title: Women in Islam

text: A marriage of pleasure, where a man pays a sum of money to a woman or her family in exchange for a temporary spousal relationship, is found and considered legal among Shia faith, for example in Iran after 1979. Temporary marriages are forbidden in Sunni Islam. Among Shia, the number of temporary marriages can be unlimited, recognized with an official temporary marriage certificate, and divorce is unnecessary because the temporary marriage automatically expires on the date and time specified on the certificate. Payment to the woman by the man is mandatory, in every temporary marriage and considered as mahr. The minimum duration of a temporary marriage is debated between scholars, with some saying the minimum duration is as low as 3 days and others saying it is as high as 1 year. Its practitioners cite sharia law as permitting the practise. Women's rights groups have condemned it as a form of legalized prostitution.


title: Women in Islam

text: Polyandry, the practice of a woman having more than one husband (even temporarily, after payment of a sum of money to the man or the man's family), by contrast, is not permitted.


title: Women in Islam

text: Muḥammad quite deliberately did not recommend cousin marriage as his "sunnah" or path to be followed; out of his thirteen wives, only one – the seventh, Zaynab bint Jahsh, a divorcée said by historians to have been very beautiful – was his cousin. The rest of his wives came from diverse social and even religious backgrounds, with Safiyya bint Huyayy and Rayhana bint Zayd being of Jewish origin.


title: Women in Islam

text: Despite this, endogamy is common in some Muslim-majority countries. The observed endogamy is primarily consanguineous marriages, where the bride and the groom share a biological grandparent or other near ancestor. The most common observed marriages are first cousin marriages, followed by second cousin marriages. Consanguineous endogamous marriages are most common for women in Muslim communities in the Middle East, North Africa and Islamic Central Asia. About 1 in 3 of all marriages in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan are first cousin marriages; while overall consanguineous endogamous marriages exceed 65 to 80% in various Islamic populations of the Middle East, North Africa and Islamic Central Asia. Consanguineous endogamous marriages are common for women in Islam. Consanguineous marriage rates in the Muslim world range from 5–9% in Malaysia to >50% in Saudi Arabia. Over 65% of all marriages in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are endogamous and consanguineous arranged marriages; more than 40% of all marriages are endogamous and consanguineous in Mauritania, Libya, Sudan, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Syria, Yemen, Kuwait, UAE and Oman.


title: Women in Islam

text: In the interests of transparency, clandestine marriages are not permitted under Islamic law; weddings must be public – a commitment made before society. The European Council for Fatwa and Research has ruled that a state registration of a marriage between Muslims, if attended by two witnesses, fulfills the minimum requirements for a religious marriage under the sharia because it demonstrates (a) mutual consent; and (b) a public declaration of commitment.


title: Women in Islam

text: Some marriages are forbidden between Muslim women and Muslim men, according to sharia. In the Quran, Surah An-Nisa gives a list of forbidden marriages. Examples for women include marrying one's stepson, biological son, biological father, biological brother, biological sibling's son, biological uncle, milk son or milk brother she has nursed, husband of her biological daughter, a stepfather who has had sexual relations with her biological mother and father-in-law. There are disputes between Hanafis, Malikis, Shafi'is and Hanabalis schools of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence on whether and which such marriages are irregular but not void if already in place ("fasid"), and which are void ("batil") marriages.


title: Women in Islam

text: Child marriage, which was once a globally accepted phenomenon, has come to be discouraged in most countries, but it persists to some extent in some select parts of the Muslim world.


title: Women in Islam

text: The age of marriage in Islam for women varies with country. Traditionally, Islam has permitted marriage of girls below the age often, because Sharia considers the practices of Muhammad a basis for Islamic law. According to Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, the two most authentic Sunni hadiths books, Muhammed married Aisha, his third wife, when she was six and consummated the marriage when she reached the age of nine or ten. This version of events is rejected by Shia Muslims and disputed by some Sunni scholars.


title: Women in Islam

text: Some Islamic scholars suggest that it is not the calendar age that matters, rather it is the biological age of the girl that determines when she can be married under Islamic law. According to these Islamic scholars, marriageable age in Islam is when a girl has reached sexual maturity, as determined by her nearest male guardian; this age can be, claim these Islamic scholars, less than 10 years, or 12, or another age depending on each girl. Some clerics and conservative elements of Muslim communities in Yemen, Saudi Arabia formerly, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Egypt, Nigeria and elsewhere have insisted that it is their Islamic right to marry girls below age 15. In December 2019, Saudi Arabia changed the law and raised the age of marriage to 18.


title: Women in Islam

text: Interfaith marriages are recognized between Muslims and non-Muslim People of the Book (usually enumerated as Jews, Christians, and Sabians). Historically, in Islamic culture and traditional Islamic law Muslim women have been forbidden from marrying Christian or Jewish men, whereas Muslim men have been permitted to marry Christian or Jewish women. Although historically Sunni Islam prohibited Muslim women to marry Non-Muslim men in interfaith marriages, in various parts of the world interfaith marriages between Muslim women and Non-Muslim men take place at substantial rates, contravening the traditional Sunni understanding of "ijma". In the United States, for example, about one in ten Muslim women are married to non-Muslim men, including about one in six Muslim women under 40 and about one in five, or 20% of, Muslim women who describe themselves as less devoutly religious. The tradition of reformist and progressive Islam permits marriage between Muslim women and Non-Muslim men; Islamic scholars opining this view include Khaleel Mohammed, Hassan Al-Turabi, among others. Ayse Elmali-Karakaya says in her 2020 study, that impact of Muslim women's marriage to non-Muslims men has been found to be positive. Elmali-Karakaya says since Muslim women's feelings of being an ambassador of Islam and Muslims in their inter-religious family, interfaith marriages help expansion of their religious knowledge.


title: Women in Islam

text: According to sharia law, it is legal for a Muslim man to marry a Christian or Jewish woman, or a woman of any of the divinely-revealed religions, while sharia law does not allow a Muslim woman to marry outside her religion. A significant number of non-Muslim men have entered into the Islamic faith to satisfy this aspect of the religious law where it is in force. With deepening globalisation, it has become more common for Muslim women to marry non-Muslim men who remain outside Islam. These marriages meet with varying degrees of social approval, depending on the milieu. However, conversions of non-Muslim men to Islam for the purpose of marriage are still numerous, in part because the procedure for converting to Islam is relatively expeditious.


title: Women in Islam

text: Additionally, according to Islamic law, if a Muslim man wishes to marry a Christian or Jewish woman, he must get to know her parents and ask for permission to marry their daughter.


title: Women in Islam

text: The majority of Muslim scholars have historically read Surah 60, verse 10, which forbids female converts from returning to their non-Muslim husbands, as an injunction against any Muslim women marrying non-Muslim men.


title: Women in Islam

text: Kecia Ali argues that such interpretations unfairly presume that women are inherently subordinate to their husbands, which, if true, could result in children being brought up as non-Muslims if their father is non-Muslim. Additionally, the Quranic verse in question mentions unbelievers, but not people of the Jewish or Christian faiths, whom the Quran "does" identify as suitable partners for Muslim men. The Quran thus does not give any general guidance on whether Muslim women may marry "non-Muslim" men, but rather "discusses specific categories of potential spouses."


title: Women in Islam

text: Islamic law and practice recognize gender disparity, in part, by assigning separate rights and obligations to a woman in married life. A woman's space is in the private sphere of the home, and a man's is in the public sphere. Women must primarily fulfill marital and maternal responsibilities, whereas men are financial and administrative stewards of their families. According to Sayyid Qutb, the Quran "gives the man the right of guardianship or superiority over the family structure to prevent dissension and friction between the spouses. The equity of this system lies in the fact that God both favoured the man with the necessary qualities and skills for the 'guardianship' and also charged him with the duty to provide for the structure's upkeep."<ref name="Haddad/Esposito9">Amherst Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and John L. Esposito (1998), "Islam, Gender, and Social Change", Oxford University Press, pp 20–38</ref>


title: Women in Islam

text: The Quran considers the love between men and women to be a Sign of God. This said, the Quran also permits men to first admonish, then lightly tap or push and even beat her, if he suspects "nushuz" (disobedience, disloyalty, rebellion, ill conduct) in his wife.


title: Women in Islam

text: In Islam, there is no coverture, an idea central in European, American as well as in non-Islamic Asian common law, and the legal basis for the principle of marital property. An Islamic marriage is a contract between a man and a woman. A Muslim man and woman do not merge their legal identity upon marriage, and do not have rights over any shared marital property. The assets of the man before the marriage, and earned by him after the marriage, remain his during marriage and in case of a divorce. A divorce under Islamic law does not require redistribution of property. Rather, each spouse walks away from the marriage with his or her individual property. Divorcing Muslim women who did not work outside their home after marriage do not have a claim on the collective wealth of the couple under Islamic law, except for deferred mahr – an amount of money or property the man agrees to pay her before the woman signs the marriage contract.


title: Women in Islam

text: In case of husband's death, a portion of his property is inherited by his wives according to a combination of sharia laws. If the man did not leave any children, his wives receive a quarter of the property and the remaining three-quarters is shared by the blood relatives of the husband (for example, parents, siblings). If he had children from any of his wives, his wives receive an eighth of the property and the rest is for his surviving children and parents. The wives share as inheritance a part of movable property of her late husband, but they do not share anything from immovable property such as land, real estate, farm or such value. A woman's deferred mahr and the dead husband's outstanding debts are paid before any inheritance is applied. Sharia mandates that inheritance include male relatives of the dead person, that a daughter receive half the inheritance as a son, and a widow receives less than her daughters.


title: Women in Islam

text: In contrast to Christianity – where sex is sanctified through marriage – in the Islamic conception, sexuality in and of itself is sacred and a blessing; as per Ibn 'Arabī's formulation, sex is a sublime act which can draw its practitioners closer to God. Marriage in Islam is a contract drawn up according to sharia to legitimise sexual relations and protect the rights of both partners. However, in common with Christianity and Judaism, sexual activity outside of marriage is perceived as a serious sin in the eyes of God.


