Jezebel: Yemen

The Most Inspirational Moments From The Nobel Peace Prize Award Ceremony

Cassie Murdoch — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 16:05:00 EST

Yemeni Women Burn Veils To Protest Government Crackdown

Margaret Hartmann — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 23:35:00 EDT

Thousands of women took to the streets of Yemen today and burned their veils, but not because they're against wearing the traditional coverings. For Bedouin tribes burning garments is a symbolic gesture that signifies an appeal to fellow tribesmen for help. The women oppose President Ali Abdullah Saleh's violent crackdown on anti-government protesters, and are hoping to draw the attention of tribal leaders and the international community. More »

Women In Yemen Severely Injured While Celebrating Peace Prize Winner

Dodai Stewart — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 16:45:00 EDT

On Friday, Tawakkul Karman of Yemen was one of three women awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Today, at a march in her honor, at least 38 women were injured by men throwing rocks. CNN reports that the perpetrators were "pro-government thugs." More »

Three Female Leaders Win Nobel Peace Prize

Anna North — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 11:20:00 EDT

For the first time since Wangari Maathai, who passed away last month, a woman has won the Nobel Peace Prize. Three women, to be exact — Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee of Liberia, and Tawakul Karman of Yemen. More »

Child Brides, In Their Own Words

Irin Carmon — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 19:15:00 EDT

From a National Geographic essay accompanying an equally devastating photo series on child brides, on one girl married at eight: "She had been keeping a diary throughout high school. One of the entries read, in carefully lettered Hindi: 'In front of my eyes, I'll never ever allow child marriages to happen. I'll save each and every girl.'" More »

Inked Youth Make Their Own Runway

Margaret Hartmann — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 10:48:00 EST

[Yemen, November 17: Children dressed in new clothes play in an alley on the second day of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, or Feast of the Sacrifice. Image via AP.]

"In Our Country It's The Men Who Give The Orders, And The Women Who Follow Them"

Katy Kelleher — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:20:00 EST

Nujood Ali, the brave 8-year-old girl who demanded a divorce from her rapist husband, has published a memoir. I am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced is a best-seller in France, but Nujood can't wait to see it in Arabic. [NYT] More »

Head And Shoulders

Anna Holmes — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:10:00 EST

[Mazraq, Yemen; November 12. Image via Getty]

Branching Out

Anna Holmes — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:10:00 EDT

[Marzaq Camp, Yemen; October 19. Image via Getty]

"Australian Fritzl" Makes Headlines After 30 Years Of Abuse • Man Wins Ladies' Poker Tournament

Katy Kelleher — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:40:00 EDT

• A man from Australia has been named the "Aussie Fritzl" after police discovered that he raped his daughter repeatedly over the course of 30 years and fathered four children with her. More »

After Divorce, Life Is Still Bleak For Former Child Bride

Katy Kelleher — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:40:00 EDT

Two years ago, Nujood Ali's story made the 8-year-old child bride famous. She appeared on multiple television and award shoes, and in 2008, Glamour named her their "woman" of the year. But despite the fame, little has changed for Nujood. More »

Gilding The Lily

Sadie Stein — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 11:40:00 EDT

Reuters reports that Yemen has seen a small revolution in abayas. New models, as seen in the clip at the link, feature embellishment, detail, and decoration that's anything but retiring, and are proving a hit. [Reuters] More »

10-Year-Old Divorcee Goes Back To School • Mom Helps Son Create A Weapons Cache

Maria — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 17:30:00 EDT

• 10-year-old Yemeni divorcee Nujood Ali went back to school this month where she plans to study drawing and math; eventually, she hopes to become a lawyer. • A Pennsylvania mother admitted to helping her 14-year-old son build a cache of weapons to fend off school bullies. • Jason Donovan, a former star of Neighbours and ex-boyfriend of his co-star Kylie Minogue, says that Kylie dumped him in the '80s over the telephone. • Zookeepers in Ukraine have sent abandoned tigers to a nearby pig farm to be nursed by the mama pigs. • More »

