Category Archives: Hijab

Hairdresser sued over Muslim headscarf ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bushra NoahA hair salon owner is being sued for religious discrimination after refusing a Muslim teenager a job as a stylist because she wore a headscarf.

Sarah Desrosiers said she refused 19-year-old Bushra Noah the position because it was an “absolutely basic” requirement that customers could see their stylist’s hair. The 32-year-old, whose “alternative” salon in London specialises in “urban, funky punky” cuts, has already spent £1,000 fighting the case. Miss Noah wants £15,000 for injury to her feelings plus an unspecified amount for lost earnings. She maintains that her headscarf is an integral part of her religious beliefs.

Miss Desrosiers, who denies any discrimination, said: “The essence of my line of work is the display of hair. To me, it’s absolutely basic that people should be able to see the stylist’s hair. It has nothing to do with religion. It is just unfortunate that for her covering her hair symbolises religion.”

Daily Telegraph, 9 November 2007

See also Evening Standard, 8 November 2007

‘Take your bloody veil off’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Muslim woman says she is scared to venture out after being ordered to take off her veil in a terrifying ordeal. Kauser Bibi was in Oldham Town Centre when she says a man began following her and asking her to take off her veil.

“I had just been to the Halifax bank when this guy started shouting ‘Oi’ at me. I just carried on walking and ignored him at first. Lots of people were there watching and no-one seemed to notice what was going on. He followed me and started shouting at me. I walked towards my car but then things got ugly.

“He kept saying ‘Take your bloody veil off – I want to see your face’. He stood in front of my car and then when I tried to reverse started kicking my car. He was really kicking the car door really hard. He was abusing me and saying all sorts of other things. I was crying and was so upset and panicked. I didn’t know what to do.”

Kauser of Blackburn who was in Oldham visiting her relatives says that passers-by then intervened and tried to pull him away but he wouldn’t listen to them. Police said a 50-year-old man from Oldham was arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated damage to a vehicle and was bailed, pending further inquiries.

Asian Image, 7 November 2007

PM is ‘playing cheap politics at the expense of Canadian Muslims’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Canadians could be forgiven for thinking veiled Muslim women pose an urgent threat to the integrity of our electoral system after Prime Minister Stephen Harper made one of his first priorities in the fall sitting of Parliament a bill to force voters to show their faces at the polls.

“But there is not one shred of evidence that such a problem existed in the first place. Even Harper’s Conservative government has admited ‘there was no apparent case of fraud’ in three federal by-elections that were held in September in Quebec, when unjustified hysteria over veiled Muslim women first boiled over. Yet that has not stopped Harper from trying to fix this imaginary problem by proposing changes to the country’s election law that would require voters to show their faces before they cast their ballots….

“Harper has tried to dress up the bill as a means to ‘enhance public confidence in the democratic process’. But it has nothing to do with electoral integrity and everything to do with pandering to narrow-minded fears about minorities…. Harper and other federal politicians are shamefully playing cheap politics at the expense of Canadian Muslims.”

Toronto Star, 4 November 2007

Thug who ripped off Muslim’s veil spared jail

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Damien FrenchA young North Wales thug who yanked off a Muslim woman’s veil was today spared jail after he made a public apology in court.

Damien French, 21, of Brighton Road in Rhyl, admitted charges of racially aggravated common assault and a racially aggravated public order offence when he appeared before Mold Crown Court this morning. The judge, Mr Recorder Robert Trevor-Jones, said that French’s behaviour in grabbing the hijab had been “deplorable, despicable and quite disgraceful”. French was given an 18-week prison sentence suspended for two years.

Mold Crown Court heard how victim Shahenna Hussain, 23, was walking with her sister and two nieces, pushing push chairs along the street at the junction of High Street and Wellington Road one afternoon in April. French was seen by a witness in a nearby shop to be initially hurling foul racial abuse at a coach which appeared full of Asian passengers.

Miss Hussain saw the defendant and his group, realised what was happening, put her head down to avoid eye contact and continued on her way. The defendant and his group noticed her and her sister as she crossed the road and he shouted and swore in racial terms towards her. Prosecutor Gareth Parry said: “She suddenly felt a violent grip to the top of her head, connecting with her hijab, which was fixed with two pins. But pins were forced open.” She was “extremely upset and angry” and felt violated, explained Mr Parry.

Daily Post, 2 November 2007

See also BBC News, 2 November 2007

Cherie Blair speaks out against the veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Cherie BlairCherie Blair has criticised Muslim religious dress for women where it fails to acknowledge “the woman’s right to be a person.” The wife of former Prime Minister Tony Blair warned against the full-face veil, or niqab, worn by strictly Islamic women worldwide because it could prevent a woman from expressing her personality.

Mrs Blair, a practising Roman Catholic who is to publish her own memoirs in October next year, admitted that she had herself been educated by Catholic nuns who wore veils. She said she had no problem with women covering their heads. But on Islamic veils, she said: “I think however, that if you get to the stage where a woman is not able to express her personality because we cannot see her face, then we do have to ask whether this is something that is actually acknowledging the woman’s right to be a person.”

Mrs Blair’s own Church forbids the ordination of women, forbids women from using condoms even when their husband has been infected by HIV while working away, and denies the sacrament of communion to women who are divorced and remarried without an annulment, even when a woman’s first marriage has broken down because of abandonment for a younger woman by their husband.

