Word: muhammad
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...wives of the Prophet Muhammad were vibrant, outspoken women. His first, Khadija, ran a prosperous trading business and at one point was Muhammad's employer. A'isha, the Prophet's favorite, was at various times a judge, a political activist and a warrior. Among Muhammad's 11 other wives and concubines were a leatherworker, an imam and an advocate of the downtrodden, revered in her day as the "Mother of the Poor...
Some women hold relatively high positions in Muslim countries today. But if the wives of Muhammad lived in parts of the contemporary Islamic world, they might be paying a high price for their independence. Consider events in the refugee centers of Peshawar, Pakistan, where more than a dozen Afghan women have been "disappeared" by radical Islamic groups for the crime of working in women's centers or with foreign aid organizations; or an episode in the Algerian town of Mascara, where a Muslim nurse was doused with alcohol and set on fire by her brother, who was furious with...
Some Muslim women argue that the zealots are perverting the very religion they claim to hold so dear. "This terrifying image of unhappy women covered in veils is not Islam," says Leila Aslaoui, an Algerian magistrate. Certainly, Muhammad was a liberal man for his time. He helped out around his various households, mended his own clothes and believed sexual satisfaction was a woman's right. The religion he founded outlawed female infanticide, made the education of girls a sacred duty and established a woman's right to own and inherit property...
...Muhammad Yunus, founder of Bangladesh's Grameen Bank, popularized this simple idea: give small "peer groups" the credit they need to start their own businesses. They then act as a combination credit committee and collection agency: if one member defaults, the others must pay back the money. The average Grameen loan is $67, and the repayment rate is 98%. Among those groups following his lead was Chicago's Neighborhood Institute, which gave Rickenbacker her loan, formed her peer group and sponsored a 13-week entrepreneurial-trainin g class...
Madani's party has put forward no concrete proposal to deal with Algeria's sagging economy. There is no guarantee that he can control the radicals, like those who took to the streets last week chanting, "Oh, Jews! The army of Muhammad will return!" And his party's aim to establish the Islamic legal code, known as the shari'a, conjures visions of public amputations. Middle- class women are particularly anxious: Madani has proposed that women be paid to stay home and not compete in the tight job market...