Ghada Jamsheer: Activist

Five years ago, Ghada Jamsheer was at the courts in Bahrain when she saw a woman sobbing and banging her head on the ground; applying Islamic law, a judge had just denied her custody of her children in a divorce case. Horrified, Jamsheer, herself a divorcée with custody of her daughter, launched a campaign for women's rights in the gulf. She founded and leads the Women's Petition Committee, a grassroots organization that is waging a bold campaign against Bahrain's Shari'a court system. With no staff, financial support or training in law or religion but enough guts to make an Emir tremble,...