The silent revolution: Women in Islam

On a fifth day of this year's festival we will turn to Morocco and the documentary Casablanca Calling. Anti-islam is ever so present in the Western media and this program aims to increase the understanding for Arab women's everyday life as well as highlight the relation between feminism and Islam.

Casablanca Calling is the story of a quiet social revolution in Morocco. In a country where over 60% of women have never been to school, a new generation of women have started work as official Muslim leaders. They are called Morchidats or spiritual guides.

We have invited Prof. Wendy Meryem Kural Shaw, in her lecture "How Change Happens: Visions of Feminism between Here and Elsewhere" she will tell us more about women's rights in North Africa:

The global struggles for racial and gender equality emerging from French revolutionary thought developed within a modern context of colonialism which mapped hierarchies of East and West onto other regions. As a primary site of French colonial domination, North Africa became a site in which the struggle for national independence and that for women's rights became deeply intertwined. Wendy Shaw will consider the state intervention engaged through the Mordichat program explored in this documentary film within the context of women's rights in North Africa from the painting of Eugene Delacroix, Pablo Picasso, and Houria Niati; the analysis of Franz Fanon; and contemporary European equations between women's rights and the veil.

Turkish writer Göksu Kunak has shared a text with us which will be distributed to all guests to interpret in silence.

Event Info:
Date: Tuesday 10th of March 2015
Time: 8.30pm (Doors from 7.30pm)
Venue: Urban Spree (Revaler Str 99, Friedrichsain)
Tickets: €6

More about the film:
www.facebook.com/casablancacalling or www.casablancacalling.com