Journalism and Gender

Here are two articles that touch on freedom of the press and gender in the Islamic world.

A journalist in Afghanistan who had a death sentence for blasphemy commuted to 20 years in prison has now been released, officials say.
Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh has been pardoned by President Hamid Karzai, the Afghan justice ministry confirmed.
Relatives of Mr Kambaksh said he had already left Afghanistan as he had been granted asylum by a European country.
In 2007, he was convicted of distributing material that questioned Islamic attitudes to women.
Media rights groups have welcomed the release of Mr Kambakhsh, which they say is the result of persistent lobbying.
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In this second article, a journalist was arrested, but not for anything she said or did.  Unlike Mr Kambakhsh, she wasn’t charged with blasphemy or with some crime against the state, as dissident journalist so often are.  Her crime was her attire.  She wasn’t dressed properly.

A Sudanese court ruled on Monday that journalist Lubna Ahmad Al-Hussein should be fined two hundred dollars for wearing trousers; considered an indecent outfit in Sudan – applying Islamic Sharia in their law. It’s worth mentioning that Lubna was threatened of a verdict amounting to 40 whip lashes…  More than a thousand persons, including numerous women in trousers, demonstrated in front of the court on Monday in solidarity with the journalist. The police broke up the demonstrators and detained forty eight female activists and journalists on the charge of inciting a riot.
via Trouser-wearing Sudanese journalist escapes flogging, fined $200

It’s worth pointing out that this article is from the site Meedan, a site with the goal of connecting Arabic and English speakers by taking advantage of machine-assisted translation technology.  A useful resource.  More on that later.