Zakia Soman is a founder member of Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, a community platform with over 20,000 members. The Andolan recently completed a survey on the aspirations of Muslim women with the support of ActionAid. Soman spoke to Humra Quraishi:  Why did you undertake this study? We have felt for a long time that Muslim girls are neglected and their voices, opinions and needs overlooked.  Their families give them least priority and the state acts as if they don’t exist.  Educated and empowered young women can play a key role in transforming the community.  It is the most promising and the most deserving section of our society, which needs to be heard.

Women’s groups in Malaysia are lobbying the country’s government to make child marriages illegal and raise the minimum age for marriage to 18.  The move follows a decision by the state government of Malacca to allow under-age marriages as a way of preventing the abandonment of babies, and unwanted pregnancies.  Under Malaysian law, Muslim couples wanting to marry must first be tested for the HIV virus.  Ivy Josiah from Malaysia’s Women’s Aid Organisation, says it is this examination that alerted women’s groups to the number of under-age girls getting married.

The announcement by the Prime Minister during the 12th Syariah Officers Conference in July, on the appointment of two women as judges in the Syariah court, has been applauded by many women-related NGOs. Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak hoped that “these appointments (as Federal Territory of Putrajaya and Kuala Lumpur Syariah court judges) would enhance justice in all cases, including those involving families and women’s rights.”

It is 5:50 in the morning, and dark shadows scurry through narrow alleys to the mosque, as the call to prayer echoes from a minaret in Kaifeng. This city in central China’s Henan province has an Islamic enclave, where Muslims have lived for more than 1,000 years.  In an alleyway called Wangjia hutong, women go to their own mosque, where Yao Baoxia leads prayers. For 14 years, Yao has been a female imam, or ahong as they are called here, a word derived from Persian.