Rod Liddle defends the right of Muslim women to wear the veil! He writes: “Surely if there is one area where immigrant communities should be allowed do as they like it is in the clothes they choose to wear.” Could it be that Rod has suffered a sudden attack of progressive politics? Nah. He continues: “Attack the ideology behind the veil, the Islamic attitude towards women – not the veil itself. But the PM can’t do that because he’s already attempted to force all of us, by law, to respect that ideology, regardless of its misogyny (and, one might add, homophobia, anti-semitism, etc).”
Category Archives: Hijab
Fascists applaud Blair speech on multiculturalism
“The Prime Minister’s latest utterance on the thorny issue of race relations looks like he has been watching copies of speeches made by Nick Griffin, BNP Leader and he looks as if he is backing a motion which was passed by a large majority at the BNP Annual Conference, two weeks ago, in which is was agreed that public wearing of Islamic headdress which covers much of the face, thereby preventing identification, should be proscribed….
“It all sounds much too little, much too late to make any real difference but at least Blair has vindicated the message of the BNP, a message gaining ground in areas where New Labour has abandoned its former support base.”
Rule on veils changed after woman kept off bus in Michigan city
GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan: After a woman passenger wearing traditional Islamic dress was turned away, the public bus system in this Michigan city said Friday it will end its rule keeping those with face coverings from boarding public transit vehicles. System administrators said the refusal in July was an isolated incident.
A driver told the unidentified woman she would have to uncover her face to ride, but she was able to board another bus that same day. She reported the incident to bus system administrators, transit officials told The Grand Rapids Press newspaper.
Busing officials regret that the woman was turned away and have apologized to her, Rapid spokeswoman Jennifer Kalczuk said. She said the original order was a security issue, so that an on-board camera system could help identify riders in the event of a disturbance. She said religious dress or other coverings were not considered.
Debbie Mageed, an area Islamic activist, said she appreciated Rapid’s response. “We can’t expect all public domains to be aware of these situations until they actually come up,” said Mageed, who wears a head covering but not a facial veil. “As long as it doesn’t happen again, I’ll feel like they were sincere in their efforts to revise their policy.”
Khadija says Channel 4 didn’t tell her she’d be in competition with the Queen
Muslim Khadija Ravat wants to pull out of Channel 4’s Christimas message because she fears she may nick viewers from the Queen. The Islamic studies teacher, 34, who wears a veil, claims she did not know the broadcasts would be screened at the same time. Last night she said: “I don’t want to be competing with the Queen. I’m sure she’s a lovely person. Her speech will be far more interesting than anything I have got to say. I didn’t mean to cause a fuss. I did not know how important the Queen’s speech is to many people.” Channel 4 said that they chose Khadija because the veil debate is topical.
Daily Star, 8 December 2006
Meanwhile, in yesterday’s Evening Standard, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown has taken the opportunity to denounce the niqab as the symbol of “Muslim women suffering under the cloak of oppression”.
For Yusuf Smith’s comments, see Indigo Jo Blogs, 7 December 2006
Why I deplore this TV Christmas stunt
For Channel 4 , a presenter in full niqab is just another wacky idea. But the veil is a cloak of oppression and cruelty, says one Muslim writer
By Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
Evening Standard, 7 December 2006
WE KNOW Channel 4 is paid to be a pain, to whip up furies and controversies. The channel’s iconoclastic spirit can generate exceptionally good programmes and also abysmally bad ideas. Hip bosses sometimes want to be audacious and provocative for the sheer fun of it. So now these Armani suits have picked a fully veiled Muslim woman to deliver their alternative Christmas message.
Delight will ripple through the corridors of the trendy HQ as a storm of outrage follows this mad, bad and dangerous decision. But why stop there? I know at least two Somali mothers who support their own genital mutilation and will subject their daughters to the “purification”. Perhaps next year.
