An Afghan woman who escaped from the Communists, and her younger sister, who fled the Taliban only to be jailed by the INS, describe the changing circumstances for women in their homeland and their efforts to survive in exile.

We don’t achieve everything we want and sometimes when we fail to fulfil the dream we have been seeing for years or our loved one leaves us, we feel, the purpose of our life ends here. And some of us take a horrendous step like a suicide. Why? Sometimes destiny makes us to lose small battles so that we can win a war. The same happens when a serious personality aaditya fails to crack an IIM interview because of his own drawback, thus he wants to end his life. Then a girl enters in his life, who always hides herself behind a burqa. Why is she hiding her identity? Come... Dive into the life of a boy who fears a lot. Watch him crossing all the boundaries for the friendship and fall in love without seeing a face for that he believes... True love isn't about faces because... Pretty faces are merely better arrangement of biochemical.

“I lived in Afghanistan for five years. I learned the rules – I had to.” Riveting and fast paced, In the Land of Blue Burqas depicts sharing the love and truth of Christ with women living in Afghanistan, which has been called "the world's most dangerous country in which to be born a woman." These stories are honest and true. The harsh reality of their lives is not sugar-coated, and that adds to the impact of this book. Through storytelling, the author shows how people who don't know Christ come to see Him, His truth, and His beauty. The stories provide insight into how a Jesus-follower brought Jesus' teachings of the Kingdom of God to Afghanistan. They reveal the splendor of Christ, the desire of human hearts, and that precious instance where the two meet. All of the names ofthose involved—including Kate's—plus the locations have been changed to protect the participants.

The author examines the role of women in Oman culture

On September 11, 2001, the World changed forever when ruthless Al-Qaeda terrorists launched an aerial attack on the United States of America. Oblivious to the world’s terror, Kay and Kerry Danes sat half a world away, secure in an Embassy after a terrifying 11-month hostage ordeal in communist Laos. As fear gripped the globe, Kerry an Australian Special Forces soldier, comforted his wife Kay, as they struggled to come to terms with their hellish ordeal of torture, mock executions and the helplessness of leaving behind 58 political prisoners of a long forgotten war. The couple’s hopes focused only on seeing their children again. In the years after regaining their freedom and working to re-piece together family life, Kerry returned to active duty with the Special Forces and Kay turned her dark experiences towards creating social justice, over the years becoming a leading international humanitarian. In November 2008, amidst haunting memories of her Laos ordeal, Kay faced her fears and embarked on a humanitarian aid mission to deliver life-changing opportunities and aid to people devastated in war-torn Afghanistan. In an old dusty Toyota mini-van, armed only with hope, Kay and her companions, a florist from Arizona, a nurse from Texas, a public servant from Australia and a US Marine Korean War veteran, drove the ancient Silk Road amidst kidnappings, suicide bombings, carnage and chaos. This powerful story will have you gripping your chair and holding your breath, as you travel with Kay through Taliban strongholds and the remote wastelands of Al Qaeda terrorists. Her story provides a rare glimpse of places we may never visit and the courageous Afghan people determined to persevere against overwhelming odds. Beneath the Pale Blue Burqa is a truly inspiring journey and an important contribution to the selfless efforts of all who have gone before to brave the perils of Afghanistan. Foreword - By Afghan Ambassador to the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