McCain Surrogate Carly "SNL Was Sexist" Fiorina Goes Out With A Bang

Megan Carpentier — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:00:00 EDT

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Oh, did you hear? Carly Fiorina has canceled all her remaining television appearances this week and will be taking a short media-oxygen-free nap due to some little things she said yesterday. Other people that should join her in her media-vacuum? Maureen Dowd, who Jason Linkins totally Rick-Rolled me with this morning, and our favorite elitist-against-elitism Clinton/McCain supporter Lynn Forester de Rothschild. All that, plus we find out that the U.S. Embassy in Yemen was bombed and we dismiss it almost as fast as real cable newspeople (but with our sad faces in place, just like them!) and a recommendation for Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey. More »

Remember when 8-year-old Yemeni Nojoud Muhammed...

Jessica G. — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 10:20:00 EDT

Remember when 8-year-old Yemeni Nojoud Muhammed Nasser (pictured) filed for divorce against the 28-year-old perv she was forced to marry, and that divorce was granted? Well let's hope this as yet unnamed 8-year-old Saudi girl meets the same fate as Nasser. According to the BBC the Saudi girl in question was married off by her father to a man in his 50s without her knowledge. The girl's mother is pushing for an annulment, but the father wants the marriage to remain valid. [BBC] More »

Victory With A Veil

Maria — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 11:20:00 EDT

When watching the Olympics this year, don't be surprised if you see more veiled female athletes than before. The Beijing Games will see eleven female athletes from predominately Muslim countries who are opting to wear specially-designed hijabs while they compete. While countries like Saudi Arabia and Brunei do not allow women to officially participate in competitive sports, countries including Egypt, the UAE, Iran, Afghanistan, and Yemen are all sending female athletes to the Games, some for the first time. Roqaya Al Ghasara from Bahrain is perhaps the highest-profile female Muslim athlete; she won the gold in the West Asian Games for sprinting in 2005. She hopes that showing she can compete well in a hijab will break Western stereotypes of Muslim women. [Reuters] More »

Bigger Than Burning Man.

Moe — Mon, 19 May 2008 10:00:00 EDT

Seventy five thousand people showed up to see Obama's biggest yet speech in Portland, Oregon yesterday. Firstly, that represents something like one-seventh the entire population of Portland and undoubtedly the biggest-ever congregation of fixed-gear bicycles. In fact, the crowd was bigger than pretty much any outdoor rock concert including Burning Man (though not including the Stones at Altamont Speedway) and it was in a city, a city we can only imagine smells kind of awful right now, if only because the coffee in Portland lends itself to really foul shits. Anyway, a friend of mine used to call Portland "White People Gone Wild." It is not such a terrible shock this crowd digs Obama. So as this woeful chapter in our nation's history concludes I can only hope the WPGW contingent will stop saying ludicrous things like the election of John McCain would be "eight more years" of Bush. To say such a thing cheapens the trauma of the World's Worst Presidency and further tries our almost thoroughly bankrupt national capacity for nuance, a capacity Obama is trying to restore. That and lots more with Megan and I, after the jump. More »

Is It "Mocking A Culture" To Talk About Piss?

Moe — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 13:30:00 EDT

"I've personally never taken Jezebel seriously and this is just reinforcing that decision," reads a comment on a Racialicious post about that thing I hastily wrote about Yemen. Well, you know? Good. Because I don't have time to take Jezebel seriously. If I did, I would never have posted that IM exchange. I would have waited to have the time to tackle some questions more complex than "So tell me about the amphetamines!" I was honestly hoping to revisit Sarah for a much more nuanced picture of the situation. But she needed to go and I needed to post and I wrote a silly, superficial joke-laden missive meant simply to draw the attention of readers who had not seen my earlier posts to the problems of people who are not Lauren Conrad. I wanted to remind readers that they should probably find out more. So let's start with the ever-present stench of urine, because that seemed to get a lot of people riled up. More »

This Week We Dealt With A Load Of Crap

Jessica G. — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:20:00 EDT

Slut Machine took one for the team and Intern Betty filmed her getting a colonic. Crappy hour indeed.