Meanwhile some liberals, the Mayor and retrograde Muslim organisations will rejoice that the niqab has thus been honoured, as will those white female commentators who have come out for the full veil. I wonder if any of these niqab groupies would be as sanguine if their own daughters decided to disappear into black shrouds.
Choice alone cannot be the sole compass for personal or political action. In any case, how do these defenders of the veil know all such women and girls have made a free and fair choice? Or that six-year-olds in a hijab are independent little misses who decided to cover their hair?
The chosen one, Khadija Ravat, is a very nice lady. We met on a TV programme and she was warm and non-judgmental. I can see why she was selected, because she gives the niqab a good name. We have emailed each other and I am going to visit her home one day. But I cannot respect her shroud. She can look at the world yet denies us access to the features which make her unique and uniquely human.
The recent employment-case judgments against the niqab reflect what society in general believes – that there have to be dress code bans on full veils at work. Most workplaces disallow semi-nudity too.
The national conversation over the veil has been open and passionate – a very important development in our complex democracy. We didn’t shut up even when instructed to by Muslim ” leaders”. Channel 4 hosted some of the best debates on the issue. Now it has decided to glamorise and validate the veil, showing cool indifference to the meanings of the most violently contested symbols in the world today.
For what some claim as their preferred attire is a cruel prison for others. Lesley Abdela, the legendary gender-rights expert, has just returned from Iraq, where she advises Iraqi women fighting for political equality. She told me this story. A top university professor in Baghdad had a corpse of a young female delivered to him. She was the brightest of his cohort. She had been raped, tortured, then killed because she dared to walk without covering her face and hair. Acid is thrown at the faces of such women; many are beaten and raped all across the Arab countries, in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In this paper I described a veiled woman who followed me home after being subjected to the most horrifying domestic violence, all signs well covered up by the unholy sheet. Since then several others have contacted me to confirm this is happening all over the country. One of them, Saima, asked this: “All those women are speaking out on TV about how they are free to decide. How can women like me tell the public our truths? We are afraid for our lives. They are not. But they should remember us.”
Instead of expressing solidarity with these females, sanctimonious British niqabis (with beautifully made-up eyes) are siding with their foes.
There are practical issues too. Veiled women cannot swim in the sea, smile at their babies in parks, feel the sun on their skin. Millions of progressive Muslims watch with disbelief as young women, born free, seek subjugation. It breaks our hearts.
In the first century of Islam, there were Muslim feminists resisting seclusion and covers. The First Lady of Rebellion was Sakina, who got a pre-nup agreement from her husband. He was to be faithful and let her keep her will and liberty. When he went to a concubine she publicly humiliated him in court in Medina. An Arab historian described her fire: “She was a delicate beauty, never veiled. Poets gathered in her house. She was playful and refined.”
Ayesha, married to the son of a close associate of Prophet Mohammed, was a feisty resister too: “I will not veil. No one can force me to do anything.” The veil predates Islam and was common among the Assyrian royalty, Byzantine upperclass Christians and Bedouins – men and women – when sand storms blasted their faces. Women from the Prophet’s family covered themselves, it is said, to prevent harassment from petitioners. He proclaimed that “the true veil is in the eyes of men.”
The Koran does not ask women to cover their faces. The growing use of the niqab represents the terrifying march of Wahhabism, which aims to expunge the female Muslim presence from the public space. Exiles from religious authoritarian regimes who fled to the West now find the evil has followed them.
Veils affirm the pernicious idea of women as carriers of original sin. The brilliant Moroccan feminist Fatima Mernissi asks why powerful men “can’t look at our hair and appreciate a Muslim woman standing defiant, her shoulders back, her breast advanced, her eyes boldly scrutinising them? Why do they all dream of this fully veiled self-deprecating creature?”
And if I were one of millions of decent Muslim men, I would be incandescent at the assumptions made about Muslim male lust and self-control, which supposedly collapses at the sight of a lock of hair.