title: Women in Islam

text: Female sexual satisfaction is given significant prominence in the Islamic faith and its classical literature. As recorded by the British Muslim writer Ruqayyah Waris Maqsood in her book "The Muslim Marriage Guide": "the early Muslims regarded sexual prowess and the ability to satisfy a woman as being an essential part of manhood. The niece of 'Ā'ishah bint Abī Bakr, a scholarly and beautiful woman named A'isha bint Talha, married the pious Umar ibn Ubaydilah. On their wedding night he made love to her no fewer than seven times, so that when morning came, she told him: 'You are a perfect Muslim in every way, even in this!'"


title: Women in Islam

text: In this context, the Muslim caliph Umar ibn Al-Khattab (584–644) believed that a married woman had the right to sex at least once every four days, while according to the hadith scholar, jurist and mystic Abu Talib al-Makki (d.996), "if [a husband] knows that [his wife] needs more, he is obliged to comply".


title: Women in Islam

text: Muhammad underlined the importance of foreplay and emotional intimacy in sexual relations, as the following hadith illustrates:


title: Women in Islam

text: "[The Prophet Muḥammad said] 'Not one of you should fall upon his wife like an animal; but let there first be a messenger between you.'


title: Women in Islam

text: Islamic luminaries expanded on this theme. The philosopher, mystic and jurist Al-Ghazālī (c.1058–1111) stated that "Sex should begin with gentle words and kissing", while the Indian scholar al-Zabīdī (1732–1790) added to this exhortation in his commentary on Al-Ghazālī's magnum opus, "The Revival of the Religious Sciences" ("Iḥiyāʾ ʿulūm ad-dīn"): "This should include not only the cheeks and lips; and then he should caress the breasts and nipples, and every part of her body."


title: Women in Islam

text: Classical Islamic scholars have written extensively about the art and desirability of husband and wife attaining simultaneous orgasms; Al-Ghazali gives the following counsel in his key work, "The Revival of the Religious Sciences" ("Iḥiyāʾ ʿulūm ad-dīn"):


title: Women in Islam

text: "When he has come to his orgasm ("inzal"), he should wait for his wife until she comes to her orgasm likewise; for her climax may well come slowly. If he arouses her desire, and then sits back from her, this will hurt her, and any disparity in their orgasms will certainly produce a sense of estrangement. A simultaneous orgasm will be the most delightful for her, especially since her husband will be distracted by his own orgasm from her, and she will not therefore be afflicted by shyness."


title: Women in Islam

text: According to Quran and "Sahih Muslim", two primary sources of sharia, Islam permits only vaginal sex.


title: Women in Islam

text: There is disagreement among Islamic scholars on proper interpretation of Islamic law on permissible sex between a husband and wife, with claims that non-vaginal sex within a marriage is disapproved but not forbidden. Anal intercourse and sex during menstruation are prohibited, as is violence and force against a partner's will. However, these are the only restrictions; as the Quran says at 2:223 (Sūratu l-Baqarah): 'Your women are your fields; go to your women as you wish'.


title: Women in Islam

text: After sex, as well as menstruation, Islam requires men and women to do ghusl (major ritual washing with water, ablutions), and in some Islamic communities xoslay (prayers seeking forgiveness and purification), as sex and menstruation are considered some of the causes that makes men and women religiously impure (najis). Some Islamic jurists suggest touching and foreplay, without any penetration, may qualify wudu (minor ritual washing) as sufficient form of religiously required ablution. Muslim men and women must also abstain from sex during a ritual fast, and during all times while on a pilgrimage to Mecca, as sexual act, touching of sexual parts and emission of sexual bodily fluids are considered ritually dirty.


title: Women in Islam

text: Sexual intercourse is not allowed to a Muslim woman during menstruation, postpartum period, during fasting and certain religious activities, disability and in iddah after divorce or widowhood. Homosexual relations and same sex marriages are forbidden to women in Islam. In vitro fertilization (IVF) is acceptable in Islam; but ovum donation along with sperm donation, embryo donation are prohibited by Islam. These marriages meet with varying degrees of social approval, depending on the milieu. Some debated fatwas from Shia sect of Islam, however, allow third party participation.


title: Women in Islam

text: Islam requires both husband and wife/wives to meet their conjugal duties. Religious qadis (judges) have admonished the man or women who fail to meet these duties.


title: Women in Islam

text: There is no mention of female circumcision – let alone other forms of female genital mutilation – in the Quran. Furthermore, Muḥammad did not subject any of his daughters to this practice, which is itself of real significance as it does not form part of his spoken or acted example. Moreover, the origins of female circumcision are not Islamic: it is first thought to have been practiced in ancient Egypt. Alternatively, it has been suggested that the practice may be an old African puberty rite that was passed on to Egypt by cultural diffusion.


title: Women in Islam

text: Notwithstanding these facts, there is a belief amongst some Muslims – particularly though not entirely exclusively in (sub-Saharan) Africa – that female circumcision (specifically the cutting of the prepuce or hood of the clitoris) is religiously vindicated by the existence of a handful of ḥadīths which apparently recommend it. However, these ḥadīths are generally regarded as inauthentic, unreliable and weak, and therefore as having no legislative foundation and/or practical application.


title: Women in Islam

text: In answering the question of how "Islamic" female circumcision is, Haifaa A. Jawad – an academic specialising in Islamic thought and the author of "The Rights of Women in Islam: An Authentic Approach" – has concluded that "the practice has no Islamic foundation whatsoever. It is nothing more than an ancient custom which has been falsely assimilated to the Islamic tradition, and with the passage of time it has been presented and accepted (in some Muslim countries) as an Islamic injunction." Jawad notes that the argument which states that there is an indirect correlation between Islam and female circumcision fails to explain why female circumcision is not practiced in much of the Islamic world, and conversely is practiced in Latin American countries such as Brazil, Mexico and Peru.


title: Women in Islam

text: The French intellectual, journalist, and translator Renée Saurel observed that female circumcision and FGM more generally directly contradict Islam's sacred text: "The Koran, contrary to Christianity and Judaism, permits and recommends that the woman be given physical and psychological pleasure, pleasure found by both partners during the act of love. Forcibly split, torn, and severed tissues are neither conducive to sensuality nor to the blessed feeling given and shared when participating in the quest for pleasure and the escape from pain."


title: Women in Islam

text: The Egyptian feminist Nawal El-Saadawi reasons that the creation of the clitoris per se is a direct Islamic argument against female circumcision: "If religion comes from God, how can it order man to cut off an organ created by Him as long as that organ is not diseased or deformed? God does not create the organs of the body haphazardly without a plan. It is not possible that He should have created the clitoris in woman's body only in order that it be cut off at an early stage in life. This is a contradiction into which neither true religion nor the Creator could possibly fall. If God has created the clitoris as a sexually sensitive organ, whose sole function seems to be the procurement of sexual pleasure for women, it follows that He also considers such pleasure for women as normal and legitimate, and therefore as an integral part of mental health."


title: Women in Islam

text: Sheikh Abbas el Hocine Bencheikh, a diplomat and Rector of the L'institut Musulman at the Grande Mosquée de Paris, pointed to the total lack of Islamic theological justification for female circumcision: "If circumcision for the man (though not compulsory) has an aesthetic and hygienic purpose, there is no existing religious Islamic text of value to be considered in favour of female excision, as proven by the fact that this practice is totally non-existent in most of the Islamic countries."


title: Women in Islam

text: Mahmud Shaltut, the former Sheikh of Al-Azhar in Cairo – one of the most important religious offices in Sunni Islam – also stated that female circumcision has no theological basis: "Islamic legislation provides a general principle, namely that should meticulous and careful examination of certain issues prove that it is definitely harmful or immoral, then it should be legitimately stopped to put an end to this damage or immorality. Therefore, since the harm of excision has been established, excision of the clitoris of females is not a mandatory obligation, nor is it a Sunnah."


title: Women in Islam

text: In the twenty-first century, a number of high-ranking religious offices within the OIC have urged the cessation of all forms of FGM:


title: Women in Islam

text: According to UNICEF (2014), twenty-six of the twenty-nine countries in which female genital mutilation is classified as 'concentrated' are in sub-Saharan Africa: there is no recorded prevalence in any non-African OIC member state outside Yemen (19% prevalence) and Iraq (8%).


title: Women in Islam

text: From very early times various methods of contraception have been practiced in Islam, and Muslim jurists of the two major sects of Islam, Sunni and Shia, generally agree that contraception and family planning are not forbidden by sharia; the use of contraceptive devices is permitted if the marital partners agree. All the Islamic schools of law from the tenth to the nineteenth century gave contraception their serious consideration. They dealt principally with coitus interruptus, the most common method, and unanimously agreed that it was licit provided the free wife gave her permission, because she had rights to children and to sexual fulfilment which withdrawal was believed to diminish. From the writings of the jurists it emerges that other methods of birth control – mostly intravaginal tampons – were also used by premodern women and the commonest view was that these should only be employed if the husband also agreed.


title: Women in Islam

text: Given the era and the fact that both Christian and Jewish tradition outlawed contraception, the attitude of Muslims towards birth control has been characterised as being remarkably pragmatic; they also possessed a sophisticated knowledge of possible birth control methods. Medieval doctors like Ibn Sina (Avicenna) regarded birth control as a normal part of medicine, and devoted chapters to contraception and abortion in their textbooks (although the permissibility of abortion within Islamic thought varies according to a number of factors; Islam views the family as sacred and children as a gift from God). According to medieval Muslims, birth control was employed to avoid a large number of dependants; to safeguard property; to guarantee the education of a child; to protect a woman from the risks of childbirth, especially if she was young or ill; or simply to preserve her health and beauty.


title: Women in Islam

text: In some Islamic populations, sex-selective female infanticide is of concern because of abnormally high boy to girl ratios at birth. In Islamic Azerbaijan, for example, the birth sex ratio was in the 105 to 108 range, before the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. After the collapse, the birth sex ratios in Azerbaijan has sharply climbed to over 115 and remained high for the last 20 years. The persistently observed 115 boys for every 100 girls born suggests sex-selective abortion of females in Azerbaijan in the last 20 years. Other Muslim-majority countries with high birth sex ratio, implying female sex-selective abortion, include Albania (112) and Pakistan (111).


