Category Archives: Hijab

German court upholds ban on head scarves

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A court on Monday upheld a ban on Muslim teachers wearing head scarves in the schools of a German state under a law that says teachers’ attire must be in line with “western Christian” values.

A Berlin-based Islamic association had complained about the law, which authorities in the conservative-run state of Bavaria have used to ban head scarves while allowing Roman Catholic nuns to continue to wear their head-covering habits in schools.

The Bavarian Constitutional Court ruled on Monday that the application of the law in the state neither violated religious freedom nor was discriminatory.

However, a lawyer for the Islamic Religious Community said some of its members were considering taking their case to the Federal Constitutional Court, Germany’s highest court.

Authorities in several states, including Baden-Wuerttemberg and Hesse, have introduced similar head scarf bans.

Judge Karl Huber insisted the Bavarian law did not favor the Christian faith. But because teachers must transmit the values of the constitution, the religious feelings of students and parents must be considered, the court said.

Associated Press, 15 January 2007

See also “Bavaria bans teacher headscarves”, BBC News, 12 November 2004

Racist attacker tried to rip veil off Muslim woman

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An attacker tried to rip off the veil of a Muslim woman while racially abusing her, police said today. The 37-year-old woman was crossing a busy park near Solent University in Southampton on Thursday when a white man aged in his 20s approached her. He started shouting racial abuse and told her to remove her veil. Police said the attacker then attempted to take the veil off, but failed as the woman managed to push him and walk away.

Pc Leigh Walker said: “This attack was particularly degrading for the victim who has strong religious beliefs that don’t allow her to remove her veil in public with men around. We need to put a stop to this kind of behaviour by someone who is ignorant to the diverse society that we live in. We will not stand for any type of racial or religious abuse and will deal with anyone who does abuse or assault people like this robustly. There were plenty of people in the area as it was daytime and plenty at the nearby bus stops, so lots of people must have seen what happened.”

Daily Echo, 13 January 2007

German politician lectures Muslims on Enlightenment values

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The German interior minister came out strongly against the burka Thursday, saying the body-covering garment worn by some religious Muslims impeded communication and obstructed integration. Calling on German and European Muslims to embrace European laws and norms, the minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, said he generally accepted the rights of Muslims to wear the head covering of their choice but that the burka was a step too far.

“Politicians should not deal with headgear of men and women. But the burka is different,” he said in outlining Germany’s agenda for its European Union presidency. “You can’t see the eyes of someone, and that is the opposite of what we believe communication should be like. Integration requires communication, and we don’t want to isolate each other.”

Schäuble, a leader of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center right Christian Democratic Union, added that he wanted to make Muslim integration a key issue of the six-month EU presidency, which began this month. Alluding to the recent terrorist plots in Britain, Denmark and Germany – which are alleged to have been perpetrated by second-generation home-grown radicals – he said it was essential to prevent the entrenchment of “parallel communities” where Muslims lived on the fringes of European society.

Pointing to a values gap apparent in some elements of Islam, he noted that Christianity had undergone an Enlightenment after the excesses of the Crusades, while parts of the Islamic world had not experienced it. He added that Muslims in Germany needed to accept universal human rights, including the equal treatment of men and women.

New York Times, 11 January 2007

See also “Islam urged to accept Enlightenment”, Boston Globe, 12 January 2007

Protection from press racism never looked gaunter

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jon Gaunt and Sun“Newspapers were a green light to discriminate against black communities after the press watchdog ruled that rules banning ‘prejudiced’ articles were meant only to protect individuals. The bizarre decision came as a result of complaints to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) about an article in The Sun newspaper written by columnist and broadcaster Jon Gaunt.

“This website, and many of our readers, took issue with a column on 24th October last year, which claimed human rights were ‘just for foreigners, fanatics, freeloaders and perverts’…. It accused a Muslim schoolteacher Aishah Azmi of wanting to ‘stitch up our way of life’ by contesting an employment courts’ decision to ban her wearing the full veil in class even when adult male colleagues are present….

“But in a ruling received today by Blink, the PCC noted that their code of conduct (Clause 12) was ‘designed to protect the individual and is not generally applicable to groups of people. As such, the complaint that the article discrimiated against Muslims in general could not raise a breach of the Code. In this instance the Commission noted that the only individual who might have been the subject of prejudicial or pejorative reference was Ms Aishah Azmi, who had not raised a compliant about the matter’.”

Lester Holloway reports, BLINK website, 8 January 2007

Americans oppose Dutch Islamic veil ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Many adults in the United States are against a proposal developed by the Dutch government that seeks to ban Islamic veils, according to a six-country poll by Harris Interactive published in the Financial Times.

59 per cent of Americans believe Islamic women should have the right to wear the garments if they wish to do so.

Support is significantly lower in the five European nations surveyed, with Spain at 39 per cent, Italy at 34 per cent, Germany at 33 per cent, Britain at 23 per cent, and France at 23 per cent.

