The Dutch activist participated in Maspalomas in the fifth annual meeting of the Ettakwa Muslim Women's Association
The international women's rights activist of Pakistani origin and living in the Netherlands, Shirin Musa, has demanded in Maspalomas that "marital captivity" be recognized as gender violence in Spanish judicial legislation, "because it constitutes a serious violation of the fundamental human rights against bicultural women.”
Musa founded the NGO 'Femmen For Fredom' in 2011, precisely after the Dutch courts coined that term when criminally sanctioning her ex-husband for not wanting to grant her a legal divorce according to talaq (Islamic divorce) despite having abandoned her. That refusal of hers, which deprived her of freedom under Muslim cultural and religious laws, made her a hostage to potential prosecution for adultery and bigamy in Pakistan in the event that she embarked on a new emotional relationship.
Shirin Musa spoke about 'marital captivity' and her own life experience, including the fight she undertook against it, during the keynote lecture she gave at the Casa Condal de Maspalomas last Saturday, within the framework of the program of activities organized by the Ettaakwa Muslim Women's Association on the occasion of its annual meeting, of which five editions have already been held.
This defender of Muslim women's rights maintains that marital captivity occurs more clearly in women from migrant and refugee communities, and warns that it is a problem that also occurs in many other countries and religious traditions. She claims that it would have to be recognized in order to empower women who are forced to marry, or who are trapped and in legal limbo when they are abandoned. She demanded that it be assumed by Spanish legislation and authorities as has already been admitted in Holland and within the Council of Europe.
Shirin Musa also spoke about this same issue in the conference “Eat, pray, resist and act, emancipation and empowerment of bicultural women from migrant and refugee communities” that she gave in English and with simultaneous translation in the Humanities Annex of the ULPGC, organized last Thursday by the Faculty of Translation and Interpretation in collaboration with the Ettakwa collective and the Spanish National Muslim Board. She insists that violence and cultural and religious discrimination against women “is unacceptable and should be eradicated.”