title: Women in Islam

text: In Islam, a woman may only divorce her husband under certain conditions. These are many and include neglect, not being supported financially, the husband's impotence, apostasy, madness, dangerous illness or some other defect in the marriage. Divorce by mutual consent has only to be agreed upon by both parties to become effective. If a Muslim woman wishes to divorce her husband she has two options under Sharia law: seek a "tafriq", or seek a "khul". A "tafriq" is a divorce for certain allowable reasons. This divorce is granted by a "qadi", a religious judge, in cases where the "qadi" accepts her claims of abuse or abandonment. If a tafriq is denied by the "qadi", she cannot divorce. If a tafriq is granted, the marriage is dissolved and the husband is obligated to pay her the deferred mahr in their marriage contract. The second method, by far more common in wife-initiated divorces, "khul" is a divorce without cause, by mutual consent. This divorce requires a husband's consent and it must be supported by consideration that passes from the wife to the husband. Often, this consideration almost always consists of the wife relinquishing her claim to the deferred mahr. In actual practice and outside of Islamic judicial theory, a woman's right to divorce is often extremely limited compared with that of men in the Middle East.


title: Women in Islam

text: In contrast to the comparatively limited methods of divorce available to a woman, Islam allows a Muslim husband to unilaterally divorce his wife, as "talaq", with no requirement to show cause; however, in practice there is variance by country as to whether there are any additional legal processes when a husband divorces his wife by this method. For example, the Tunisian Law of Personal Status (1957) makes repudiation by a husband invalid until it has been ratified by a court, and provides for further financial compensation to the wife. Similar laws have been enacted elsewhere, both within an interpretive framework of traditional sharia law, and through the operation of civil codes not based upon the sharia. However, upon talaq, the husband must pay the wife her deferred mahr. Some Muslim-majority countries mandate additional financial contributions to be made to the wife on top of the mahr: for example, the Syrian Law of Personal Status (1953) makes the payment of maintenance to the wife by the husband obligatory for one year after the divorce, which is thus a legal recourse of the wife against the husband. The husband is free to marry again immediately after a divorce, but the woman must observe "iddah", that is wait for 3 lunar months before she can remarry after divorce, to establish paternity, in case she discovers she is pregnant. In case of death of her husband, the "iddah" period is 4 lunar months and 10 days before she can start conjugal relations with another Muslim man.


title: Women in Islam

text: This verse not only explains the divorce rights of women in Islam, it sets out "iddah" to prevent illegal custody of divorcing husband's child by a woman, specifies that each gender has divorce rights, and that men are a degree above women.


title: Women in Islam

text: The Hanbali jurist Ibn Qudama explains that a man is entitled to have sexual relations with his concubines, to employ her service, to hire her out and to marry her. However he is not allowed to sell or transfer ownership of his concubines. Concubines were at times housed in harems which maintained their modesty and privilege. Some harems were guarded by eunuchs.


title: Women in Islam

text: In regards to female slaves, who are termed, 'what your right hands possess', Ibn Kathir in his Tafsir exegesis of Al-Mu'minoon 23:5–6, writes that "a man is allowed to have sexual relations with his slave-girl as with his wife". Malik ibn Anas cites a report in which "Umar b. al-Khattab says that when a female slave gives birth to a child by her master, then the slave becomes an "umm walad" (mother of a child, concubine)." Ibn al-Humam adds that the slave-owner must acknowledge the kinship of the child.


title: Women in Islam

text: Writing in, "Concubines and Courtesans: Women and Slavery in Islamic History", the authors say that the Quran's endorsement for sexual relations with whom, "your right hand possess" meant that concubines and their children were considered legitimate and not a product of "zina". Hence, they were not discriminated like their counterparts in Christendom were. Rabb Intisar claims that Islamic sources treat non-consensual sex with slaves as zina or rape. However, Kecia Ali disputes this and says that she is unable to find this position within premodern Muslim legal tradition. Some Muslim scholars such as Muhammad Asad and Mustafa Islamoğlu completely rejected any kind of concubinage in Islam, stating that 'sexual relations with female slaves are permitted only on the basis of marriage, and that in this respect there is no difference between them and free women; consequently, concubinage is ruled out.'


title: Women in Islam

text: With the coming of the Quranic revelation, the family replaced the tribe as the basic unit of Arab society, and today the family is still the primary means of social organisation in the Islamic world. As in many other traditional societies, the family in Muslim-majority countries is not restricted to the nuclear model solely consisting of parents and children, but is instead typically made up of a larger extended family network which includes grandparents, uncles, aunts, in-laws and cousins.


title: Women in Islam

text: "A woman questioned the Prophet [Muḥammad]: 'Men go to war and have a great reward for that, so what do women have.' He answered: 'When a woman is pregnant, she has the reward of someone who spends the whole night praying and the whole day fasting; when the contractions strike her, no one knows how much reward God gives her for having to go through this, and when she delivers her child, then for every suck it draws from her, she receives the reward for keeping a soul alive.'"


title: Women in Islam

text: Muḥammad also stated that if a woman dies in childbirth, she is counted as a martyr; the reward for martyrdom is Paradise.


title: Women in Islam

text: A famous hadith of Muḥammad states that "Heaven lies under the feet of mothers", and accordingly – and like all traditional systems – Islam has honoured the work of homemaker and mother as being of the highest value. While there is nothing in Islamic teachings that precludes women from working and receiving wages, as per Seyyed Hossein Nasr's "The Heart of Islam: Enduring Values for Humanity", "Islamic society has never thought that working in an office is of a higher order of importance than bringing up one's children".


title: Women in Islam

text: A Muslim woman may not move in a mosque and is relieved from duty of performing salat while she is menstruating or during postpartum period, because bodily fluids are considered ritually impure in Islam. Some Muslim scholars suggest that the woman should stay in her house, or near her house, during this state. Some Islamic jurists claim that this is an incorrect interpretation of sharia, and suggest the Islamic intent was about hygiene, not about religious ritual cleanliness.


title: Women in Islam

text: Some scholars say that it is not permitted for menstruating women to read the Quran. Others say it is possible, in some circumstances.


title: Women in Islam

text: Menstruating women are allowed to attend the `Eid prayer without participating in the prayer but just to witness it.


title: Women in Islam

text: No limitation or prohibition against women travelling by themselves is mentioned in the Quran. Some scholars state that a woman may not travel by herself on a journey that takes longer than three days, per a hadith. However, another hadith has stated that women are able to travel long distances so long as there is no fear, except from God. Thus many scholars have interpreted this hadith in such a way that, as long as the journey is safe, it is fine for women to travel by themselves. According to the European Council for Fatwa and Research, this prohibition arose from fears for women's safety when travel was more dangerous, which was applicable during the Middle Ages. Some scholars relax this prohibition for journeys likely to be safe, such as travel with a trustworthy group of men or men and women, or travel via a modern train or plane when the woman will be met upon arrival.


title: Women in Islam

text: A 1990 fatwa commissioned by the Saudi Arabian Ministry of the Interior formally enacted a ban on women driving. This prohibition was unique to Saudi Arabia and became a source of international ridicule. On September 26, 2017, a royal decree personally signed by Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud – the King and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia – directed the Ministry of the Interior to reverse the ban. The decree noted that "the original Islamic ruling in regards to women driving is to allow it", and that those who opposed this view did so on the basis of "excuses that are baseless and have no predominance of thought (sic)". Full implementation of the decree was scheduled for June 2018.


title: Women in Islam

text: In an interview with The Atlantic, Hala Al-Dosari – a Saudi scholar at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study – posited that the driving ban was not religious or even cultural, but political; she also noted the absurdity of banning females driving when women in the era of Muḥammad (570–632) were riding their camels without it being an issue. The author and academic Haifaa Jawad underlined that the royal decree was "not some bold initiative to present a new religious interpretation of the issue. Theologically speaking, the ban has no basis in the Quran or Hadith, and should never have been issued in the first place."


title: Women in Islam

text: Additionally, some analysts have contended that the US$3.5 billion investment in the car-sharing app Uber by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund – together with other projected economic gains – was instrumental in the reversal of the ban on women driving.


title: Women in Islam

text: Modesty (Haya) is a religious prescription in Islam: the Quran commands both men and women to dress modestly and not display their bodies, and Muḥammad asserted that modesty is a central character trait in Islam.


title: Women in Islam

text: In the specific context of women, the Quran at 24:31 speaks of covering women's "ornaments" from strangers outside the family. This latter verse of the Quran represents the institution of a new public modesty: when the pre-Islamic Arabs went to battle, Arab women seeing the men off to war would bare their breasts to encourage them to fight; or they would do so at the battle itself, as in the case of the Meccan women led by Hind at the Battle of Uḥud. This type of behaviour is commonly seen by Islamic scholars and the broader Muslim public alike as emblematic of a state of spiritual ignorance ("al-Jāhiliyyah").


title: Women in Islam

text: All orthodox schools of sharia law prescribe covering the body in public: specifically, to the neck, the ankles, and below the elbow. However, none of the traditional legal systems actually stipulate that women must wear a veil: it is only the wives of Muḥammad who are instructed to wear this article of clothing (33:59).


title: Women in Islam

text: On the basis of the injunction to be modest, various forms of dress were developed in different parts of the Islamic world, but some forms of dress were carryovers from earlier, pre-Islamic Near Eastern societies: the practice of women covering their hair was the norm in the earlier communities of Jews and Christians. The iconography of the Virgin Mary in Christian art always shows her with her hair covered, and this convention was followed into the modern era by both Georgian and Armenian Christians, in addition to Oriental Jewish women; Catholic women would not go to church without covering their heads until well into the twentieth century. The covering of the hair was taken by women to be a natural part of life as a sign of modesty and especially as a sign of respect before God.


