Category Archives: Hijab

Hijab and soccer: another red card

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Safaa MenhamThe family of a 14-year-old girl is demanding an apology from a referee who refused to allow her to play indoor soccer while wearing a religious head scarf. But the head of referee development for Alberta’s governing soccer body says wearing hijabs can pose a threat to player safety.

Safaa Menhem arrived late in the first half of her game with the Chinook Phantom under-16 girls team at the Calgary Soccer Centre Saturday. After her first shift in the game, the referee told the coach she couldn’t play if she wore her hijab.

At half time, the rest of the team – with the support of parents in the stands – threatened to forfeit the game in protest, but Menhem urged them to keep playing. “She walked off the field with her head down in tears thinking she’d done something wrong, which she hadn’t,” said her eldest brother Hekmet Menhem, 27, who may face disciplinary action for confronting the referee on the field. “The look I saw on her face when she came off killed me. That’s when I snapped.”

Montreal Gazette, 25 November 2007

The politics of the veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Politics of the Veil“‘A kind of aggression’. ‘successor to the Berlin Wall’. ‘lever in the long power struggle between democratic values and fundamentalism’. ‘An insult to education’. ‘A terrorist operation’. These descriptions – by former French President Jacques Chirac; economist Jacques Attali; and philosophers Bernard-Henri Lévy, Alain Finkielkraut and André Glucksmann – do not refer to the next great menace to human civilization but rather to the Muslim woman’s headscarf, which covers the hair and neck, or, as it is known in France, the foulard islamique.”

Laila Lalami reviews Joan Wallach Scott’s recently published book The Politics of the Veil.

The Nation, 21 November 2007

Hijab-wearing girl blocked from judo match

Posted on by Bob Pitt

WINNIPEG — Manitoba’s sport minister has ordered the agency that governs provincial sports to review a decision that banned an 11-year-old girl from a judo tournament because she wore a Muslim head scarf. “I’ve asked Sport Manitoba to become engaged here and find out what the deal is and come to a resolution in short order,” Eric Robinson told the Winnipeg Free Press yesterday.

Hagar Outbih left a judo tournament in tears Saturday when judo officials in Winnipeg refused to let her fight while wearing the hijab. The girl said she couldn’t believe sports officials would ban her because she wore a head scarf. Safety, not religious reasons, determined the decision, said Judo Manitoba president Dave Minuk. “It could be used to strangle somebody,” he said.

Canadian Press, 19 November 2007

‘The abuse of Muslim women shames us all’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Yet another anti-Muslim piece in today’s Observer from Jasper Gerard who tells us that “it’s not racist to defend Asian women who need help”, although it’s unclear how his insistence on criticising the Muslim community (or “Islamic sorts” to employ Gerard’s preferred term) provides any help at all to Asian women. On the contrary, it merely legitimises the prevailing culture of anti-Muslim bigotry, of which hijab-wearing Muslim women in particular are the frequent victims.

But what can you expect from a writer whose response to the Eagleton-Amis controversy was to opine that “it’s a blessed relief that Amis and co have latched on to Islam” and assert that “Eagleton, not Amis, is the problem”? As for racism, perhaps Gerard might ask himself how he would characterise a non-Jewish journalist who demonstrated a similar obsession with criticising the Jewish community.

Gerard observes that “a study claims to show an analysis of British media reports on Islam demonise Muslims. I’m sure this article will also be chalked up as another ‘attack’.” Only too happy to oblige, Jasper.

Veil bill ‘misses target’ say Canadian Liberals

Posted on by Bob Pitt

OTTAWA – Liberals have lost their enthusiasm for forcing veiled Muslim women to show their faces if they want to vote in federal elections. Some Grit MPs now admit the party was wrong to jump on the bandwagon two months ago, joining the three other federal parties in demanding that Elections Canada insist all voters uncover their faces.

At the time, the parties were contesting three crucial by-elections in Quebec, where the issue of veiled voters was part of a heated debate over how far the province should go in accommodating immigrants.

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion was among those who initially urged Elections Canada to revisit its decision not to compel by-election voters to show their faces. But now that the Tory government has introduced legislation to require precisely that, Mr. Dion is hinting that Liberals won’t support it.

Moncton MP Brian Murphy, who led off debate for the Liberals on the bill, suggested the issue of veiled voters is a tempest in a teapot. He said the legislation is unnecessary, that it targets Muslim women, and possibly violates equality guarantees in the Charter of Rights.

Canadian Press, 16 November 2007

Quebec mother considers teachers in hijabs a threat

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Reminding them of the Christian name of where they were – on Île Jésus – a young mother yesterday urged the chairmen of Quebec’s “reasonable accommodations” commission not to forget their Roman Catholic heritage. Geneviève April also had a warning for Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor: Don’t promote the rise of Islam in Quebec, because it will erode the identity of young French Canadians like her two children, who are exposed to it at school and daycare.