She nevertheless focused her criticisms on Islamic countries. She said the laws on divorce and custody of children remained unfair to women in many Islamic countries, such as Egypt. “I think the facts speak for themselves,” she said.

Times, 31 October 2007

Canada: Tory bill would ban voting while wearing veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A bill requiring visual identification when voting in federal elections has come to Parliament, largely due to controversy in Quebec over veiled women voting. The controversy over veiled voters arose when a ruling from Elections Canada allowed veiled women to cast ballots in three recent Quebec by-elections.

The Conservatives decided legislation was necessary after Marc Mayrand, Canada’s chief electoral officer, rebuffed efforts by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to get him to adjust voting rules to force women to bare their faces at polls. “I think it is necessary to maintaining public confidence in … the electoral process,” Conservative House Leader Peter Van Loan told the Toronto Star yesterday.

Mayrand noted the revised federal electoral law that Parliament passed in June did not compel women with veils to remove them as part of voter identification, explaining that if MPs want that to be a rule, they should pass a new law.

The Conservative government’s obsession with women having to lift their veils is seen by some as much ado about nothing. “This so-called veil problem is not even a problem that’s been raised with the Muslim community,” NDP Leader Jack Layton said.

Toronto Star, 27 October 2007

First Lady submits to the Islamic hordes

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“We are the king of the world. We are the best and the brightest. We are America goddammit. WTF are we bowing to Islam for? This ain’t PR no matter what Karen Hughes and Condirasha say. This is not not going to make the Islamic world hold hands and sing campfire tunes. Uh uh. This is submission and the worst message to send to Muslims.”

Pamela Geller offers a reasoned response to a photo of Laura Bush wearing a headscarf during her visit to Saudi Arabia.

Atlas Shrugs, 25 October 2007

See also the Weekly Standard, 25 October 2007

‘Every street in Britain could look like this in 50 years time’, warns Mail

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Every street could look like thisIn an article headed “Britain will be scarcely recognisable in 50 years if the immigration deluge continues”, Stephen Glover writes:

“The only question that interests me is whether a country that is recognisably British will survive in 50 or 100 years. British culture, whatever it represents, is evidently not worth preserving in the view of some on the Left.

“It is a curious paradox that some of its adherents believe that foreign cultures are worth safeguarding, but … when our own indigenous culture is threatened, we are told that it is parochial and small-minded to think about trying to defend it….

“Preserving one’s own culture is at least as important as preserving one’s infrastructure. Actually, it is even more important, because new hospitals, houses and roads can, with a struggle, be built – but culture, once it has been undermined, cannot be recovered.”

Daily Mail, 25 October 2007

And note the photograph chosen to illustrate Glover’s piece (reproduced above). It prominently features a Muslim woman wearing the niqab and is captioned: “Every street in Britain could look like this in 50 years time.”

Young U.S. Muslims struggle against prejudice

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Speaking with kids from high schools and youth organizations in the Dearborn area, Y-Press learned about some of the stereotypes many Americans hold about Arab-Americans and Muslims. The issues affecting Arab teens range from everyday high school challenges to discrimination.

The Abusalah family, natives of Palestine, ordered their meals at a restaurant and watched as the white family next to them got more attention from the waiter: Their order was taken first, the food arrived faster, and the waiter was simply friendlier. He barely smiled at the Arab-American family.

“It’s all the time,” said Reema Abusalah, 15. “We always get the dirty looks and stares. It’s not around Dearborn usually, but when we leave Dearborn, we see people who are not Arab stare at us, give us dirty looks and look funny at us.”

Reema feels that people who don’t live in diverse communities such as Dearborn rely on biased opinions to generate a picture of Arab-Americans.

For example, a lot of movies cast Arabs as villains, and the news media reports more negative stories about Arabs than positive ones. Yusef Saad, 16, saw a documentary called “Real Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People.” Arabs come out looking bad in such films as “Back to the Future” and even the Disney movie, “Aladdin,” Yusef said.

For Muslim teenage girls wearing the traditional Islamic hijab, or headscarf, stereotypes are sometimes intensified. “They think that all Muslim girls are oppressed and forced to put on the hijab. Well, it’s actually the other way around,” said Nour Hijazi, 17. “We want people to look at us and not evaluate how we look, but actually how we are and the way we treat people.”

Indianapolis Star, 21 October 2007

Ref benches teen soccer player because of headscarf

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Iman KhalilFor six years, Iman Khalil has worn a headscarf with her soccer uniform. It wasn’t a problem until this past weekend, when a referee decided before a tournament match on Saturday that the headscarf violated league rules.

“The referee looked at me and said, ‘You can’t play in that,'” the 15-year-old told The Tampa Tribune. “This isn’t headgear or anything. It’s part of the faith. I don’t think it should be a problem that I wear it.”

A league official overruled referee Steve Richardson during half-time, but he still refused to let the Muslim girl play in the second half of the game.

“At first I was extremely upset,” she said. “I got very emotional. I kept my cool. I wiped my face because I was crying. But then everyone rallied around us. All the team. All the parents. Even the other team. It was just phenomenal.”

The league later apologized to Iman and reminded referees that players are allowed to wear religious articles as long they don’t pose a threat of injury.

USA Today, 15 October 2007