MUSLIM WOMEN LEADERS FOR JUSTICE

Overview

KARAMAH EU’s ‘Muslim Women Leaders for Justice’ program (#MWLFJ) is a multifaceted project that aims at countering discrimination affecting Muslims, with a focus on Muslim women. Each aspect of the program focuses on specific target groups: Muslims affected by discrimination, organizations countering discrimination and the broader public.

The project is articulated around three tangible goals

Support opportunities for legal actions against discrimination in access to employment and education of Muslim women (and men), by providing ‘safe spaces’ to voice experiences of exclusion and strengthening legal awareness;

Encourage inclusive dialogue and address stereotypes of Muslim women (and Muslims more generally) as well as misrepresentations about (gender equality in) Islam by majority populations, especially in the educational sector, but also journalists and mainstream (women’s) organizations;  

Build strong and sustainable collaborations through opportunities for networking and knowledge sharing among civil society organizations with the aim to support the emergence of a wider coalition against discrimination affecting Muslim women (and men). 

For each of the three above mentioned goals KARAMAH EU achieved important milestones and successes

The main achievement of the project was the important impulse that we were able to give to the emergence of a solid and durable coalition to fight the discrimination affecting Muslim women on the national, but especially on the regional – Flemish – level.  

Opportunities for legal action were directly and indirectly supported through both our networking and coalition building activities catered for partner organisations and our activities for (potential) victims of discrimination aimed at strengthening legal awareness (workshops and booklet).

Concrete strategic legal action was introduced in the educational sector, as a major element of this project.  

Dialogue and positive public perception of Muslims and Muslim women in particular was supported through all of the project activities, and especially through the building bridges activities. 

The #MWLFJ
project comes in two stages

Legal action against the headscarf ban in Flemish public schools

Preparatory work and strategic litigation

 

The initial aim was to conduct a local and national awareness campaign to mobilize victims of Islamophobia, with a focus on Muslim women discriminated at work and at school in Belgium, so as to generate opportunities to engage…

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Awareness campaign to feed opportunitiesfor legal action

 

The awareness campaign was initially intended to feed opportunities for legal action. The strategic litigation required discretion, so the awareness campaign has been filled in differently and was disconnected from the timeline for the legal  

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Dialogue and legal awareness raising: A series of workshops

KARAMAH EU organized, a series of workshops, offering a safe space for victims of Islamophobia and discrimination to voice their experiences and raising (legal) awareness to face and counter discrimination and hostility. In total, 6 workshops were held (some were part of a cluster of workshops taking place on a single day). The workshops took place in Antwerp and Brussels.

Psychological impact of islamophobia and online hate speech workshops

Antwerp

 

On Saturday the 29th of April 2017 we organized a one day-long interactive activity (2 workshops) in Antwerp. In the morning, psychotherapist Birsen Taspinar, who has also written a book about the migration story of three Turkish women, held a workshop on the psychological …

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Brussels Masterclass I: Muslim women fight back

Legal awareness and safe space

 

On 7 and 8 October 2017, we have organized a two-day masterclass in Brussels, divided in three main parts : legal awareness, safe space and mobilization for social change.

We partnered up with ENAR, CCIB and MRAX to organize a cluster …

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Legal awareness workshop

Antwerp

 

On Sunday 23th April in Antwerp, we organized a training on legal awareness including a safe space where participants could share experiences of discriminations in general and of Islamophobia in particular. Invited experts provided the content to raise awareness about …

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Legal awareness booklet

 

Many documentations are available on what is islamophobia, who is targeted and how to fight against it. However, there is no concise document gathering all relevant and practical information build for a digital native audience. For this booklet we have …

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‘Building bridges’

inclusive interactive workshops and communicational tool 

Building Bridges workshop

On Sunday the 15th of October 2016  

We held our first ‘building bridges workshopWe involved partners who stride against post-colonialism, racism, discrimination, and islamophobia. Throughout the course of 10 months we held subsequent meetings with all partners …

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Brussels Masterclass II : ReSisters : when women from minorities reclaim their narrative

The co-building of the sustainable coalition through the launch of the website ReSisters. The website has been designed as a digital safe space dedicated for women from all minority groups …

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