Sarah Left Women's Magazines To Try And Learn "Why They Hate Us." She Could Use A Drink.

Moe — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 15:00:00 EDT

Meet Sarah. She used to live in New York and cover fashion for women's magazines. Then she moved to Yemen. What's Yemen? Just a little country where prisoners go to when they get released from Guantanamo, where Al Qaeda is like the Beatles, where eight-year-olds have to go to court to get their own divorces and where women aren't allowed to laugh in public. They've been trying to blow up foreigners lately in Yemen, and the Embassy and its stash of liquor is gone for the moment, but Sarah is sticking around because the food is cheap and she never really liked showing her hair or speaking in public that much to begin with. Herewith, an IM interview with Yemenista, the only Jezebel reader with ready access to qat. It's nature's adderall. More »

8-Year-Old Yemeni Girl Wins Divorce From Gross Husband

Moe — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 17:00:00 EDT

Nojoud Nasser, the 8-year-old Yemeni kid who took her own pint-sized self to court to get a divorce from her 30-year-old pedophile husband, has won, but the Yemeni parliament does not really see any point in passing laws to prevent parents from selling their elementary school-aged daughters to pervs, perhaps because, even though the average marriage age has fallen to fourteen, it's still a lot higher than 10, which it was a few generations ago. But one crusading politician, the Islah Party's Fuad Dahaba, is pressing for a law. "If it is my personal opinion I believe 18 is the right age, because marriage is such a big responsibility," he says. Eighteen! What a mensch. We Googled him. And! We learned about a run-in he had with another sort of fearless Arab heroine that kinda tells you a lot about the Middle East, God, & life, etc.! More »

This Week We Hung Out With A Lot Of Child Molesters

Jessica G. — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 18:00:00 EDT

We were so into the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints and their Yearning For Zion Ranch, where girls in their early teens get married off to gross molesty old men with multiple other wives, none of whom are allowed to wear red because that's Jesus' color.

8-Year-Old In Yemen Takes Abusive 30-Year-Old Husband To Court, And Wins!

Moe — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:00:00 EDT

Nojoud Muhammed Nasser wants a divorce. She is eight years old, and really too cute to be illustrating an angry feminist rant, but I guess that's sort of the point: Nasser's dad married her off to a thirty-year-old child molester, and while that sort of thing is perfectly legal in Yemen since they amended the marital age limit laws in 1999, the molester was not supposed to try to actually molest her, according to the law, until she was "mature." Remarkably, he did not comply. It's a tossup who is the more reprehensible man in this story: the husband —"Whenever I wanted to play in the yard he beat me and asked me to go to the bedroom with him," she tells the Yemen Times, or the dad, who "beat me and told me that I must marry this man, and if I did not, I would be raped and no law and no sheikh in this country would help me" — until you learn her dad is a beggar who probably has mental problems. Some interesting context re the Yemen Times: they employ columnist Maged Thabet Al-Kholidy, author of the recent internet sensation: "There Must Be Violence Against Women." More »

The Ground Rules For Wifebeating, Brought To You By The Yemen Times

Moe — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 14:00:59 EST

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"This title may sound strange, but it's actually not just a way to attract readers to the topic," writes one Maged Thabet Al-Kholidy in the Yemen Times, which we totally read all the time even if Maged hadn't decided to call his piece "There Must Be Violence Against Women." Because he's not kidding! Maged, who writes a column called "Through The Mind's Eye" thinks it's pretty preposterous for human rights organizations to urge battered wives and abuse victims to go to the police. What's his rationale?

According to them, women should complain to the courts about any type of violence against them. Likewise, should fathers and brothers complain to police if their daughters or sisters violate moral, Islamic or social norms?

Um, probably not — though it could make for a pretty humorous 911 dispatcher exchange? Anyway, Maged's column is pretty unbelievable all the way through until you do some Googling and try to put it in context. See, the Yemen Times appears to be on some sort of crusade to "humanize" men who find themselves imprisoned for assault. And why do I get the sense that Maged is one of the paper's more, uh, enlightened contributors? More »