “They’re going to blame us.”In the aftermath, she was bullied. People threw eggs at her home and slashed her mother’s tires. Her family faced such a backlash that her father temporarily relocated them to Jordan.While she is proud of being “born and raised a Jersey girl,” it was only in Jordan that she began to take pride in her roots. She learned Arabic and appreciated Middle Eastern food and hospitality. When she returned to the U.S., she began to wear a headscarf as an act of defiance against a rising anti-Muslim tide.“I lost a lot of friends, people started treating me differently,” she said. But she also became an ambassador for her faith. Students, even teachers, stopped her in school and asked about the Quran and Islam.“I had to learn as much as I possibly could about my own religion, the ins and outs of it, what Islamophobes were saying about it, so that I could understand how to respond,” she said.Eventually, she concluded that if the people around her had those questions, so did many others.In recent years, Forbes magazine chose her for its “30 Under 30” list of top achievers. Michelle Obama asked her to speak at the United State of Women Summit. She was also part of a panel that included female astronaut Cody Coleman and was moderated by former President Bill Clinton. Most recently, she served on an advisory committee for the live-action remake of Disney’s “Aladdin” and attended the premiere.“It was such a full-circle moment for me, because when I was a little girl, Princess Jasmine was one of the only representations that I had growing up,” she said.Being on the committee allowed her “to try to course-correct some of the problematic stereotypes” in the first movie, including some that she did not notice as a child.She pointed to two examples: The opening song talked about a faraway place that is “barbaric.” And Jasmine was dressed in a belly dancing outfit and chains in a “hyper-sexualized and oppressive way.”On her site, Al-Khatahtbeh is especially proud of stories that deal with race and sexuality. “Of course, female sexuality is honored within our religion, and it shouldn’t be something we shy away from or think of as a taboo.”Most of the site’s visitors live in the U.S. and Britain, and an estimated 70% are Millennials and Gen Z ages 15 to 32. One of the site’s most controversial stories was written by a Muslim transgender convert.“We want to push the envelope that way by creating that space and reminding people that they have a place within our religion,” she said. “I’m really proud of that, because one thing MuslimGirl does really well is we attract youth. They want to come in, and they want to learn more about Islam because of the way that we put it out there. We always say that our language is the Millennial tongue.”
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Ohio’s Statehouse would join a small number of others around the country with outdoor monuments dedicated to real women in U.S. history under a proposal expected Thursday to create a memorial to Ohio women who fought for voting rights.Currently, all statues of historical figures outside the Statehouse are of men, including Christopher Columbus, President William McKinley (a former Ohio governor), and seven Civil War generals including Ulysses S. Grant.“Who are these seven men?” asks a trivia question for tourists at the base of the Civil War statue, which is topped by a statue of a woman from ancient Rome whose sons were prominent in the military and politics.Women’s Suffrage MovementThe Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery looks back at the women’s suffrage movement – one of the longest reform movements in U.S. history – with an exhibition called, “Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence.” Curator Kate Clarke Lemay shows us some of the art and artifacts from that era and how creating visual displays for their cause created a different understanding about women’s freedom and voting rights.
Reporter: Julie Taboh, Camera: Adam Greenbaum; Adapted by: Martin SecrestAround the corner, “Peace,” a winged female figure, stands on the north side of the Statehouse, remembering Ohio’s civil war soldiers “And The Loyal Women Of That Period.” Another statue of a generic woman, also representing peace, sits below a statue of McKinley.On Thursday, members of the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission planned to propose the voting rights memorial to the Capitol Square Review and Advisory Board.It’s time to include real women on the Statehouse grounds, especially those who fought for such an important right, said State Sen. Stephanie Kunze, a co-chair of the commission. Such a statue would both honor their work and inspire the girls and young women of today, she said.“It’s deserving to honor the women who fought for the right to vote during this 100th anniversary, and then to really look forward to see what else women are going to achieve in the next 100 years,” said Kunze, a Republican from Hilliard in suburban Columbus.Wax statues at at the Occoquan Workhouse Museum in Lorton, Virginia, show the 1917 force-feeding of suffragist Lucy Burns, an American women’s rights advocate who was on hunger strike. (Photo by Diaa Bekheet)If the memorial is approved, fundraising would likely top $1 million and construction could follow after a five-year waiting period.Nationally, statues of real women are relatively rare on the grounds of statehouses.Connecticut’s Statehouse features a statue of former Gov. Ella Grasso, the state’s first female governor elected in her own right, while Utah has a statue of Martha Hughes Cannon, the country’s first female state senator.A statue of Esther Hobart Morris, Wyoming’s first female justice of the peace, stood for years in front of the state Capitol but was moved inside after last year’s renovation, with some calls for it to be returned outside after its own renovation. In Hawaii, the Capitol features a statue of Queen Liliuokalani, the last monarch of the Hawaiian Kingdom.The Arkansas Capitol has a statue featuring the Little Rock Nine, the black students who integrated Central High School, six of whom were girls.Arkansas and Mississippi also have monuments to Confederate women featuring figurative representations. “Forward,” an allegorical female statue, stands outside the Wisconsin State Capitol. “As Long as the Waters Flow,” a 13-foot representation of a Native American woman, stands prominently outside the Oklahoma Capitol.Minnesota has a memorial to women’s suffrage that honors 25 women who fought for voting rights, with an expansive garden that includes their names but no statues.Inside statehouses, Alabama has a statue of Gov. Lurleen Wallace, Illinois has a statue of Lottie Holman O’Neill, the first woman elected to the Illinois General Assembly, and Oklahoma has a statue of Kate Barnard, the second woman ever to be elected to a statewide public office in the United States (Oklahoma commissioner of charities and corrections in 1907).Nebraska’s hall of fame inside the Capitol building includes busts of Willa Cather and Mari Sandoz, and Maryland will soon have an indoor statue of Harriet Tubman.Over the years, the country hasn’t done a great job honoring all the people who contributed to what it means to be American, said Lisa Benton-Short, a geography professor at George Washington University.“There’s a lot of our story that’s missing, and it’s missing from those key spaces,” she said.The Ohio Holocaust and Liberators Memorial, unveiled in 2014 on the South Side of the Ohio Statehouse, was the Capitol’s last new outdoor memorial. At the time, some questioned its appropriateness because it includes a representation of the Star of David, while others worried about triggering a race to erect other memorials. In the end, though, it was easily approved.