As long as it ensures genuine equal standards for all, a liberal nation has no obligation to extend its liberalism to condone the most illiberal practices. Europe still treats Muslims as undeserving inferiors. The media lurches drunkenly between pandering to Muslim separatists and maligning us all as the aliens within. It is hard to be a Muslim today. And it becomes harder still when some choose deliberately to act and dress as aliens.
To Luke Johnson, chairman of Channel 4, and to its director of programmes, Kevin Lygo, Ms Ravat is just one more off-the-wall, wacky Christmas messenger – joining Sharon Osbourne, Brigitte Bardot and Ali G, its bearers in previous years. But Muslim women suffocating under the cloak of oppression will not see the funny side. And as a Muslim feminist, I don’t either.
Khadija Ravat won’t be watching Channel 4 programme
The veiled Muslim woman signed up by Channel 4 to do their Christmas Day message will not be watching herself on TV – she will be watching the Queen. Khadija Ravat’s six-minute address will go out at 3pm, exactly the same time as the Queen’s annual broadcast. But yesterday, the 33-year-old teacher described herself as a patriotic Brit who has no intention of tuning into C4’s alternative Christmas Day message.
She said: “Believe me, I’m going to be watching the Queen’s speech. I like being British, being British has so much to it that can be shared by so many people.” She denied the C4 scheduling was divisive and said she wanted to build bridges between different communities.
Khadija, who teaches at a private Islamic school in Leicester, added: “We live in a fantastic society. We are all British. We have so many wonderful people around and I hope that we all respect each other. My world is so wonderful. Wherever I look, there are different colours, different people. Sometimes we disagree but we respect each other. That is why I will use the six minutes to put over a really positive message. I want to build bridges.”
Asked if it was provocative for a veiled Muslim to offer an alternative message to the Queen’s, she said: “I have never thought of it that way.”
Meanwhile, today’s Daily Star reports that 94% of its readers have called for the broadcast to be banned.
Woman in veil ‘sparks fury’
Channel 4 has sparked fury by planning an “alternative” Christmas Day message delivered by a Muslim woman in a veil.
Radical Khadija Ravat, who lectures on Islam, will appear on its screens while the Queen is giving her traditional afternoon speech on the other channels. Mrs Ravat’s talk is expected to focus on the heated debate about the veil following the recent case of teacher Aishah Azmi losing her battle to wear it in the classroom.
Evangelical lobby group Christian Voice’s Stephen Green said the alternative message will “put people’s backs up”. He added: “The niqab is a veil of separation between Muslims and the indigenous Christian community. This will expose multi-culturalism for what it is – a bias against the Christian population.”
Tory MP Philip Davies, who represents Shipley, West Yorkshire, said: “It seems Channel 4 is being provocative towards Christians. I would recommend listening to what the Queen has to say. Kick Channel 4 into the long grass. You would think that for one day of the year, during what is still just about a Christian festival, they could leave political correctness alone.”
Mrs Ravat, 33, a radical Islamist from Leicester, spoke out about the veil after ex-Foreign Secretary Jack Straw declared it made community relations more difficult.
Daily Express, 6 December 2006
Call me an old sceptic, but given Channel 4’s past record in stoking up Islamophobia you suspect this is the exactly reaction they set out to provoke.
‘The hidden truth of the veil: it’s all politics’
“Britain, for all its faults, is not a society in which women are pestered or harassed as a matter of course. When we walk outside we have to contend with a tuneless wolf whistle at worst. For a woman here to argue that simply uncovering her face will automatically inflame the men around her to dangerous levels of lust is absurd: indeed, it is ostentatious modesty inflated to the point of vanity. To feel compelled to wear the full veil in Britain is the sexual equivalent of attending a Quaker meeting accompanied by three heavily-armed bodyguards.