title: Women in Islam

text: In the twenty-first century, there continues to be tremendous variance in how Muslim women dress, not least because the Islamic world is so geographically and culturally diverse. Laws passed in states (such as laïcist Turkey and Tunisia) with twentieth century Westernisation campaigns – which mandated that women wear "modern", Western-style clothing – have been relaxed in recent years; similarly, the end of communism in Albania and the Yugoslav republics also meant an end to highly restrictive secular apparel legislation. As a result, it is now legal for women in these countries to wear clothes suggesting a (post-) modern Islamic identity – such as the headscarf colloquially known as the ḥijāb – in public, though not necessarily in all public institutions or offices of state.


title: Women in Islam

text: Conversely, in a handful of states – notably Shia Iran – with modernist fundamentalist regime, dress codes stipulating that women wear exclusively "religious" garments (as opposed to "secular" ones) in public which became mandatory in the latter part of the twentieth century are still in force. However, these countries are both theologically and culturally atypical within the Islamic world: Iran is the world's only Shī'a revolutionary state in none of the others do the same restrictions on women's clothing in public apply. The overwhelming majority of Muslim-majority countries do not have laws mandating the public wearing of either secular or religious apparel, and the full spectrum of female clothing – from bikinis to face veils – can be seen in countries such as Albania, Lebanon and Morocco.


title: Women in Islam

text: In a 2018 study done by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, Muslim American women were, "the most likely" when compared to other domestic religious communities to, "wear "a visible symbol that makes their faith identity known to others."" Of the Muslim women surveyed by ISPU, 46% say they wear a visible symbol to mark their faith in public all the time" (this includes the hijab), 19% some of the time, and 35% none of the time. The study did not find there to be any significant age or race difference.


title: Women in Islam

text: In today's modern context, the question of why Muslim women wear the hijab is met with a variety of responses by Muslim American women, including the most popular, "piety and to please God" (54%), "so others know they are Muslim" (21%), and "for modesty" (12%). Only 1% said they wore it, "because a family member or spouse required it".


title: Women in Islam

text: According to all schools of Islamic law, only women are permitted to wear pure silken garments next to the skin, although the schools of law differ about almost every other detail concerning silk (such as the permissibility of men wearing silk mixed with other fibres). In Islamic tradition, silk is strongly associated with Heaven. The Quran speaks in several places of the sumptuous fabrics to be enjoyed by the virtuous in Paradise: their garments will be made of silk (22:23 and 35:33), and they will recline on carpets lined with rich brocade (55:54).


title: Women in Islam

text: Similarly, sharia law posits that only women may wear gold ornaments, such as jewellery. The intention behind this distinction is to help men maintain a state of sobriety, reserve, concentration, and spiritual poverty (the "perfections of the centre"). Conversely, women, who symbolise unfolding, infinitude and manifestation, are not bound by the same constraints.


title: Women in Islam

text: Clothing such as ḥijābs, chādors, and burqas are typically worn in public only. 32% of countries in the European Union have bans on traditional Muslim headgear for women. Bans differ in enforcement, penalty for violation, and details of what type of headgear is considered "publicly acceptable" in countries with these bans in place. The United Nations Human Rights Committee has publicly condemned these bans, claiming their infringement on rights of women dressing a certain way for religious purposes. Muslim European women, specifically, have noted that their public wearing of Islamic headgear has posed obstacles when it comes to gaining employment. In private, it is common for women to wear Western-style clothing. Global fashion retail chains including Zara and Victoria's Secret have branches in OIC member states like Saudi Arabia.


title: Women in Islam

text: From the 1920s to the 1970s, the use of what is often referred to as the "veil" – this term could mean anything from a face veil to a shawl loosely draped over the head – declined until only a minority of Muslim women outside the conservative societies of the Arabian peninsula still used it. However, in recent decades there has been an increase in the number of Muslim women wearing new types of head coverings which are known by the generic appellation "ḥijāb".


title: Women in Islam

text: Deepening globalisation has resulted in a number of developments pertaining to clothing customs in Muslim-majority countries. Firstly, retail outlets for Western fashion labels are now commonly found in OIC member states: to give but one example, Calvin Klein has stores from the Citypark shopping mall in Tirana, Albania to the Plaza Indonesia mall in Jakarta. Secondly, fashion labels specialising in modest attire (particularly but not exclusively the hijab or headscarf worn by some Muslim women) have sprung up in a number of OIC states and observer countries.


title: Women in Islam

text: The fashion media sector within the Muslim world for both Western and Islamic fashion has grown tremendously from the 1990s onwards. Local editions of magazines from Marie Claire to Cosmopolitan are now published in a wide range of OIC member states, including Turkey, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Indonesia, while fashion magazines specifically targeted at more overtly religious demographics are flourishing: the Turkish title Âlâ is reportedly outselling both Vogue and Elle within its home market, while Aquila Style has a purported total circulation of 30,000 in three ASEAN states.


title: Women in Islam

text: The 2014–15 Thomson Reuters State of the Global Islamic Economy Report forecasted that expenditure on clothing in OIC member states would reach US$484 billion by 2019.


title: Women in Islam

text: From the earliest centuries of Islam, Muslims have visited shrines and mosques to pray, meditate, ask forgiveness, seek cures for ailments, and seek grace – a blessing or spiritual influence ("barakah") sent down by God. Some of these structures are named after women. Although women are not restricted from entering mosques, it is quite uncommon to see women gathering in mosques to pray. When women do travel to mosques, they are usually accompanied by their husband or other women at times of the day where there is not a large population of other men. While prayer is mostly done at home for women when they are attending prayers at public worship places such as a mosque they are to be separated from the other men present. Women must also be dressed appropriately or they may be reprimanded.


title: Women in Islam

text: The Virgin Mary ('Maryam' in Arabic) has a particularly exalted position within the Islamic tradition, extolled as she is for being the mother of Jesus, whom Muslims revere as a prophet. Maryam is the only woman mentioned by name in Islam's sacred text; an entire chapter or sūra of the Quran – the nineteenth, Sūrat Maryam – bears her name.


title: Women in Islam

text: Hala Sultan Tekke, Larnaca, Cyprus is an ancient site revered because it contains the burial place of Muḥammad's paternal aunt Hala Sultan (Umm Haram in Arabic), although other scholars believe that she was in fact Muḥammad's wet nurse.


title: Women in Islam

text: According to legend, Hala Sultan died after falling off her mule and breaking her neck during the first Arab incursions into Cyprus around 647 A.D. The same night, a divine power supposedly placed three giant stones where she lay. In 1760, Hala Sultan's grave was discovered by Sheikh Hasan; he began spreading the word about her healing powers, and a tomb was built there. The complex – comprising a mosque, mausoleum, minaret, cemetery and living quarters for men and women – was constructed in its present form while the island was still under Ottoman rule, and completed in around 1816.


title: Women in Islam

text: According to the archaeologist Tuncer Bağışkan, during the Ottoman period in Cyprus, Ottoman-flagged ships used to fly their flags at half-mast when off the shores of Larnaca, and salute Hala Sultan with cannon shots.


title: Women in Islam

text: This tekke is also notable for being the burial place of the grandmother of the late King Hussein of Jordan.


title: Women in Islam

text: The granddaughter of Muḥammad is the patron saint of Cairo, the Arab world's largest city and a regional cultural hub. She also has the following mosques named for her:


title: Women in Islam

text: Fātimah al-Ma'sūmah was the sister of the eighth Imam and the daughter of the seventh Imam in 'Twelver' Shī'ism. Her shrine is located in Qom, a city which is one of the most important Shī'ah centres of theology. During the Safavid dynasty, the women of this family were very active in embellishing the Shrine of Fatima Masumeh. In times of war, Safavid royal women found refuge in Qom, and likely compared their situation to that of Fatima Masumeh.


title: Women in Islam

text: One of the most famous saints in Islam, Rabi'āh al-'Adawiyyah ('Rabi'āh') extolled the way of "maḥabbah" ('divine love') and "uns" ('Intimacy with God'). Her mystical sayings are noted for their pith and clarity; some have become proverbs throughout the Islamic world. The famous mosque in Cairo, which is named in Rabi'āh's honour, is notable for being the burial site of former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. The mosque was badly damaged during the 2013 post-military coup unrest in Egypt. It has since been rebuilt.


title: Women in Islam

text: Ruqayyah bint Ali was the daughter-in-law of Muḥammad's cousin and son-in-law 'Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib. Legend has it that the Bibi Pak Daman (lit. 'the chaste lady') mausoleum – located in Lahore, Pakistan – named after her contains not just her grave but those of five other ladies from Muḥammad's household. These females were amongst the most important women who brought Islam to South Asia. It is said that these ladies came here after the event of the battle of Karbala on the 10th day of the month of Muharram in 61 AH (October 10, CE 680). Bibi Pak Daman is the collective name of the six ladies believed to interred at this mausoleum, though it is also (mistakenly) popularly used to refer to the personage of Ruqayyah bint Ali alone. They preached and engaged in missionary activity in the environs of Lahore. It is said that Data Ganj Bakhsh, considered a great Sufi saint of the South Asia, was himself a devotee of the Bibi Pak Daman shrine and received holy knowledge from this auspicious shrine.


title: Women in Islam

text: According to a saying attributed to Muhammad in the hadith Sahih Bukhari, women are allowed to go to mosques. However, as Islam spread, Muslim authorities stressed the fears of unchastity from interaction between sexes outside their home, including the mosque. By pre-modern period it was unusual for women to pray at a mosque. By the late 1960s, women in urban areas of the Middle East increasingly began praying in the mosque, but men and women generally worship separately. (Muslims explain this by citing the need to avoid distraction during prayer prostrations that raise the buttocks while the forehead touches the ground.) Separation between sexes ranges from men and women on opposite sides of an aisle, to men in front of women (as was the case in the time of Muhammad), to women in second-floor balconies or separate rooms accessible by a door for women only. Women in the state of ritual impurity, such as menstruation, are forbidden from entering the prayer hall of the mosque.


title: Women in Islam

text: Today, Muslim women do indeed attend mosques. In fact, in the United States, a recent study by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding found that American Muslim women attend the mosque at extremely similar rates (35%) to those of American Muslim men (45%). ISPU also found that 87% of Muslim American women say that they "see their faith identity as a source of happiness in their life."


