Tawkkol A. Karman—a member of the Majlis al-Shura (Consultative Assemby) at the Islamist party Islah and the chairwoman of Women Journalists Without Chains—is the focus of the Yemen Observer’s third interview discussing the Vice and Virtue Committee’s fatwa on women in politics:
Many ‘ulama support women’s right to become president if they want to, but now al-Zindani speaks and everyone gets upset, but he is just one person, one opinion. He has the right to express whatever he wants, is his own right of expression, but in the end we are the ones making out of his words and acts something bigger. I think women’s organizations that denounced so much the fatwa and the Virtue Authority were wrong when they shouted about it. This authority became bigger because these denunciations made it bigger, but their fatwa does not make sense, is one among many others, and they are just another NGO.
Read the full interview with Karman here.