Education for Iraqi Women

IWPR has two articles up relating to the education of women in post-Saddam Iraq. This one tells how the destruction of women's dorms is forcing Iraqi women out of their colleges. When I was at Yarmouk University in Jordan, they told us that dorms were important for women so that parents would know their daughters' virtue was being protected while they studied. This article talks about the role of women in the revival of Shi'ite learning in the south. When you speak of learning and scholarship in Islam, you're talking about something that is at the very core of Islamic culture, and the people the American media refer to as "clerics" are more properly referred to as "Islamic scholars." The Shi'ite south is getting a lot of bad press on the women's right issue; it's good to see women playing a positive role in their cultural revival.