title: Women in Islam

text: Female religious scholars were relatively common from early Islamic history throughout the 16th century. Mohammad Akram Nadwi, a Sunni religious scholar, has listed 8,000 female jurists, and orientalist Ignaz Goldziher estimates 15 percent of medieval hadith scholars were women. Women, during early history of Islam, primarily obtained their knowledge through community study groups, ribat retreats and during hajj when the usual restrictions imposed on female education were more lenient. After the 16th century, however, female scholars became fewer. In the modern era, while female activists and writers are relatively common, there has not been a significant female jurist in over 200 years. Opportunities for women's religious education exist, but cultural barriers often keep women from pursuing such a vocation.


title: Women in Islam

text: Women's right to become imams, however, is disputed by many. A fundamental role of an "imam" (religious leader) in a mosque is to lead the "salat" (congregational prayers). Generally, women are not allowed to lead mixed prayers. However, some argue that Muhammad gave permission to Ume Warqa to lead a mixed prayer at the mosque of Dar.


title: Women in Islam

text: Hui women are self-aware of their relative freedom as Chinese women in contrast to the status of Arab women in countries like Saudi Arabia where Arab women are restricted and forced to wear encompassing clothing. Hui women point out these restrictions as "low status", and feel better to be Chinese than to be Arab, claiming that it is Chinese women's advanced knowledge of the Quran which enables them to have equality between men and women.


title: Women in Islam

text: Sufi Islam teaches the doctrine of "tariqa", meaning following a spiritual path in daily living habits. To support followers of this concept, separate institutions for men ("ta'ifa, hizb, rabita") and women ("khanqa, rabita, derga") were created. Initiates to these groups pursued a progression of seven stages of spiritual discipline, called "makamat" (stations) or "ahwal" (spiritual states).


title: Women in Islam

text: Rabiah al-Basri is an important figure in Islamic Mysticism called Sufism. She upheld the doctrine of "disinterested love of God".


title: Women in Islam

text: There are a number of prominent female Islamic scholars. They generally focus on questioning gender-based interpretations of the Quran, the traditions of Muhammad and early Islamic history. Some notable Muslim women scholars are: Azizah al-Hibri, Amina Wadud, Fatima Mernissi, Riffat Hassan, Laila Ahmad, Amatul Rahman Omar, Farhat Hashmi, Aisha Abdul-Rahman, and Merryl Wyn Davies.


title: Women in Islam

text: Many classical Islamic scholars, such as al-Tabari, supported female leadership. In early Islamic history, women including Aisha, Ume Warqa, and Samra Binte Wahaib took part in political activities. Ash-Shifa would later on become the head of Health and Safety in Basra, Iraq. Other historical Muslim female leaders include Shajarat ad-Durr, who ruled Egypt from 1250 to 1257, Razia Sultana, who ruled the Sultanate of Delhi from 1236 to 1239, and Taj ul-Alam, who ruled Aceh Sultanate from 1641 to 1675.


title: Women in Islam

text: This historical record contrasts markedly with that of (predominantly Taoist and Buddhist) Chinese-majority nations, where there were no women rulers in the period between the reign of the fierce empress Wu Zetian at the turn of the eighth century (690–705), and the inauguration of Tsai Ing-wen as President of the Republic of China in 2016.


title: Women in Islam

text: Dar al-Ifta al-Misriyyah, an Islamic institute that advises Egypt's ministry of justice, had said women can both be rulers and judges in an Islamic state.


title: Women in Islam

text: In the modern era, Pakistan became the first Muslim-majority state with an elected female head of government (1988). Currently Bangladesh is the country that has had females as head of government continuously the longest starting with Khaleda Zia in 1991.


title: Women in Islam

text: In the past several decades, a number of countries in which Muslims are a majority, including Turkey (Prime Minister Tansu Çiller, 1993), Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto (1988–1996), Bangladesh (prime ministers Begum Khaleda Zia (1991–1996, 2001–2009) and Sheikh Hasina (1996–2001, 2009–present), Indonesia (President Megawati Sukarnoputri, 2001), Kosovo (President Atifete Jahjaga, 2011), and Kyrgyzstan (President Roza Otunbayeva, 2010) have been led by women; Mauritius, which has a significant Muslim minority, elected a female Muslim (Ameenah Gurib) as president in 2015.


title: Women in Islam

text: At one stage in the 1990s, over 300 million Muslims – at that time, between one-third and a quarter of the world's entire Islamic population – were simultaneously ruled by women when elected heads of state Tansu Çiller (the 22nd Prime Minister of Turkey), Khaleda Zia (the 9th Prime Minister of Bangladesh) and Benazir Bhutto (the 11th Prime Minister of Pakistan) led their respective countries.


title: Women in Islam

text: As well as elected heads of state, a number of other elected female politicians have attained exceptional levels of notability within the OIC in the twenty-first century. These include Louisa Hanoune, the head of Algeria's Workers' Party and the first woman to be a presidential candidate in an Arab country (2004; Hanoune also ran for the same post in 2009 and 2014); Susi Pudjiastuti, Indonesia's Minister of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (2014–2019) who is also a successful seafood and transportation entrepreneur who has been profiled in the Financial Times; Meral Akşener, a veteran Turkish conservative nationalist politician who is the founder and leader of the İyi Party (2017–); and mezzo-soprano opera singer Dariga Nazarbayeva, the Chairwoman of the Kazakhstan Senate and one of her country's wealthiest individuals.


title: Women in Islam

text: Several Muslim-majority nations have passed laws to incorporate more women in their parliaments and political processes. For example, Indonesia passed a law in 2013 that required political parties to field at least 30% women candidates in elections or pay a financial penalty, a law which was later amended to stipulate that at least one in three candidates on every party's electoral list must be female and parties which do not fulfill this criterion will be barred from contesting the election; Tunisia's mandated electoral lists composed of 50% women in both the 2011 and 2014 legislative elections; and in 2012, Algeria set a minimum parliamentary female membership requirement of 30%. Following the May 2012 legislative elections, women constitute 31.6% of Algerian MPs. In Senegal, 50% of local and national electoral lists have to be female as of 2012. Following the passage of Law No. 46 of 2014, Egypt has required party lists to include a certain number of women; in 2018, Egypt's cabinet had eight female ministers out of a total of 35 (22.86%). Kosovo has had a female quota for its assembly as far back as 2001, when it was "de jure" part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia; the Muslim-majority (95.6%) Balkan republic guarantees women 30% of parliamentary seats as of 2016.


title: Women in Islam

text: In 2012, among all regions of the world, the Gulf Arab region had the lowest overall percentage of women in parliament, and no women in the parliaments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the only two Muslim-majority states in the world which are officially Wahhabi. However, since 2012 Saudi women have been allowed to vote in some elections. The Shura Council of Saudi Arabia now includes female members after a January 2013 decree by the Saudi King that created reserved parliamentary seats for women, while four women were appointed to Qatar's 41-member Shura Council in 2017. Kuwait granted its women the right to vote in the first half of the 1980s; this right was later rescinded, and then reintroduced in 2005. Additionally, the United Arab Emirates has allocated 30% of its top government posts to women; as of February 2016, females accounted for 27.5% of the UAE's cabinet.


title: Women in Islam

text: According to Sheikh Zoubir Bouchikhi, Imam of the Islamic Society of Greater Houston's Southeast Mosque, nothing in Islam specifically allows or disallows voting by women. Until recently most Muslim nations were non-democratic, but most today allow their citizens to have some level of voting and control over their government. However, some Muslim countries gave women suffrage in the early 20th century. For example, Azerbaijan extended voting rights to women in 1918, two years before it became part of Soviet Union. Females in Turkey similarly gained the right to vote in municipal and parliamentary elections in 1930 and 1934 respectively.


title: Women in Islam

text: In the United States, Islamophobia, coupled with the 2016 presidential election which heightened anti-Muslim sentiment has particularly impacted on Muslim American women. In their 2018 American Muslim Poll, think tank Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) reported, "though roughly half of women of all backgrounds, including Muslim women, report experiencing some frequency of gender-based discrimination in the past year, Muslim women's more frequent complaints are racial (75%) and religious (69%) discrimination." Most Muslim women (72%) and Muslim men (76%) reject the notion that "most Muslims in America discriminate against women."


title: Women in Islam

text: Further data collected by the ISPU has found that "Muslim women are more likely than Muslim men to report experiencing religious discrimination in the last year (68% vs. 55%)". After the bombing of the World Trade Center Muslim women were especially exposed to increased violence in public spaces. Research showed that 85% of Muslim women experienced violence through verbal threats as well as 25% of Muslim women experiencing actual physical violence in public spaces. ISPU also found that most American Muslim women (68%) agree that most people associate negative stereotypes with their faith identity. Among these, more than half (52%) "strongly agree" that being Muslim is correlated with negative stereotypes. Data shows that American Muslim women are actually more likely than Muslim men to fear for their safety from white supremacist groups (47% vs. 31%) and nearly one in five (19%) Muslim women say they have stress and anxiety enough to believe they need the help of a mental health professional as a result of the 2016 presidential elections, compared with only 9% of American Muslim men. Despite this deficit in security and greater likelihood for experienced religious-based discrimination, Muslim women are no more likely than Muslim men to change their appearance to be less identifiable as a Muslim (16% vs. 15%). Additionally, despite many feeling stigmatized, a large majority of Muslim American women (87%) say they are proud to be identified as a member of their faith community.


title: Women in Islam

text: According to the European Network Against Racism NGO, In addition to enhanced prevalence of Islamophobia among Muslim American women, Muslim European women also experienced heightened Islamophobia—especially, when they wear headscarves. Islamophobia researcher and convert to Islam Linda Hyokki points out that at an even higher risk of Islamophobia are Muslim women of color, as they are always susceptible to Islamophobia, with or without their headscarves. In 2017, English Islamophobic monitoring company Tell Mama reported that there had been a 26% increase in Islamophobia in the UK, overwhelmingly affecting Muslim women more than Muslim men. Additionally, Muslim women disproportionately face the Islamophobic trope that women are seen as inferior in their religion. Research has found that media along with politics, particularly, in European society, perpetuate these stereotypes of Muslim women. Aside from seeing women as experiencing sexism within their religion, other Islamophobic stereotypes of Muslim women include seeing them as, "either [...] oppressed or as dangerous".


