Thara magazine - A weekly review of scholarship and literature on woman

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Elan- a new Muslim magazine

Rima Marrouch-New York
The title debuted last week on February 22nd. When you read and talk to any member of the team you soon realize that it was launched out of frustration, a frustration with the image of Muslims in the U.S.

Marlene Bertrand: Building Shelters

A veteran campaigner for women’s rights, Marlene Bertrand has received numerous awards in her native Canada in recognition of her tireless work in the field of family violence prevention. She came to Damascus last week at the invitation of the National Association for the Development of the Role of Women, to lead a seminar on the logistics of running a women's shelter. Among those attending were employees and volunteers from a new women's shelter that has recently opened in Damascus. We talked to her about her work, and the obstacles faced by women's rights campaigners both in Syria and worldwide.

Girl Solo in Arabia
Traveling in the Footsteps of Ibn Battuta

By: Matthew McNaught

Caroline McIntyre is a woman on a mission; to retrace the steps of Ibn Battuta, the Moroccan explorer who traveled to the outer limits of the Islamic world in the 14th century. She hopes that her solo journey will encourage people in the west to reassess their preconceptions about the Middle East, the region that has become her second home since she moved to Saudi Arabia when she was 17. "If I hadn't answered an advert in a London magazine recruiting flight attendants for a Saudi Arabian airline, the whole of my life would have turned out differently. Before then, the Middle East wasn't even on my radar; I knew nothing about it".

Divorced and still yearning to return…

“I met him whilst I was visiting my grandfather. He was extremely friendly, charming me with his beauty and charisma - he was the man of my dreams. I loved him a lot and so encouraged him to get engaged to me. Despite warnings from my family, who did not consent to the wedding, we got married. He started to treat me with contempt and prohibited me from leaving the house or even making telephone calls. He banned my family from visiting and when I asked the reason behind this change in attitude towards me, he answered me abruptly

Family Oppression Once Again

By: Yahya Alous

She doesn't know where she will be in a year or even a month later, but she says that she will not be in the place she has just escaped from…Tonight is the first time in several days that she has felt safe and warm…she is in a shelter! She knows that people are searching for her and that they would shed her blood with impunity but she is not afraid. Perhaps she will be defiant. Today she had that chance, but who can she defy?

Housing crisis robs women of right to motherhood

By: Lava Khalid

She lives in the capital’s suburbs. “Need and straitened circumstances drove us to accept living in the shop that my husband rented a year ago as shelter, and as the cheapest substitute for the properties that we couldn’t and can’t even dream of living in.” I asked her: “Why live in a shop?” She answered me:

A Boy or a Girl? A Boy for Sure??!!!

Perhaps the Dark Ages are so named because it was in this time that negative values and general ignorance were spread to various parts of life. Now we dismiss as unacceptable any value that is different from what we know and live. This custom of ours is an old relic. It is a phenomenon which has been revisited across the ages, amongst various peoples. It is the phenomena of: “Do you want a boy or a girl? Of course I want a boy.”

Police Man disparages woman
who complains against husband

The camel’s back finally broke and the woman decided to file a complaint against her husband at the police station, for she was no longer able to bear the torture that she met with at his hands: beatings, insults, and belittlement that she never knew might one day be the end of her. So she decided to report her husband and depend on God to provide for her, for the husband never lost an opportunity to beat her, with cause or without it, within the hearing of every neighbour, and there was no escape for the helpless woman except the police station. She called the police so that they might find a solution for her with this husband undeterred by any consideration of morals or the law. In turn, the police sent her an officer, an expert in customs and traditions and the members of the “weaker sex”!

Women's Rights in Syria
Achievements You Can Count on One Hand
and Innumerable Failures

By: Yahya Alous

Time after time, those who adhere to the wisdom of "equal choices, not equality" bombard us with accounts of the achievements they have made in improving the legal status of Syrian women. They vaunt these things they call achievements but which are in fact nothing more but a small part of the general façade which hides a decrepit state of affairs which we can no longer pretend is acceptable. Among these headache- inducing "achievements" is an increase in the length of time divorced women are entitled to custody of their children, new legislation permitting the working woman – after she dies, of course- to bequeath her income to the descendents, an increase in paid maternity leave and, last but not least, the establishment of the Syrian Association for Family Affairs… And all of this as if no other state has ever dared introduce such novel changes!

Discrimination between the sexes in the Syrian families

By: Michel Shammas

The family is considered the cornerstone of society. The family provides the society with the individuals that ensure the continuation and endurance of the society, and because of this the family is the most important instrument for development.

The Mandaean Diaspora in Damascus

In a field outside Damascus, a large gathering is taking place. In the center, eight men swathed in white cloth with full grey-white beards stand in rows and recite verses from a strange script in thick hand-written books. In front of them, smoke curls up from small wooden fires, and olive branches are scattered around. It looks like a scene from the Old Testament- the robes, the sacraments, and the low murmur of an unfamiliar language. Around them though, the mood is much less somber. Children chase each other around while glamorous women in Gucci sunglasses share drinks and gossip. Elsewhere, teenagers beat rhythms on tablas and sing along while families picnic on checkered blankets.