Hey, Students...

do you want to leave Fluffytown for a while and study abroad, well... overseas, I mean?

Various scholarships info for study abroad, the latest info includes Ambassadorial scholarships, Junior Research Fellowships -Trinity College Cambridge, UK , The International Centre of Excellence in Tourism and Hospitality Education Scholarship – Australia , Swiss scholarships for university studies, CIMO Fellowships – Finland , and AYF Fellowship-JAPAN (2007) , detail at :

http://internationa l-scholarships- portal.blogspot. com/

best,

Trilala.

the Duke at Gaffa

What's more stimulating than a magazine you don't agree with and can engage with in a polemic without the machine-guns? 
@gaffa

:::DUKE Magazine Debut Issue:::

Launch Party

By Raquel Welch and Emily Hunt

Launching Thursday 7th December 6-9pm

(Exhibition runs until Dec 12)

What is DUKE Magazine?

DUKE Magazine is an Absurd Art /
Thrift Fashion Magazine, 

self-published

through a collaboration between
artists Raquel Welch
and Emily Hunt. 

The name DUKE Magazine is drawn from
our favourite David
Bowie character 

The Thin White Duke and our fixation
with European Royalty.

Inspired by Girls Annuals from the 1970’s and 80’s
in both content and design, DUKE Magazine focuses on
Thrift Culture and the Art of Collecting.

The debut issue includes features on emerging artists
from Sydney and Melbourne, a Warhol-esque look at
celebrity culture, interviews with interesting
characters, thrift fashion dress-ups and style pages, 

fotosex novellas and even a centrefold man.

DUKE Magazine says what others don’t dare. It is an offensive and

entertaining journal which delivers it’s message with biting humour and

brutal honesty. A Magazine with an opinion!

Female Voices in Islam

Wouldn't it be exciting if a woman issued a fatwa against tha author of violence, domestic or political?

Bringing a Female Voice to Islamic Law

Posted by: "Ayu Ratih"

Wed Nov 22, 2006 3:07 pm (PST)

A Bid to Bring the Female Voice to Islamic Law

By Ben Arnold, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

photo: Laying Plans: Muslim women from 25 countries met over
the weekend in New York to talk over plans for an all-female
council that would weigh in with its interpretations of
Islamic law. Melanie Stetson Freeman - Staff

NEW YORK -- For centuries, devout Muslims have looked to the
fatwa - an opinion based on religious reasoning of a learned
individual or committee - for direction on how to resolve
moral dilemmas ranging from the mundane to the sublime. And
for centuries, Muslim women have conceded the ground, for
the most part, to the men who issue these opinions.

That's beginning to change.

Meeting in New York over the weekend, Muslim women from 25
countries began laying groundwork for the first
international all-female council formed to issue fatwas.
Their idea: to ensure that women's perspectives on Islamic
law become part of religious deliberation in the Muslim
world - particularly on issues such as domestic violence,
divorce, and inheritance.

"There's this growing sense on the part of literate Muslim
women ... that there is a vital need for women to confront
the Islamic tradition and to work on a par with men in
interpreting the sources," says Ann Mayer, an expert in
Middle Eastern law at the University of Pennsylvania' s
Wharton School of Business. "Otherwise you end up with a
very sexist bias in the readings."

The number of women officially sanctioned to issue fatwas is
hard to pin down, but certainly tiny. The emergence of such
women, known as muftias, usually makes headlines: A
religious school in India installed three in 2003, and the
Turkish government last year hired two assistant muftias,
its first. Governments and schools try to license who can
issue fatwas, but Islam stipulates only certain
prerequisites, such as knowledge of the Koran and Arabic. As
a result, the ranks of unofficial authorities are deeper and
the barriers to women surmountable.

Whether the opinions of a women's council will carry any
weight, especially in conservative cultures, is another
matter.

Its advent is proving to be controversial even among Muslim
women who share many goals of those launching the council.

"Advancing the idea of reinterpreting the texts has to be
done, but I am totally against this initiative because it
will have negative effects," says Rebab al-Mahdi, a
political scientist at the American University in Cairo. It
will be portrayed as part of "a Western cultural invasion,"
she adds. "This is what conservative clerics always say, and
people listen."