Soon after the fall of the Taliban, in 2001, Deborah Rodriguez went to Afghanistan as part of a group offering humanitarian aid to this war-torn nation. Surrounded by men and women whose skills–as doctors, nurses, and therapists–seemed eminently more practical than her own, Rodriguez, a hairdresser and mother of two from Michigan, despaired of being of any real use. Yet she soon found she had a gift for befriending Afghans, and once her profession became known she was eagerly sought out by Westerners desperate for a good haircut and by Afghan women, who have a long and proud tradition of running their own beauty salons. Thus an idea was born. With the help of corporate and international sponsors, the Kabul Beauty School welcomed its first class in 2003. Well meaning but sometimes brazen, Rodriguez stumbled through language barriers, overstepped cultural customs, and constantly juggled the challenges of a postwar nation even as she learned how to empower her students to become their families’ breadwinners by learning the fundamentals of coloring techniques, haircutting, and makeup. Yet within the small haven of the beauty school, the line between teacher and student quickly blurred as these vibrant women shared with Rodriguez their stories and their hearts: the newlywed who faked her virginity on her wedding night, the twelve-year-old bride sold into marriage to pay her family’s debts, the Taliban member’s wife who pursued her training despite her husband’s constant beatings. Through these and other stories, Rodriguez found the strength to leave her own unhealthy marriage and allow herself to love again, Afghan style. With warmth and humor, Rodriguez details the lushness of a seemingly desolate region and reveals the magnificence behind the burqa. Kabul Beauty School is a remarkable tale of an extraordinary community of women who come together and learn the arts of perms, friendship, and freedom.

The book goes behind the scenes into the lives of Muslim women, showing how these are very different from those of Western women and revealing the rules, pressures and tensions that they face. It describes how Islamic concepts of honour and shame can oppress and endanger women and how arranged and forced marriages can be life-threatening for them.

In 2004, the French government instituted a ban on the wearing of "conspicuous signs" of religious affiliation in public schools. Though the ban applies to everyone, it is aimed at Muslim girls wearing headscarves. Proponents of the law insist it upholds France's values of secular liberalism and regard the headscarf as symbolic of Islam's resistance to modernity. The Politics of the Veil is an explosive refutation of this view, one that bears important implications for us all. Joan Wallach Scott, the renowned pioneer of gender studies, argues that the law is symptomatic of France's failure to integrate its former colonial subjects as full citizens. She examines the long history of racism behind the law as well as the ideological barriers thrown up against Muslim assimilation. She emphasizes the conflicting approaches to sexuality that lie at the heart of the debate--how French supporters of the ban view sexual openness as the standard for normalcy, emancipation, and individuality, and the sexual modesty implicit in the headscarf as proof that Muslims can never become fully French. Scott maintains that the law, far from reconciling religious and ethnic differences, only exacerbates them. She shows how the insistence on homogeneity is no longer feasible for France--or the West in general--and how it creates the very "clash of civilizations" said to be at the root of these tensions. The Politics of the Veil calls for a new vision of community where common ground is found amid our differences, and where the embracing of diversity--not its suppression--is recognized as the best path to social harmony.

Seventeen Muslim women speaking frankly about the hijab and wavering faith, about love and divorce, about feminism, queer identity, sex, and the twin threats of a disapproving community and a racist country. With a mix of British and international women writers

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2020 "An exemplary work of investigative journalism." —Parul Sehgal, The New York Times The murder of a Pakistani social media star exposes a culture divided between accelerating modernity and imposed traditional values—and the tragedy of those caught in the middle. In 2016, Pakistan’s first social media celebrity, Qandeel Baloch, was murdered in a suspected honor killing. Her death quickly became a media sensation. It was both devastatingly routine and breathtakingly brutal, and in a new media landscape, it couldn’t be ignored. Qandeel had courted attention and outrage with a talent for self-promotion that earned her comparisons to Kim Kardashian—and made her the constant victim of harassment and death threats. Social media and reality television exist uneasily alongside honor killings and forced marriages in a rapidly, if unevenly, modernizing Pakistan, and Qandeel Baloch’s story became emblematic of the cultural divide. In this definitive and up-to-date account, Sanam Maher reconstructs the story of Qandeel’s life and explores the depth and range of her legacy from her impoverished hometown rankled by her infamy, to the aspiring fashion models who follow her footsteps, to the Internet activists resisting the same vicious online misogyny she faced. Maher depicts a society at a crossroads, where women serve as an easy scapegoat for its anxieties and dislocations, and teases apart the intrigue and myth-making of the Qandeel Baloch story to restore the humanity of the woman at its center.