Angus Reid Global Monitor, 31 December 2006

Dutch veil ban poll

‘The Veil… and why these leading Muslims won’t wear it’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“As Channel 4 controversially celebrated women covering their faces and critics are dismissed as Islamophobics, Joan Smith talks to a group of women who fear the consequences of the veil’s acceptance.”

Independent on Sunday, 31 December 2006

Yes, it’s the familiar strategy pursued by Islamophobes of finding some Muslims who agree with them on a particular issue and then using this as a cover for attacks which feed into the wider media campaign being waged against the entire Muslim community. You’d have hoped that people wouldn’t fall for this, but they do. The irony here is that Khadijah Atkinson, the presenter of Channel 4’s “alternative Christmas message”, is a member of Minhaj-ul-Quran, which has aligned itself with an Islamophobic campaign against the proposed so-called “mega-mosque” in Newham. And now some of her fellow Muslims are collaborating with an anti-Islamic bigot like Joan Smith in attacking Khadijah and other veiled women. It’s not really the business of Islamophobia Watch to intervene in these matters, but surely some basic solidarity and an elementary sense of tactics wouldn’t come amiss here?

For the sort of comment Smith’s article has prompted from right-wing bloggers, see here and here.

Daily Mail ‘unmasks’ woman behind alternative Christmas message

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“She was presented by Channel 4 as an authentic – but anonymous – voice of moderate British Islam. And on Christmas Day the veiled woman described only as ‘Khadijah’ was given a national televison platform for propagating her views in an ‘alternative Christmas message’ designed to rival the Queen’s. She told viewers Jack Straw was wrong to criticise the veil, claiming concealing facial features ‘liberated’ women. But the Daily Mail can now unveil ‘Khadijah’ – and reveal that she is in fact Elaine Atkinson, an English convert to Islam who travels the country working for a radical muslim group trying to take political control of Pakistan.”

Daily Mail, 29 December 2006

The “radical Muslim group” is Mihaj-ul-Quran, an organisation associated with a political party – Pakistan Awami Tehrik – that gained precisely 0.7% of the popular vote in the last parliamentary elections in Pakistan and elected just one MP. So clearly it has some way to go before it takes political control of Pakistan.

And although the Daily Mail pours scorn on Khadijah’s “claims of being moderate”, the same paper recently quoted another supporter of Minhaj-ul-Quran as an example of the “moderate Muslims” who the Mail claims are opposed to Tablighi Jamaat building a new mosque in Newham.

The BNP have applauded the Mail for exposing Khadijah Atkinson’s “rejection of her traditional English background, and her determination to embrace radical Islam”. BNP news article, 30 December 2006

‘Importing ghastly patriarchal values’ – Joan Smith on the veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Joan SmithJoan Smith complains that “we now have a growing minority of the population demanding the right to go about their everyday business in masks, which is what the word ‘niqab’ means in Arabic. This, I think, is where a lot of people discover the limits of tolerance … rightly perceiving that the face-covering is not so much an obligatory religious requirement as a challenge to the values of our largely secular society….

“Of course it upsets people in an open society where we’re used to seeing each other’s faces; our identity is expressed in facial expressions, which ease everyday transactions by indicating whether someone is happy, sad, pleased to see us or lying – an important issue when so many of our dealing with strangers are based on trust. In that sense, it can’t be read as anything other than an assertion of not belonging, of separation from the majority population, a political position some Muslims have begun to take to absurd lengths….

“It’s the worst sort of identity politics, importing ghastly patriarchal values into a country where we already have enough problems with a male political class which believes it knows what’s best for us….”

Independent, 27 December 2006

Ban veils in public, says bishop

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Nazir Ali 2Muslim women should be banned from wearing the veil, to improve security and cohesion in Britain, the Church of England’s only Asian bishop has said. The Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester, urged the Government to introduce legislation that would force Muslims to remove the veil when they are at work or travelling.

In an outspoken attack on the custom of Muslim women to cover their faces, the Pakistani-born bishop said that the Islamic community needed to make greater efforts to integrate into British society.

His call for new laws to control the wearing of the veil in public comes only days after it was revealed that Mustaf Jama, the Somali suspected of murdering WPc Sharon Beshenivsky, is thought to have fled the country by dressing in the niqab, which covers the whole face except the eyes.

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Veiled meanings

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The reason young Muslim women wear the hijab is not to hide from people’s gaze, but to invite and challenge it, argues Brendan O’Neill of Spiked.

Comment is Free, 21 December 2006

The first comment on O’Neill’s piece nails its arrogance precisely: “Now, now, Mr O’Neill, neither you nor I nor anyone can get away with such sweeping statements. Maybe some muslim women do wear the veil for reasons you have deduced. Maybe not. This is merely what you, a politicised, white male imagines. I will listen with respect to what a woman who wears the hijab produces as her reasons – yours are simply an imposed narrative and interesting as a revelation of your reactions more than anything else.”

Update:  See also Dervish, 23 December 2006