title: Women in Islam

text: Many cultural norms are shared within societies that follow the same religion and share similar values. In many Muslim societies, keeping face is an important matter that usually determines the amount of respect an individual can receive from others. Most people build an acceptable face in terms of personality and appearance for themselves and hide behind that to fit within the cultural and societal norms. The saving face includes anything that people do to present themselves as someone that they are not to gain social credibility. Saving face is even more serious and in some situations even necessary for women in Muslim societies because as mentioned in the other sections, there are many rules around the lives of Muslim women which they have to follow to be socially accepted and have a good future. These rules of Islam may not be easy to follow by all women, so many women who want to be morally accepted into their societies, follow these rules at all costs and hide their true selves behind the socially accepted version of themselves which is a common way of saving face. In many Muslim societies, women's dignity and reputation only depend on how precisely they follow the orders of their families before marriage and husbands after marriage and if somebody refuses to follow these orders, they may not be accepted into that society anymore. Even though Islam is a religion that has high regard for women and in the holy book of Islam there are suras that honor women, but there are some groups of people that don't follow the rules of Islam as they are and that has caused many problems for Muslim women.


title: Women in Islam

text: In the Islamic conception, every human being has a responsibility towards oneself. Since human life is sacred and initially created by divine rather than human agency, people are responsible for trying to keep their bodies and souls healthy, and not causing themselves spiritual or physical harm. Consequently, sport has obvious attractions in Islam: traditions record that Muḥammad raced with his wife 'Ā'ishah, and that he encouraged parents to teach their children swimming, riding and archery. Persian miniatures show Muslim women jointly playing polo with men in the same field. In the twenty-first century, some Muslim sociologists even argue that it should be obligatory for Muslim females to participate in sport of some kind.


title: Women in Islam

text: At the same time, many Muslim women experience significant barriers to sports participation. These barriers include bans on the Islamic headscarf, commonly known as the hijab, cultural and familial barriers, and the lack of appropriate sports programs and facilities. Many Muslim female athletes have overcome these obstacles and used sports to empower themselves and others, such as through education, health and wellbeing, and a push for women's rights.


title: Women in Islam

text: The Islamic Solidarity Games is a large multi-sport event held every four years in which all qualifying athletes from Organisation of Islamic Cooperation member countries can compete, regardless of their religious affiliation. The female International Athlete Ambassadors for Baku 2017 – the most recent edition of the games – included Tunisian Olympic medallist wrestler Marwa Amri; taekwondo icons Elaine Teo (Malaysia) and Taleen Al Humaidi (Jordan); and the Palestinian swimmer Mary Al-Atrash.


title: Women in Islam

text: As in the rest of the world, the new technological and organisational developments of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have led to the creation of electronic media industries in OIC member countries. Women have presentational and, significantly, financial roles in OIC member states' television, film and Internet sectors. Moreover, given that a number of populous Muslim-majority countries – such as Indonesia and Turkey – are categorised as dynamic emerging economies in formulations such as MIST and Next eleven, these women increasingly have an impact far beyond their national borders.


title: Women in Islam

text: The international influence of Turkey's television industry has expanded dramatically in the twenty-first century: as of 2017, the country was the world's fastest-growing television series exporter and second in the overall global rankings only to the United States.


title: Women in Islam

text: In some Muslim countries including Iran, the government officials and some conservative men in the families have started blaming Turkish TV series for the problems they have started facing in their marriages such as their wives wanting to be financially independent, working outside of their houses, and making changes to their appearance to look more like a modern-day woman. Many Turkish series are promoting women's independence and equality, which is not acceptable in some societies because of strict religious rules and cultural norms. As the result of some women trying to mock the lifestyles of the Turkish women in the series and be more present in their societies and the workforce, disagreements within the families have increased and have caused an increase in the number of divorces. The long amount of time that some members of the households spend on watching the TV shows has resulted in fewer family interactions and falling behind on daily chores.


title: Women in Islam

text: Rosianna Silalahi is editor-in-chief of the influential and prestigious Kompas TV, a news channel named after Kompas, Indonesia's highest-circulation daily newspaper.


title: Women in Islam

text: The global accelerated proliferation of television channels and content from the 1990s onwards has seen a marked increase in religious programming in Muslim-majority countries. This content is broadcast either on dedicated religious channels, such as Turkey's Diyanet TV, or the many general interest channels which enjoy greater audience share. Topics addressed on these shows range from theology and history to technological developments and mysticism.


title: Women in Islam

text: Contemporary female presenters of note in this genre include , who presents Öteki Gündem ('The Other Agenda') on Habertürk TV (Turkey); Amina Svraka, a hostess at BIR TV in Bosnia and Herzegovina; and Nashwa Al-Ruwaini, an Egyptian television personality who also has extensive business interests in the media sector.


title: Women in Islam

text: Since its inception in the Arabian peninsula during the 7th century CE, Islam has had contact and coexistence with other major world religions, and this phenomenon intensified as the religion transcended its Arabian origins to spread over a wide geographical area: from the Adriatic region, where Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox Christianity took root, to the Hinduism- and Buddhism-dominated land masses of India and South-East Asia, Muslim populations have both influenced and been influenced by the pre-existing spiritual traditions that they encountered. Prominent examples of these processes include the syncretist philosophy of "dīn-i-ilāhī" ("religion of God"), an amalgam of several religions devised by Emperor Akbar (1542–1605) that was practiced at the Mughul Court in India; the crypto-Christianity of Kosovo, a belief system that created a tradition of joint Catholic-Muslim households which persisted into the twentieth century; and "Pancasila", the official foundational philosophy of the modern Indonesian state which draws on indigenous beliefs, as well as Hindu, Christian and Islamic traditions.


title: Women in Islam

text: In the 21st century, a number of new factors have facilitated the comparison of spiritual traditions – and the place of women within them – to an unprecedented level. These include: (i) a fresh wave of technological globalisation, which has obliterated communicational borders; (ii) the advent of cheap mass international air travel, which has hugely increased people's exposure to other cultures; and (iii) the internationalisation of higher education, whereby students and scholars alike are spending ever-increasing amounts of time in countries with different religious demographic compositions to their own.


title: Women in Islam

text: Notwithstanding these developments, comparing the position of women in Islam with that of women in other faith traditions is complicated by the following determinants:


title: Women in Islam

text: In contrast with the Biblical account of the Fall, in the Islamic tradition Eve ("Ḥawwā") did not tempt Adam ("Ādam") to eat the forbidden fruit; instead, they were tempted together by the Devil ("al-Shayṭān"). This means that Eve was not the cause of Adam's expulsion from paradise: he was also responsible, and therefore both men and women are faced equally with its consequences. This has a number of important implications for the Islamic understanding of womanhood and women's roles in both religious and social life. For one, in Islam, women are not seen as a source of evil as a result of the Fall.


title: Women in Islam

text: Moreover, the Biblical statement that Eve was created from Adam's rib (the famous 'third rib') finds no echo in the Quranic account: both male and female were created 'from one soul' (Sūrah 4:1). Similarly, the concept that (as per Genesis 3:16) the pains of childbirth are a punishment for Eve's sin is alien to the Quran.


title: Women in Islam

text: The Virgin Mary (Maryām) is considered by the Quran to hold the most exalted spiritual position amongst women. A chapter of the Quran (Sūrat Maryam, the nineteenth sura) is named after her, and she is the only woman mentioned by name in Islam's sacred scripture; Maryām is mentioned more times in the Quran than in the New Testament. Furthermore, the miraculous birth of Christ from a virgin mother is recognised in the Quran.


title: Women in Islam

text: In the Western world, polygamy has long been associated with Islam; the idea of Islam as – to quote Professor Akbar S. Ahmed – some sort of 'man's paradise', with every man possessing at least four wives, remains a powerful one. However, polygamy is far from unique to Islam; in fact, in traditionally multi-confessional India, polygamy is actually more widespread amongst other religious communities: the 1961 census found that the incidence of polygamy was the least amongst Muslims (5.7%), with Hindus (5.8%), Jains (6.7%), Buddhists (7.9%) and Adivasis (15.25%) all more likely have at least two wives. Similarly, India's third National Family Health Survey (2006) found that a number of socioeconomic reasons were more likely to explain the prevalence of polygamy than the religion of the parties involved. This survey also found that a polygamous Hindu was likely to have (as a statistical average) 1.77 wives; a Christian, 2.35; a Muslim, 2.55; and a Buddhist, 3.41.


title: Women in Islam

text: Like many other major world religions, Islam views extramarital sex as a great sin in the eyes of God. However, its general approach to sexuality is profoundly distinct to that of Christianity. There exists a marked contrast between the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas – who stated that marriage becomes "more holy "sine carnale commixione"" (i.e. when sexual desire is absent) – and IbnʿArabī's conclusion that "The most intense and perfect contemplation of God is through women, and the most intense union [with God] is the conjugal act".


title: Women in Islam

text: In "Islam and the Destiny of Man", the Swiss-born diplomat Charles le Gai Eaton elaborates on the respective sexuality perspectives of the world's two most popular faiths:


title: Women in Islam

text: "Islam disapproves of casual promiscuity as does Christianity; but the Muslim takes it for granted that when a man sees a beautiful woman he will desire physical union with her, and that when a woman sees a man who appeals to her she will be drawn to him, and this mutual desire is seen as flowing directly from the nature of things as willed by God. It is in itself an unqualified good, however much it may need to be hedged about with restrictions."


title: Women in Islam

text: Women have played an integral part in the development and spiritual life of Islam since the inception of Islamic civilisation in the seventh century AD. Khadijah, a businesswoman who became Muhammad's employer and first wife, was also the first Muslim. There have been a few number of female saints in the Islamic world spanning the highest social classes (a famous example being Princess Jahānārā, the daughter of the Moghul emperor Shāh Jahān) and the lowest (such as Lallā Mīmūna in Morocco); some of them, such as Rābi'a of Basra (who is cited reverentially in Muḥammad al-Ghazālī's classic "The Revival of Religious Sciences") and Fāṭima of Cordoba (who deeply influenced the young Ibn 'Arabī) have been pivotal to the conceptualisation of Islamic mysticism.


