The Yemen Observer has published a series of interviews with Yemeni women in response to the recently created Vice and Virtue Committee (VVC). The Yemeni government recently proposed a law that would require the Parliament to be 15% female, and, in response, the VVC formed and issued a fatwa banning all women from politics. The first interview was with Hooria Mashoor, Deputy Chairperson of the Women National Committee, in which she said:

Some of the ‘ulama also support the idea of increasing women’s participation in politics with the quota system, so their vision on this issue varies. Above all, what is risky is that they are using our religion, which is a fundamental factor in our society, to convince people about things that are not present in Islam or in the Qur’an, and that our work or the work of human rights activists goes against Islam, but human right activist here are Muslims as well.

Read the full interview with Hooria Mashoor here.