“As a mother, I’m very worried,” said April, 30, whose young son attends a multi-ethnic school that is 70-per-cent allophone and where the pupils are of 45 nationalities. “Children are sponges, and if my children are taught by someone (who is Muslim), they’ll start asking themselves who they are,” said April, the first of two dozen people who addressed the commission yesterday in Laval.

Teachers and daycare workers in hijabs, for example, are a threat, because “children trust the people looking after them, and (wearing the hijab) is practically a kind of subversion, and I think that’s deplorable and shouldn’t be accepted.”

Bouchard, a veteran historian and sociologist who grew up Catholic in Chicoutimi, asked April whether it’s OK for parents to transmit their religion to their children. Absolutely, she replied, but “I don’t want Muslim parents transmitting their religion to my children.”

“Culture and religion are interrelated,” and whereas Islam has no roots here, “Quebec culture is completely filled with allusions to the Catholic religion,” she said, noting that the Highway 15 hotel where the Laval hearings are being held sits on Île Jésus.

At his multi-ethnic school, her son is “in a bath of cultures, and his identity will be put to the test,” April said. If his teacher wears a hijab and many of his classmates are Muslims, her son may one day decide to become Muslim himself, “just to be like his friends, and I wouldn’t like that,” April said.

“That’s why you’d like hijabs to be banned in schools?” Bouchard asked.

“Yes,” April replied.

Montreal Gazette, 15 November 2007

Call to ban council staff from wearing the burka

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A group of councillors are proposing that staff at Calderdale Council be banned from wearing the burka and niqab.

Coun Allen Clegg has demanded staff be stopped from wearing the religious Muslim dress because “it intimidates people.” He likened the niqab – the face veil – and the burka, the garment that cloaks the entire body, often including the face, to outfits worn by the Ku Klux Klan.

He told the Courier: “Council workers are often facing the public and I don’t think the public feels comfortable or safe facing someone they essentially cannot see. It’s a matter of common sense. How would you feel if a social worker turned up at your door wearing something that resembled a Ku Klux Klan outfit?”

Halifax Evening Courier, 12 November 2007

Denmark’s extreme right beefs up anti-immigrant line ahead of vote

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Dansk FolkepartiCOPENHAGEN — The Danish government’s far-right ally in parliament has made immigration, especially by Muslims, its main target of attacks ahead of next week’s legislative elections. In its election campaign for the November 13 poll, the Danish People’s Party (DPP) blasts Muslim immigrants for not respecting Danish traditions and for taking advantage of the Scandinavian country’s generous welfare system.

One poster shows a woman wearing a Muslim headscarf withdrawing money from a cash dispenser machine drawn with the logo of the welfare benefits office, with the caption: “Make demands on the foreigners. Now they must contribute!”. Another shows a group of veiled women under the headline: “Follow the country’s traditions and customs or leave.”

In a third poster, the party makes reference to the crisis sparked by the publication of caricatures of Prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper two years ago. The global row that followed lasted months and included attacks on Danish embassies, the burning of the country’s flag and boycotts of its products across the Muslim world. The poster shows a hand drawing the Prophet Mohammed, over the words: “Freedom of expression is Danish. Censorship is not. Defend Danish values.”

Therkel Straede, a Holocaust expert at Syddansk University, compared the party’s tactics to those used by the Nazis during World War II. “The DPP is not Nazi, but its ideology, with its xenophobic extreme nationalism, resembles Nazism, since it tries to stamp out a minority,” he said.

Two days after the government called snap elections for November 13, the DPP presented a series of law proposals aimed at Muslim immigrants, including bans on using the Muslim headscarf in public places and on special worship areas for Muslims in the workplace. The party also called for a ban on halal meat in daycare centres and on special locker rooms for Muslim schoolgirls.

“There is every reason to tighten the screws, because Danish values are under pressure,” said deputy head of the party Peter Skaarup, insisting that “these demands will at the end of the day be beneficial to the integration of immigrants.”

During the general elections in February 2005, the DPP won 13.3 percent of the votes, or 24 seats, making it the third-largest party in parliament and allowing it to wield significant influence on Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s Liberal-Conservative coalition government.

AFP, 11 November 2007

Bushra Noah case – ‘nothing to do with race or religion’ says Tory

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The owner of a hair salon in London’s King’s Cross is being sued for not hiring a Muslim girl who refused to take off her headscarf. Sarah Desrosiers, 32, runs Wedge, a salon specialising in cutting-edge, urban, punky styles. One glance at 19-year-old Bushra Noah will tell you she is none of those things.

“Yet she is suing for £15,000, claiming that she’s the victim of religious discrimination. Poppycock. This case has nothing to do with race or religion, but plenty to do with an ill-suited job applicant using their faith as a means to extort money aboard Britain’s Great Grievance Gravy Train. What next? Ugly Betty suing for not getting the top job at Vogue?”

William Hague’s former press secretary Amanda Platell in the Daily Mail, 10 November 2007