title: Women in Islam

text: Today, some notable personalities of the Islamic world include the Turkish Sufi teacher Cemalnur Sargut – a disciple of the novelist and mystic Samiha Ayverdi (1905–1993), Amatul Rahman Omar, the first woman to translate the Qur'an into English, and Shaykha Fariha al Jerrahi, the guide of the Nur Ashki Jerrahi Sufi Order.


title: Women in Islam

text: Notable recent female converts to Islam include the German former MTV VJ and author Kristiane Backer, American singer and cultural icon Janet Jackson, Anglo-French writer, broadcaster and academic Myriam François, formerly François-Cerrah, award-winning German actress, model and fashion designer Wilma Elles, Malaysian model Felixia Yeap, Malaysian VJ Marion Caunter, Czech model Markéta Kořínková, Canadian solo motorcycle adventurer Rosie Gabrielle, the Belgian model and former Miss Belgium candidate Lindsey van Gele, the Albanian model Rea Beko, Russian model and former Miss Moscow Oksana Voevodina, the German model Anna-Maria Ferchichi (née Lagerblom), the American supermodel Kendra Spears (Princess Salwa Aga Khan), the Australian model and Miss World Australia finalist Emma Maree Edwards, South African model Wendy Jacobs, and Lithuanian model-turned-actress Karolina 'Kerry' Demirci; the Serbian model and fashion designer Ivana Sert stated her intention to become a Muslim in 2014 after she read the Quran in English. Notable recent women born in a Muslim family who became atheist or converted to another religion include Dutch feminist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin, Indian actress Nakhat Khan and Iranian-American women's right activist Parvin Darabi. The Turkish actress, author and model (Miss Turkey 2001) Tuğçe Kazaz converted from Islam to Eastern Orthodox Christianity in 2005, and then converted back to Islam in 2008.


title: Women in Islam

text: Women make up a disproportionately large or rising share of converts to Islam in numerous Western countries. According to researchers based at Swansea University, of the approximately 100,000 people who entered the Muslim faith in the United Kingdom between 2001 and 2011, 75% were women. In the United States, more Hispanic women convert to Islam than Hispanic men, with these women being "mostly educated, young and professional"; the share of overall female converts to Islam in the US rose from 32% in 2000 to 41% in 2011. In Brazil, approximately 70% of converts to Islam are women, most of whom are young and relatively well-educated. Young females constitute an estimated 80% of converts to Islam in Lithuania. According to Susanne Leuenberger of the Institute of Advanced Study in the Humanities and the Social Sciences at the University of Bern, females make up around 60–70% of conversions to Islam in Europe.


title: Women in Islam

text: In the twenty-first century, a number of semi-autobiographical books by Western female converts to Islam have enjoyed a measure of mainstream success. These include former MTV and NBC Europe presenter Kristiane Backer's "From MTV to Mecca: How Islam Inspired My Life" (Arcadia Books, 2012); Spanish journalist Amanda Figueras Fernández's "Por qué el islam: Mi vida como mujer, europea y musulmana" (Ediciones Península, 2018); and French author Mathilde Loujayne's "Big Little Steps: A Woman's Guide to Embracing Islam" (Kube Publishing, 2020).


title: Women in Islam

text: Within the Muslim community, conservatives and Islamic feminists have used Islamic doctrine as the basis for discussion of women's rights, drawing on the Quran, the "hadith", and the lives of prominent women in the early period of Muslim history as evidence. Where conservatives have seen evidence that existing gender asymmetries are divinely ordained, feminists have seen more egalitarian ideals in early Islam. Still others have argued that this discourse is essentialist and ahistorical, and have urged that Islamic doctrine not be the only framework within which discussion occurs.


title: Women in Islam

text: Conservatives reject the assertion that different laws prescribed for men and women imply that men are more valuable than women. Ali ibn Musa Al-reza reasoned that at the time of marriage a man has to pay something to his prospective bride, and that men are responsible for both their wives' and their own expenses but women have no such responsibility.


title: Women in Islam

text: The nebulous revivalist movement termed Islamism is one of the most dynamic movements within Islam in the 20th and 21st centuries. The experience of women in Islamist states has been varied. The progression of Muslim women's rights has been inhibited by religious extremist groups that use the disempowerment of women as a political agenda. When women are opposed to these infringements on their rights they are often subjected to abuse, violence, and shunned. Women in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan faced treatment condemned by the international community. Women were forced to wear the "burqa" in public, not allowed to work, not allowed to be educated after the age of eight, and faced public flogging and execution for violations of the Taliban's laws. The position of women in Iran, which has been a theocracy since its 1979 revolution, is more complex. Iranian Islamists are ideologically in favour of allowing female legislators in Iran's parliament and 60% of university students are women.


title: Women in Islam

text: Anousheh Ansari is an Iranian American engineer who moved to American after the Iranian Revolution. After settling in Texas, she started a technology firm in Texas which allowed her to achieve her dream in life, which was spaceflight. Regardless of all the difficulties that she was facing as a Muslim woman, she started a nonprofit organization to help those in need and support social entrepreneurship. Anousheh Ansari is a role model to many women, especially in the Middle East, because of her achievements in life and overcoming the financial and cultural struggles she went through for achieving her dream.


title: Women in Islam

text: Liberal Muslims have urged that "ijtihad", a form of critical thinking, be used to develop a more progressive form of Islam with respect to the status of women. In addition, Islamic feminists have advocated for women's rights, gender equality, and social justice grounded in an Islamic framework. Although rooted in Islam, pioneers of Islamic feminism have also used secular and western feminist discourses and have sought to include Islamic feminism in the larger global feminist movement. Islamic feminists seek to highlight the teachings of equality in Islam to question patriarchal interpretations of Islamic teachings. Others point out the incredible amount of flexibility of sharia law, which can offer greater protections for women if the political will to do so is present.


title: Women in Islam

text: After the September 11, 2001, attacks, international attention was focused on the condition of women in the Muslim world. Critics asserted that women are not treated as equal members of Muslim societies and criticized Muslim societies for condoning this treatment. Phyllis Chesler has alleged that Western academics, especially feminists, have ignored the plight of Muslim women to be considered politically correct. British solicitor Nazir Afzal has stated that "I have talked to loads of Muslim women and I can tell you that the greatest fear they have is not Islamophobia or being attacked by racists or being arrested on suspicion of terrorism. It is from within their own family."


title: Women in Islam

text: Some Muslim women exposed to the growth in civil rights accessible to secular or non-Muslim women have protested to strengthen their own rights within Islamic communities. One example is Malaysia, where 60% of the population is Muslim, and where there are separate parallel legal systems for secular law and sharia law. In 2006, Marina Mahathir, the daughter of Malaysia's former Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, published an editorial in the Malaysia "Star" newspaper to denounce what she termed "a growing form of apartheid" for Malaysia's Muslim women:


title: Women in Islam

text: She pointed out that polygamy was illegal in Malaysia for non-Muslims but not for Muslims, and that child custody arrangements for Muslims were biased towards fathers as opposed to the shared-custody arrangements of non-Muslim parents. Women's groups in Malaysia began campaigning in the 1990s to have female sharia judges appointed to the sharia legal system in the country, and in 2010 two female judges were appointed.


title: Women in Islam

text: In March 2016, an Australian Tribunal determined that separate male and female seating arrangements contravened section 33 of the NSW Anti-Discrimination Act. The Tribunal ordered that all future publicity materials for public events hosted by Hizb ut-Tahrir must clearly inform attendees that segregated seating arrangements are not compulsory.


title: Proof of stake

text: Proof-of-stake (PoS) protocols are a class of consensus mechanisms for blockchains that work by selecting validators in proportion to their quantity of holdings in the associated cryptocurrency. This is done to avoid the computational cost of proof-of-work schemes. The first functioning use of PoS for cryptocurrency was Peercoin in 2012.


title: Proof of stake

text: For a blockchain transaction to be recognized, it must be appended to the blockchain. In the proof of stake blockchain the appending entities are named "minters" or (in the proof of work blockchains this task is carried out by the miners); in most protocols, the validators receive a reward for doing so. For the blockchain to remain secure, it must have a mechanism to prevent a malicious user or group from taking over a majority of validation. PoS accomplishes this by requiring that validators have some quantity of blockchain tokens, requiring potential attackers to acquire a large fraction of the tokens on the blockchain to mount an attack.


title: Proof of stake

text: Proof of work (PoW), another commonly used consensus mechanism, uses a validation of computational prowess to verify transactions, requiring a potential attacker to acquire a large fraction of the computational power of the validator network. This incentivizes consuming huge quantities of energy. PoS is more energy-efficient.


title: Proof of stake

text: Early PoS implementations were plagued by a number of new attacks that exploited the unique vulnerabilities of the PoS protocols, eventually two dominant designs emerged: so called "Byzantine Fault Tolerance-based" and "Chain-based" approaches.


title: Proof of stake

text: The additional vulnerabilities of the PoS schemes are directly related to their advantage, a relatively low amount of calculations to be performed while constructing a blockchain.


title: Proof of stake

text: The low amount of computing power involved allows a class of attacks that replace a non-negligible portion of the main blockchain with a hijacked version. These attacks are called in literature by different names, "Long-Range", "Alternative History", "Alternate History", "History Revision", and are unfeasible in the PoW schemes due to the sheer volume of calculations required. The early stages of a blockchain are much more malleable for rewriting, as they likely have much smaller group of stakeholders involved, simplifying the collusion. If the per-block and per-transaction rewards are offered, the malicious group can, for example, redo the entire history and collect these rewards.


title: Proof of stake

text: The classic "Short-Range" attack (bribery attack) that rewrites just a small tail portion of the chain is also possible.