“Behind this absurdity lurks something rather more worrying, however: the persistent agenda of a minority of Islamic fundamentalists to emphasise difference and push the boundaries of secular society. The arguments over Muslim women’s clothing have really been thinly disguised political battles, such as the 2002 attempt by the schoolgirl Shabina Begum to force her school to permit her to wear a cumbersome garment called the jilbab in contravention of school uniform. Begum’s brother, who was extremely vocal in court, was a reported member of the Islamic fundamentalist group Hizb-ut Tahrir….
“A clear, constant distinction between the sartorial obligations of private time and work time would surely relieve us all of mounting irritation, and deprive these wearisome attention-seekers of the substance they seem most eager to breathe in through the niqab: the oxygen of publicity.”
Jenny McCartney in the Sunday Telegraph, 3 December 2006
A school with a progressive attitude to the veil
Last month Tony Blair said the veil row was part of a necessary debate about the way the Muslim community integrates into British society. He said the veil was a “mark of separation” which makes people feel uncomfortable. But Charlie Taylor, deputy head of Turton high school arts and media college, Bolton, does not share the politicians’ concerns. “I should know about face covering,” he laughs from behind a generous beard. “Communication is more than just facial expression; mostly you know whether pupils are taking something in from what they say and how they say it. We don’t see the veil as an issue here.”
For the past two or three years, a small but growing number of Turton’s female Muslim sixth formers have chosen to wear the niqab – which covers the face – and staff have chosen to respect their choice. These students are not retiring violets. Indeed, they are among the feistiest students in the sixth form. Like many young women who have taken up the niqab in the UK, they wear it proudly, an outward sign, they say, of their deep faith, and a statement of their cultural identity.
Turton, in the largely white, northern suburbs of Bolton, close to the Pennine foothills, is the last place one would expect to find students wearing the niqab, given that most schools in northern towns, even those with a largely Muslim intake, allow students to wear the hijab (the headscarf), but stop short of the veil. But Turton’s sixth form of 500 draws from diverse cultures, and John Porteous, the head, is proud of the mix: “I think, increasingly, Asian heritage students and particularly Muslim girls are attracted to the sixth form because they find it a sympathetic place to be.”
All of Turton’s upper sixth Muslim girls – whether veiled, headscarf wearers, or bare-headed – who agreed to speak to The TES regard themselves as fully integrated into British society. They also respect each other’s choice of dress, believing it expresses their differing piety. They were all taking A-levels and plan to study for careers ranging from optometry to politics. Their dress, they say, is about their faith and cultural identity, not about wanting to be separate.
BNP on banning the ‘burka’
The British National Party has posted the resolutions adopted at its conference in Blackpool last weekend. This is the one on the “burka” – presumably it is directed at the niqab too – which was “passed by a large majority”:
“The British National Party is the party of freedom and democracy. We are also, however, the party of the British people, of British culture, of British heritage, of British traditions and of the British way of life. The wearing of the burka is not a religious requirement and is not stipulated in the Koran; it is, instead, a symbol of the wearer’s repudiation of traditional Britain. Furthermore, the burka has been used as a disguise which has enabled suspects wanted by the police in connection with serious terrorist offences to evade capture. The wearing of the burka is therefore both a political act of hostility to Britain and a serious security risk. Banning the burka will not inconvenience the indigenous British people and will increase their security and freedom from terrorism. We therefore believe this is an entirely sensible and proportionate policy.”
Blair considering veil ban, Mirror claims
Tony Blair has held secret talks about banning Muslim women wearing veils in public.
Leaked documents seen by the Mirror reveal the Prime Minister has already had meetings with Islamic scholars about the controversial issue. He is considering new measures to stop the Niqab – the full face veil – being worn in public buildings such as schools, courts and hospitals.
It comes as a survey published yesterday revealed one in three people supports a total ban on veils which completely cover womens’ faces. The BBC survey said 60 per cent of people backed a ban in airports and at passport control, 53 per cent in schools and 40 per cent in the workplace.
Zareen Roohi Ahmed, chief executive of the British Muslim Forum, said there was no religious reason for a full veil to be worn. She added: “If security is at stake, then yes, the veil should be removed.”