Category Archives: Hijab

Australian politician defends call for headscarf ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

School studentLiberal backbencher Bronwyn Bishop has defended her push to ban Muslim girls from wearing headscarves at public schools, despite widespread condemnation from school groups, Muslim leaders and fellow politicians.

“I think it is because a lot of people are thinking about it and I think it’s time people stood up to be counted,” Ms Bishop told ABC radio. “It has become the icon, the symbol of the clash of cultures, and it runs much deeper than a piece of cloth. The fact of the matter is we’ve got people in our country who are advocating – and I’m talking about extremist Islamist leaders – the overturning of our laws which guarantee freedom.”

Ms Bishop said she had no problem with members of other faiths adorning themselves with religious symbols, such as Christians wearing a cross or Orthodox Jews a yarmulke. “I have no concerns about people who wear a cross or people who wear a skull-cap because I haven’t heard any leaders of those communities stand up and say the very fabric of our society should be overturned,” she said.

Australian Secondary Principals Association president Ted Brierley said it was a non-issue among schools. “I’m not aware of any schools that are making this an issue,” he said.

The Age, 29 August 2005

Woman defies law banning the burqa

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Moroccan woman living in a small town in Belgium has single-handedly triggered a national debate on multiculturalism after refusing to obey a municipal injunction to stop wearing a burqa.

The woman has now prompted politicians in the Dutch-speaking north of Belgium to talk about changing federal law, after she became the first person in Belgium to be fined for wearing the all-enveloping veil and robe. She has so far refused to pay the £80 fine, or even to co-operate with police and municipal authorities in the Flemish town of Maaseik.

The burqa, together with a smaller type of face mask, the niqab, has been banned by bylaw in the cities and towns of Ghent, Antwerp, Sint-Truden, Lebbeke and Maaseik. The mayor of Maaseik, Jan Cleemers, said he acted after six women started wearing burqas, alarming locals. Five of the women stopped wearing the garments.

A police inspector in Maaseik said the head-to-toe covering of Bouloudo’s wife, who has refused to speak to police or give her name, offended and alarmed locals. “You cannot identify or recognise someone when they’re wearing a burqa, especially at night. It’s not normal, we don’t have that in our culture,” he said.

Daily Telegraph, 30 August 2005

Ban hijab not Bakri – Rod Liddle

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Rod LiddleRod Liddle finds it ironic that “it is the Charles Moores of our world – the high church, High Tory Right – who are the most persuasive and clear-headed in their public antipathy towards Islam and towards those who would, under the banner of political correctness, afford this still primitive creed some sort of equivalence with post-reformation Christianity”.

On the other side are “those Left-liberal multiculturalist commentators who continue to delude themselves that Islam as a whole is easily compatible with the Western notions of freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, democracy and equality. As a result, we now have a false dichotomy – between something called moderate Islam and this rogue creature, extremist Islam”.

Banning a marginal figure like Omar Bakri is, from Liddle’s perspective, irrelevant. It is Islam as a whole that has to be taken on, by “ensuring that Muslim schoolchildren receive a secular education and banishing the hijab”.

Spectator, 13 August 2005

I’m always amused by these commentators who preach the virtues of “post-reformation Christianity”. This would include the US Christian Right and Ian Paisley, would it?

Anti-Muslim hate crime on rise in Wales

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Muslim woman has described her fear during a racist attack on her Cardiff home, as a UK-wide study into the effects of hate crime is launched.

The £100,000 Victim Support research project aims to develop new guidelines and support for victims of hate and race crime. It comes as Muslims in Wales face rising levels of violence and intimidation after the London bombings. In July, animal parts and a racist letter were left at a Cardiff mosque. And on Wednesday, a Muslim woman, who did not want to be identified, told BBC Wales how her home had been attacked last week.

She said: “We were sitting in our living room when we heard this man shouting outside our door. He was throwing things, picking up stones from our front garden and throwing them at our door and our window. And then he smashed a section of our double-glazed window. He was shouting [a series of abusive names]. It was quite scary, because we didn’t know what he had. My niece was sleeping in the front room.

“We don’t feel secure at all. When you are in the house you are always fearing whether someone will come in or try and force their way in. They can do anything, they can put things in our letter boxes. And when you go out, you are always paranoid, always looking around and people do give you funny looks anyway, especially since the London bombings.

“You kind of think ‘I shouldn’t wear traditional clothing just in case somebody makes a comment, I’d rather fit in with the crowd and look more westernised’ and I don’t like doing that. I’m British but I’m also Pakistani. I’m Muslim and that’s my culture.”

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VA Muslim attacked by men shouting racist slurs

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group today called on law enforcement authorities to treat an assault this morning on a Virginia Muslim woman as a hate crime.

The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) reported that a 23-year-old Muslim woman, who is 8 months pregnant and wears and Islamic head scarf, said she was out for her morning walk in Arlington, Va., when three white men in a pick-up truck began screaming anti-Muslim and racist slurs at her. According to the victim, the men shouted, “You terrorist b*tch, go back to your country. . .You n*gger b*tch.” (The woman is African-American.) The truck drove away and then returned as the woman continued on her walk. One of the men, who was wearing military-style clothing, allegedly got out of the vehicle and began shoving the woman and preventing her from moving away. During the assault, he shouted, “You terrorist b*tch. . . We’re going to kick your a*s. . . you’re nothing.” The other men then called the attacker back to the truck and it sped off.

