YORUBA TRADITIONAL RELIGION SITE
Libyans 'exploiting Syrian women' with marriage offers.
BBC. 24.9.12
Hard living conditions for Syrian refugees in Libya are forcing some families to marry off their daughters to wealthy local men. Syrians say Libyans often knock at their doors asking for especially underage girls, as BBC Arabic's Ahmed Maher reports from Benghazi.
Ahmed Atrash is among hundreds of Syrian refugees in the country's second largest city, Benghazi. He and his family have fled the raging war back home.
He says he would rather see Syrians beg in the street than married off to rich Libyans for money, lamenting that many were targeting underage Syrian girls.
"We arrived in Benghazi two months ago and last month a Libyan man knocked at my door and asked whether I had a daughter or a sister to marry in return for money. I laughed and told him yes, I do have a two-year-old daughter," he told BBC Arabic TV.
"He became angry, then I told him: 'Fear God! We sought refuge and protection in your country not to be humiliated'," recalls Mr Atrash, 38, who was a graphic designer in Damascus, but now works as a carpenter in Benghazi.
The father-of-two is appalled that penniless Syrian families are being forced to sell off their daughters.
"They are exploiting our financial distress. Many families here cannot provide even a square meal for their children."
An official from the self-styled Syrian Revolutionary Union (SRU) said Libyan men often ask them to direct them to Syrian families, hoping to marry girls.
One Libyan man told me: "Syrian girls are beautiful."
Another pointed out that to marry a Libyan woman, her family would ask for a dowry of $19,000, while Syrians would only seek a few hundred dollars.
There are neither refugee camps for Syrians nor an organised government scheme to host them, unlike in other Arab and Muslim countries, chiefly Turkey and Jordan. They are scattered across several Libyan cities and there are no official statistics on their numbers in the North African country.
The SRU in Benghazi puts the number of Syrian refugees in the city at 1,000.
Turkey hosts the largest number of Syrian refugees, with more than 80,000 at 14 separate camps.
The United Nations said earlier this month that the number of Syrian refugees in neighbouring countries had reached a quarter of a million, with the unabated conflict accelerating the exodus.
'Modern-day slavery'
Some Muslim scholars believe the marriages are merely an expression of solidarity by wealthy Libyans, as Syrians are in dire need.
"There is nothing wrong in such marriages if the men are financially able, whether they are single or married," said Sheikh Ashraf Al-Aqrabi, Imam of the Garyounis Mosque.
"This is a religious duty as long as it is done by mutual consent. We must encourage Libyans to help protect such vulnerable families, because they might be forced into prostitution."
But Mr Atrash doesn't agree.
"This is modern-day slavery," he said angrily. "Using the word marriage is just a euphemism."
Several Arabic newspapers reported recently that requests had appeared in online forums and chatrooms from men seeking marriage with Syrian girls in refugee camps for meagre prices. These requests, however, could not be verified.
Mr Atrash and his family consider the marriages to be sexual exploitation. And it only adds to the trauma of leaving the homeland.
"If they were really honest, they would come along with their mothers and fathers, not on their own. This is not a decent way to propose to respectable families in all Muslim societies."
Mr Atrash chooses to speak up because he wants to protect the dignity of Syrian women who have sought safety abroad.
"Syrian women escaped from rapes by [President] Bashar al-Assad's thugs to face rapes in the name of religion," he said.
Iranian university bans on women causes consternation.
BBC. 22.9.12
By Fariba Sahraei BBC Persian
With the start of the new Iranian academic year, a raft of restrictions on courses open to female students has been introduced, raising questions about the rights of women to education in Iran - and the long-term impact such exclusions might have.
More than 30 universities have introduced new rules banning female students from almost 80 different degree courses.
These include a bewildering variety of subjects from engineering, nuclear physics and computer science, to English literature, archaeology and business.
No official reason has been given for the move, but campaigners, including Nobel Prize winning lawyer Shirin Ebadi, allege it is part of a deliberate policy by the authorities to exclude women from education.
"The Iranian government is using various initiatives… to restrict women's access to education, to stop them being active in society, and to return them to the home," she told the BBC.
Higher Education Minister Kamran Daneshjoo has sought to play down the situation, stressing Iran's strong track record in getting young people into higher education and saying that despite the changes, 90% of university courses are still open to both men and women.
Men outnumbered
Iran was one of the first countries in the Middle East to allow women to study at university and since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 it has made big efforts to encourage more girls to enrol in higher education.
The gap between the numbers of male and female students has gradually narrowed. In 2001 women outnumbered men for the first time and they now make up more than 60% of the overall student body.
Year-on-year more Iranian women than men are applying for university places, motivated some say by the chance to live a more independent life, to have a career and to escape the pressure from parents to stay at home and to get married.
Women are well-represented across a wide range of professions and there are many female engineers, scientists and doctors.
But many in Iran fear that the new restrictions could now undermine this achievement.
"I wanted to study architecture and civil engineering," says Leila, a young woman from the south of Iran. "But access for girls has been cut by fifty per cent, and there's a chance I won't get into university at all this year."
In the early days after the Islamic revolution, universities were one of the few places where young Iranian men and women could mix relatively freely.
Over the years this gradually changed, with universities introducing stricter measures like separate entrances, lecture halls and even canteens for men and women.
Since the unrest after the 2009 presidential election this process has accelerated as conservative politicians have tightened their grip on the country.
Women played a key role in those protests - from the traditionally veiled but surprisingly outspoken wives of the two main opposition candidates, to the glamorous green-scarved demonstrators out on the streets of Tehran and other cities.
Some Iranians say it was the sight of so many young Iranian women at the forefront of the protests in 2009 that unnerved the country's conservative leaders and prompted them into action.
"The women's movement has been challenging Iran's male-dominated establishment for several years," says Saeed Moidfar, a retired sociology professor from Tehran.
"Traditional politicians now see educated and powerful women as a threat."
'Islamisation'
In a speech after the 2009 protests, the country's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called for the "Islamisation" of universities and criticised subjects like sociology, which he said were too western-influenced and had no place in the Iranian Islamic curriculum.
Since then, there have been many changes at universities, with courses cut and long-serving academic staff replaced with conservative loyalists.
Many see the new restrictions on female students as a continuation of this process.
In August 2012 Ayatollah Khamenei made another widely-discussed speech calling for Iranians to return to traditional values and to have more children.
It was an affront to many in a country which pioneered family planning and has won praise from around the world for its emphasis on the importance of providing families with access to contraception.
"People are more educated now and they are more concerned about the size of their families," says Saeed Moidfar. "I doubt that the government plans will change anything."
However, since the speech there have been reports of cutbacks in family planning programmes, and in sex education classes at universities.
It is not yet clear exactly how many women students have been affected by the new rules on university entrance. But as the new academic year begins, at least some have had to completely rethink their career plans.
"From the age of 16 I knew I wanted to be a mechanical engineer, and I really worked hard for it," says Noushin from Esfahan. "But although I got high marks in the National University entrance exam, I've ended up with a place to study art and design instead."
Over the coming months campaigners will be watching closely to track the effects of the policy and to try to gauge the longer-term implications.nt] Bashar al-Assad's thugs to face rapes in the name of religion," he said.