For others, doubt is mingled with hope.

"I share some cynicism, but at the same moment, symbols are
sometimes important," says Pakistani-born Asma Barlas, a
politics professor at Ithaca College in New York and a
prominent advocate of jettisoning what she calls male-
centric and incorrect interpretations of the Koran. "These
little steps, ... even if they don't change anything, do
send a message that women are getting together and trying to
make their voices heard."

The group is also up against the inertia of tradition.
Throughout history, few Muslim women were prominent jurists,
though scholars are uncovering more, including, some say,
Aisha, the prophet Muhammad's wife. Some question whether
much within the religion is open to new interpretation and,
by extension, reform. Others note that fatwas are nonbinding
and may have little effect on civil law and state judgments.

Still, Muslim women have recently brought change by citing
the Koran and other Islamic sources:

• In Malaysia, a group called Sisters in Islam used Koranic
scholarship to rebuff efforts to exclude Muslims from a
domestic-abuse law.

• In Saudi Arabia, an effort this summer to push women
further back at a crowded holy site in Mecca was thwarted
with the help of a female Islamic scholar's arguments.

• In the United States, the forthcoming English translation
of the Koran by a woman, the first ever, finds an alternate
meaning in a verse widely interpreted to give husbands
authority to beat their wives as a last resort.

photo: Midday Prayer: Muslim women take a break from
deliberations on forming the world's first all-female shura
council. It's a controversial plan, even among reform-minded
Muslims. Melanie Stetson Freeman - Staff

The New York gathering, called the Women's Islamic
Initiative in Spirituality and Equity, plans to seat the new
council - perhaps seven members - within a year. Drawn from
diverse schools within Islam, the members will be versed in
Islamic law. The group also plans to give scholarships for
more women to pursue advanced training - open to women in
places like Morocco, Egypt, and Iran - in an effort to
broaden the qualified pool.

"Islam is a religion of law, and it is important to express
the principles of social justice within the framework of
Islamic law," says Daisy Khan, executive director of the
American Society for Muslim Advancement and leader of the
effort. "This is why we need muftias, in order to do that.
Otherwise, it falls on deaf ears."

Traditionally, religious legal authority was local, vested
in muftis and other leaders who attained their status via
government appointment or community esteem. But today's
global communications are challenging that, as more Muslims
seek religious opinions far and wide through the Internet.
The women's council takes advantage of this: Its members
will be in different places, taking questions and conferring
over the Web.

Given this wider marketplace of ideas, the new council's
credibility will be determined by the quality of its legal
reasoning, and whether its logic strikes a chord, say
several scholars and observers.

"There is a sense among many Muslims - particularly, but not
exclusively, women - that Islamic jurists are out of touch,
that their guidance is not adequate to the modern world. And
if this shura council succeeds in bridging that gap, it may
be speaking to an audience that doesn't currently consider
itself bound by the pronouncements of existing groups," says
Kecia Ali, assistant professor of religion at Boston
University.

"But this is going to be a tremendously challenging task
because religious authority, even scholarly authority, has
always been contested," she adds. "It is in matters related
to women, marriage, sexuality that Muslim intellectuals on
both conservative and modernist sides of the spectrum have
chosen to wage their epic battle."

For others, the council has a credibility problem right out
of the gate. "It should not have happened in New York,
because it will set back the agenda of women given the
current political upheaval [over the Iraq war]," says
Mohammad Reda, a Syrian-American Muslim in the Boston area
often sought out for his religious opinions. He supports the
idea that "women should stand up and give their own opinions
on women's issues," but says American efforts to force
change in the Muslim world, as in Iraq, mean reformers now
must avoid links to the US. The New York conference used
money from nongovernmental foundations, some based in the
US.

Conference attendees say a muftia council could prompt wider
support for women's struggles. "The women who we're trying
to help, for them religion is very important," says Zainah
Anwar, head of the Malaysian group Sisters in Islam. "It's
empowering for them to know that their desire to not be
beaten by their husband can actually be justified in the
name of Islam."