“We believe these types of incidents are the direct result of the growing level of virulent anti-Muslim rhetoric Americans are exposed to on the Internet, in newspaper editorial pages and on radio talk shows,” said CAIR Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper. “Our nation’s political and religious leaders must begin to challenge Islamophobic hate-mongers.” Hooper noted that a Washington, D.C., radio talk show host was recently suspended without pay for stating repeatedly that “Islam is a terrorist organization.” He added that an Illinois man was arrested just last Friday for threatening to bomb CAIR’s Capitol Hill headquarters. In July, a national council of American Muslim religious scholars issued a “fatwa,” or formal Islamic legal ruling, against terrorism and religious extremism. That fatwa has been endorsed by some 200 Islamic groups, leaders and institutions.

CAIR news release, 9 August 2005

Telegraph readers debate hijab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hijab is Our RightAs you might anticipate, there is the usual racist crap: “… the real intention of this apparel is to denigrate women and deny them their individuality. As a Western woman, I regard this apparel as insulting to my sex, my religious beliefs and my cultural mores. If Muslims wish to enjoy the manifold benefits of living in the West, they must both respect and observe our customs as well as our rules.” (Katherine Barlow, Vienna, Austria)

However, some letter writers take a very different line:

“It will be a very poor outcome for all of us if we, the British people, allow ourselves to be manipulated by this campaign into attacking Muslim women. I would hope that the ideals inherent in the whole of our British culture would continue to respect women of all races, colours and creeds. Whatever these terrorists think, we are now a multicultural society…. Muslim women should not discard their hijabs. Otherwise the terrorists will have won.” (Geoffrey Collingwood, Brackley, Northants)

“Katherine Barlow (Letters, Aug 5) regards Muslim women’s apparel as an insult to her mores. I am English and have lived here all my life. I prefer not to wear the cleavage-displaying, thigh-revealing garb favoured by many of my compatriots. If I can choose to dress how I please, why on earth should Muslim women be criticised for similar choices?” (Linda Garrett, Potters Bar, Herts)

Daily Telegraph, 5 August and 8 August 2005

It’s a disturbing thought that there are Torygraph readers who take a much more progressive position on this issue than many liberals do.

Ban public servants wearing headscarves – Dutch opinion poll

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A majority of the Dutch public wants a new law to ban public servants from wearing headscarves or “other Islamic attire”, a new poll has found. Polling organisation TNS Nipo carried out the research for the latest edition of independent magazine Binnenlands Bestuur.

Expatica, 5 August 2005

Needless to say, this meets with approval of Rebecca Bynum: Dhimmi Watch, 7 August 2005

The news is also greeted enthusiastically by the fascists of the BNP, who seem to be getting a lot of their inspiration from Ms Bynum and her colleague Robert Spencer these days: “Once again plucky Netherlanders are unravelling the multi-cultural experiment forced upon them by decadent and traitorous politicians. Seen for years as the most easy going, tolerant and liberal nation in Europe, the Dutch people are fighting back to reclaim their society from the twisted multi-culturalists.”

BNP news article, 7 August 2005

However, a closer reading of the Expatica report indicates that it wasn’t in fact “the Dutch public” whose views were surveyed: “TNS Nipo questioned 433 adults – 292 government employees and 50 municipal aldermen – for the poll.”

The price of multiculturalism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“If young Muslim women have embraced the hijab as a badge of identity in a way their mothers never did, as a public political symbol, this is more a result of the demands of British multiculturalism than a spontaneous assertion of allegiance. Furthermore, the distinctive character of the identity promoted by multiculturalism is the identity of victim. In the world of multiculturalism, claims of victimhood provide the basis for recognition and status. Thus British Muslims proclaim a litany of persecutions and humiliations of Muslims around the world – in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Israel, in Bosnia – as the justification for their sense of grievance and their claim to a privileged position in the hierarchy of victimhood…. But the cult of victimhood in Britain has merely a vicarious relationship with the sufferings of people in Iraq or Palestine – its real origins are to be found in Britain. In the competitive struggle for prestige (and state resources) unleashed by multiculturalism, every minority must justify its claim by elevating its sufferings…. Muslims inflate every personal slight into a manifestation of Islamophobia.”

Another rant by Mark Steyn in the Telegraph, perhaps? No, it’s ex-RCPer Michael Fitzpatrick.

Spiked Online, 5 August 2005

Anti-Muslim hatred transcends hijab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

IHRC is deeply concerned at the message being sent out by Zaki Badawi’s attributed statement that Muslim women should remove their hijab to avoid being attacked in the wake of 7/7. The devastating rise in faith hate crimes post 7/7 cannot simply be linked to the wearing of hijab. Whilst incidents against Muslim women have risen, it is worth noting that there have been many complaints both by women who do not wear hijab and also women who are not Muslim but who have been mistaken to be Muslim.

IHRC press release, 4 August 2005