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Between Certainty and Guesswork: Social Work in Syria

Almost…around…close to…words like these are all that is available to us in the discussion of women's issues in Syria, because there are no exact numbers we can use to describe any phenomenon. All we have, instead, are numbers that are not based on research, but on guesswork. For example, the number of honor crimes or killings in Syria that is released to the public lies between 200 and 300 crimes per year.

Instigation by the Family:
Teenager Kills Sister in an Honor Crime

Yahya Alous
Translated by: Susanna Ferguson

Honor crimes continue to happen in Syria, as Syria remains without an orga- nization or authority to limit these crimes or, at the very least, to record their number and description. The crime highlighted in this article is a highly trad- itional one because the killer is a confused young man of less than fifteen yea- rs old (and thus, importantly, a minor in the eyes of the law

Arab Waman in religion and society

Hossain Awdat

Introduction

My sole sister among four brothers rejected to take her share of inheritance after the death of my father, in spite of my brothers' insistence. She stuck to that and hindered the distribution of the inheritance for more than twenty years. Her argument was that it was a shame on her to take a share of her father's inheritance from her male brothers, because they, as she believed, were more deserving, and that God had satisfied her and her husband with what he had endowed them, though, in reality, she and her husband were the poorest of us and in bad need for the inheritance, given the fact that it was an agricultural land and they were the only ones living in the village, while we all did not.

After the Shock: Living with War

By: Matthew McNaught
To many, the word ‘therapy’carries certain connotations. The butt of a hundred Hollywood jokes, it summons up images of neurotic New Yorkers lying on couches and explaining to their over-paid psychotherapists how their father didn't hug them enough. Yet for many people who have lived through war or other traumatic events, psychotherapy offers a lifeline, helping them rebuild their shattered lives and learn to function once again as confident, active human beings.

Marlene Bertrand: Building Shelters

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

Girl Solo in Arabia
Traveling in the Footsteps of Ibn Battuta

By: Matthew McNaught

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

Divorced and still yearning to return…

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

Family Oppression Once Again

By: Yahya Alous

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

Housing crisis robs women of right to motherhood

By: Lava Khalid

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

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