title: Proof of stake

text: Since validators do not need to spend a considerable amount of computing power (and thus money) on the process, they are prone to the "Nothing-at-Stake" attack: the participation in a successful validation increases the validator's earnings, so there is a built-in incentive for the validators to accept all chain forks submitted to them, thus increasing the chances of earning the validation fee. The PoS schemes enable low-cost creation of blockchain alternatives starting at any point in history ("costless simulation"), submitting these forks to eager validators endangers the stability of the system. If this situation persists, it can allow double-spending, where a digital token can be spent more than once. This can be mitigated through penalizing validators who validate conflicting chains ("economic finality") or by structuring the rewards so that there is no economic incentive to create conflicts. y Byzantine Fault Tolerance based PoS are generally considered robust against this threat.


title: Proof of stake

text: Bribery attack, where the attackers financially induce some validators to approve their fork of blockchain, is enhanced in PoS, as rewriting a large portion of history might enable the collusion of once-rich stakeholders that no longer hold significant amounts at stake to claim a necessary majority at some point back in time, and grow the alternative blockchain from there, an operation made possible by the low computing cost of adding blocks in the PoS scheme.


title: Proof of stake

text: The exact definition of "stake" varies from implementation to implementation. For instance, some cryptocurrencies use the concept of "coin age", the product of the number of tokens with the amount of time that a single user has held them, rather than merely the number of tokens, to define a validator's stake.


title: Proof of stake

text: Delegated proof of stake (DPoS) systems separate the roles of the stake-holders and validators, by allowing stakeholders to delegate the validation role.


title: Proof of stake

text: The first functioning implementation of a proof-of-stake cryptocurrency was Peercoin, introduced in 2012. Other cryptocurrencies, such as Blackcoin, Nxt, Cardano, and Algorand followed. However, , PoS cryptocurrencies were still not as widely used as proof-of-work cryptocurrencies.


title: Proof of stake

text: In September 2022, Ethereum, the world second largest cryptocurrency in 2022, switched from proof of work to a proof of stake consensus mechanism system, after several proposals and some delays.


title: Proof of stake

text: Critics have argued that the proof of stake model is less secure compared to the proof of work model.


title: Proof of stake

text: Critics have argued that the proof of stake will likely lead cryptocurrency blockchains being more centralized in comparison to proof of work as the system favors users who have a large amount of cryptocurrency, which in turn could lead to users who have a large amount of cryptocurrency having major influence on the management and direction for a crypto blockchain.


title: Proof of stake

text: In 2021 a study by the University of London found that in general the energy consumption of the proof-of-work based Bitcoin was about a thousand times higher than that of the highest consuming proof-of-stake system that was studied even under the most favorable conditions and that most proof of stake systems cause less energy consumption in most configurations. The researchers also noted that the energy consumption of different proof-of-stake systems was divergent with permissioned systems that used less validators being more energy efficient than permission-less systems that don't. They also couldn't find the energy consumption of a proof-of-stake system on a large scale, as such a system did not exist at the time of the report.


title: Proof of stake

text: In January 2022 Vice-Chair of the European Securities and Markets Authority Erik Thedéen called on the EU to ban the proof of work model in favor of the proof of stake model due to its lower energy consumption.


title: GIGN

text: The GIGN ( ; ) is the elite police tactical unit of the National Gendarmerie of France. Among its missions are counterterrorism, hostage rescue, surveillance of national threats, protection of government officials, critical site protection (such as French embassies in war-torn countries), and targeting organized crime.


title: GIGN

text: Established in 1973, the GIGN was initially created as a relatively small tactical unit specialized in sensitive hostage situations, but has since grown into a larger force with expanded responsibilities and capabilities. It is now composed of nearly 1,000 operators : around 400 operators based in Satory, near Versailles in the Paris aera and approximately 600 operators in fourteen regional GIGN branches, AGIGN (), located in metropolitan France or in the French overseas territories. The unit shares jurisdiction of French sovereign territory with the special response units of the National Police, and its training centre is located in Beynes.


title: GIGN

text: Although most of its operations take place in France, the GIGN (as a component of the French Armed Forces) can operate anywhere in the world. Many of its missions are secret, and GIGN operators are not allowed to be publicly photographed. Since its formation, the GIGN has been involved in over 1,800 missions and has also rescued more than 600 hostages, making it one of the most experienced counter-terrorism units in the world.


title: GIGN

text: In December 1994, the GIGN rose to worldwide prominence after its operatives successfully stormed Air France Flight 8969, which had been hijacked by the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria at Marseille Provence Airport; all four hijackers were killed in the assault.


title: GIGN

text: GIGN was formed in , near Paris, in 1973, shortly after the Munich massacre at the 1972 Summer Olympics and other less-known incidents in France resulted in a need for dedicated counterterrorist units in Europe. Initially named ECRI ( or Regional Commando Intervention Team), it became operational in March 1974, under the command of then-lieutenant , and executed its first mission ten days later. Another unit, named GIGN, was created simultaneously within the Mobile Gendarmerie parachute squadron in in southwest France, but the two units were merged under 's command in 1976, and adopted the GIGN designation. GIGNs initial complement was 15, later increased to 32 in 1976, 78 by 1986, and 120 by 2005. GIGN moved to in 1982.


title: GIGN

text: In 1984, it became a part of a larger organisation called GSIGN (), together with EPIGN (), GSPR (), the Presidential Security group and GISA (), a specialized training center.


title: GIGN

text: On 1 September 2007, a major reorganization took place. GSIGN was disbanded and replaced by a new unit also named GIGN. The former GSIGN components (the original GIGN, EPIGN, GSPR and GISA) became "forces" of the new GIGN which now reached a total complement of 380 operators.


title: GIGN

text: The change from GSIGN to the new GIGN, an organization reporting directly to the Director-general of the Gendarmerie, was not a simple name swap. It was done in order to reinforce command and control functions; provide better integration through common selection, common training and stronger support; and improve the unit's capability to handle complex situations such as mass hostage-takings similar to the Beslan school siege.


title: GIGN

text: In 2009, the Gendarmerie, while remaining part of the French Armed Forces, was attached to the Ministry of the Interior, which already supervised the National Police. The respective areas of responsibility of each force did not change however, as the Police already had primary responsibility for major cities and large urban areas, while the Gendarmerie was in charge of smaller towns and rural areas (in addition to its specific military missions). Under the new command structure, GIGN gendarmes can still be engaged in operations outside of France due to their military status.


title: GIGN

text: Since its creation, the group has taken part in over 1,800 operations, rescued over 600 hostages and arrested over 1500 suspects, losing two members killed in action and seven in training. The two fatalities in action were sustained when dealing with armed deranged persons.


title: GIGN

text: In January 2015, GIGN was engaged for the very first time simultaneously with RAID, the National Police tactical unit, during the January 2015 Île-de-France attacks.


title: GIGN

text: On 1 August 2021, the 14 regional GIGN branches were fully integrated in the group's organization as part of a new "Force Antennes". Prior to this reorganization, these regional branches, established in 2004, had been administratively attached to the seven domestic "Zonal Gendarmerie Regions" for seven of them and to the Overseas Gendarmerie Command () for the remaining seven but they were independent units that only came under GIGN operational control when a crisis occurred. Sometimes referred to as "GIGN 3.0", the new organization also emphasizes the group's role in training and in operational support.<ref name="arrêté 26/07/2021"> Ministerial decree of 26 July 2021. Arrêté du 26 juillet 2021 relatif aux attributions et à l'organisation du groupe d'intervention de la gendarmerie nationale NOR : INTJ2120405A https://media.interieur.gouv.fr/bomi/BOMI2021-8-2/textes/I40_20210726_INTJ2120405A.pdf</ref>


title: GIGN

text: A new common insignia was adopted as a result of the 2021 reorganization. Shaped as a shield, it worn on the left sleeve by every GIGN gendarme. A circular badge is worn on the right sleeve: the traditional round GIGN patch for Satory-based operators and a different patch for members of the AGIGNs. The AGIGN patch replaces the parachute with a thunderbolt, as AGIGNs are not parachute units.


title: GIGN

text: GIGN is currently organized in four ""forces"", a "détachement", an Engineering and Support division, a National Training Center for Specialized Intervention and a Human Resources bureau, under two headquarters (administrative and operational):


title: GIGN

text: There are several tactical specialties in the group, including: long-range sniping, breaching, observation and reconnaissance, executive protection, freefall parachuting with HALO/HAHO jumps, diving, etc.


title: GIGN

text: Helicopter support is provided by Gendarmerie helicopters and, for tactical deployment of large groups, by GIH (), a joint Army/Air Force special operations flight equipped with SA330 PUMA helicopters, based in nearby Villacoublay Air Base. GIH was established in 2006, and has also been tasked to support the National Police's RAID unit since 2008.


title: GIGN

text: The fourteen regional GIGN branches, initially known as PI2Gs () for the domestic units and GPIs () for the overseas units, were respectively redesignated as GIGN branches in April and July 2016 and fully integrated into GIGN in 2021. As of 2021, the seven metropolitan GIGN branches are located in Caen, Dijon, Nantes, Orange, Reims, Toulouse and Tours, while the seven overseas branches are based in Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, Réunion, Mayotte, French Polynesia and New Caledonia. The twenty nuclear protection units, called PSPGs (), located on site at each one of the French nuclear power plants, are not a part of GIGN, but operate under its operational control.


title: GIGN

text: Coordination between GIGN and RAID, the National Police's tactical unit, is handled by a joint organization called Ucofi ( or Intervention Forces Coordination Unit). A "leader/follower" protocol has been established for use when both units need to be engaged jointly, leadership belonging to the unit operating in its primary areas of responsibility.


title: GIGN

text: GIGN reports directly to the Director General of the Gendarmerie Nationale (DGGN), i.e., the chief of staff of the Gendarmerie, who in turn reports directly to the Ministry of the Interior. The DGGN or his Deputy for Operations can take charge in a major crisis; however, most of the day-to-day missions are conducted in support of local units of the Departmental Gendarmerie. GIGN is also a member of the European ATLAS Network, an informal association consisting of the special police units of the 27 states of the European Union.


title: GIGN

text: GIGN was selected by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) to organise hostage-rescue exercises aboard planes for the special forces of the other member states.