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The The World Health Organization reports that 3,382 cases of Ebola, including 2,232 deaths, have occurred in Congo’s North Kivu and Ituri provinces since the start of the outbreak in August 2018. The epidemic is unfolding in an area affected by a two decades-long conflict that has claimed countless lives.Capobianco says this unstable, dangerous situation has raised fear and hostility in communities toward responders.”The episode was regrettable and I think the expression of the frustration in the communities seeing this Ebola outbreak continuing month after month,” he said. “You know, this is a year-and-a-half now. And, that is a way that the frustration and the fear is manifesting.” Capobianco says the attack is a sign that the Red Cross needs to do more to build community trust and acceptance. He says the hundreds of volunteers involved in Ebola operations come from the communities in which they work. He says this is one of their strengths.After the volunteers recover from the shock of the attack, he says they will go back into the communities. The Red Cross official says they will talk and listen to what they have to say while continuing to involve them in the Ebola response.
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The last 10 years were the hottest decade ever measured on Earth, last year was the second warmest ever and NASA says “you haven’t seen anything yet.”The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Wednesday that the average global temperature in the 2010s was 14.7 degrees Celsius, with eight of the 10 hottest years ever recorded.Parts of Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and South America had record-high temperatures in 2019. Alaska’s average temperature was above freezing for the first time in recorded history.Many climate scientists who have seen the study said there was no other explanation for the record-breaking warming than human activity.”This is going to be part of what we see every year until we stabilize greenhouse gases,” said Gavin Schmidt, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “We crossed over into more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit warming territory in 2015 and we are unlikely to go back. This shows that what’s happening is persistent, not a fluke due to some weather phenomenon.”Experts say natural causes of a warmer atmosphere, including more heat from the sun and climate variations, are not big enough to explain the long-term temperature rise.For those who still question global warming, the scientists say all one has to do is look at melting ice sheets, more powerful storms, floods in some parts of the world and drought in others as clear evidence.
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The new U.S.-China trade agreement includes provisions that are aimed at curbing forced technology transfers, in which companies hand over technical know-how to foreign partners. For many high-tech businesses, the intellectual property behind their products represents the bulk of their companies’ value. To learn more about the risks of IP theft, Elizabeth Lee recently visited the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where companies talked about the risks to their technology secrets.
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The former pope Benedict XVI reportedly wants his name removed from a controversial book that appears to undermine his successor, Pope Francis, on issues of priestly celibacy. The book hit stores Wednesday in France, the first country to publish it. But despite the furor the book has stirred in the press, many French readers appear underwhelmed.The book, “Des Profondeurs de Nos Coeurs,” meaning “From the Depths of Our Hearts,” defends priestly celibacy at a time when Pope Francis is considering whether to lift restrictions on married priests in remote areas. Cardinal Robert Sarah, who co-authored the book, rejects accusations he manipulated Benedict regarding the content. The furor, which appears to lay bare spiritual divisions between the two popes, has made news headlines, but hasn’t stirred up much public interest. Parisian Brigitte Gallay says she has heard about the book, but notes Protestant ministers are married with children. She sees nothing wrong about a church that’s closer to the lives of ordinary people — even though some Catholics might be shocked at the thought of married priests. The Catholic Church has taken a hit in France, not just because of declining attendance, but also because of a major pedophilia scandal — the theme of a recent movie. A trial opened this month against a priest at the heart of the scandal, which has helped fuel debate about the dangers of priestly celibacy. At Paris bookstore Gibert Joseph, social worker Alexander Monnot adds the book to a pile of others he’s planning to buy. Monnot says he supports celibacy for priests. “The fact is, at the very beginning of the Church, there was Jesus and 12 apostles,” Monnot said. “And even some were married. They all left their families to preach. Jesus was not married. And priests should be an incarnation, a continuation of Jesus.”Monnot says he is looking forward to reading the book’s arguments in favor of celibacy, but that’s not the only reason he’s buying it. He predicts the French publisher will recall this edition, which has Benedict’s name as co-author, meaning the copy he’s buying may one day be a collector’s item.
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