CONFERENCE: Tehran Hosts Women's Rights Conference

At a summit for Muslim women Sunday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called feminism "a cry of protest of crushed women in a capitalist system," state media said.

Speaking at the third meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Tehran, Ahmadinejad criticized countries that prevent women from education, the Iranian Student News Agency, ISNA, said.

"Women are main victims of the ruling bullying policies, actually feminism is the cry of protest of crushed women in capitalism system," the Iranian president said.

On the eve of the three-day conference, Maryam Mojtahedzadeh, Ahmadinejad's adviser on women's affairs, said meetings will discuss challenges facing Muslim women in the world and ways to counter them, Press TV said. Other topics include examining ways of making women more independent in society, both financially and socially she said.

Representatives from 30 Muslim states including Lebanon, Egypt, Sudan, Syria, Somalia, Mali, Malaysia, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Bangladesh are attending the gathering.

The first biennial conference on Women's Role in the Development of OIC's 57 member states was in Istanbul in 2006. Cairo hosted the second event in 2008.