Category Archives: Hijab

Belgian school sacks teacher for wearing veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Belgian high school on Tuesday sacked a Muslim maths teacher after she insisted she would continue to wear the burqa while taking classes.

At the start of the academic year authorities at the school in Charleroi, south of Brussels, told the Turkish-born teacher to remove her full-face Islamic veil, which she had been wearing during class for two and a half years. The teacher refused and took her case to court.

In the first instance the Charleroi tribunal backed the school board, citing the religious “neutrality” of the schools serving Belgium’s francophone community. However, in March the appeals court ruled that the school in question came under the jurisdiction of Charleroi, which had not issued rules on the banning of religious insignia. The Muslim teacher therefore returned to school, but the municipality soon afterwards introduced its own ban on the wearing of “all religious or philosophical symbols”.

On Tuesday officials at the school, after auditioning the teacher in presence of the mayor, decided to sack her for her continued refusal to leave her burqa at home, according to a statement issued by the town hall.

AFP, 8 June 2010

Update:  See Islam in Europe which points out that “Nuran Topal, the teacher in question, wears a headscarf, not a face-veil”.

Canadian court to rule on ‘veil’ testimony

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An Ontario court is considering whether an alleged rape victim may testify with her face covered, which defendants say would call her truthfulness in question.

At a preliminary hearing last year, a judge ordered the 32-year-old woman to remove her niqab, or burqa, so defense lawyers could assess her claims of being molested. She resisted, saying her religion bars her from exposing her face to non-family members, the Globe and Mail reported Tuesday.

The defendants – a cousin and uncle of the woman – argue the truthfulness of her testimony cannot be determined if her face is hidden.

Some legal experts claim veils provide a convenient shield for a lying witness, while others reject the idea of facial expressions being a reliable guide to honesty, the newspaper said. The Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund says disallowing veils would drive Muslim women from the justice system.

The case is currently before an Ontario appeals court.

UPI, 8 June 2010

Another Catalan town council to consider veil ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The full council of El Vendrell (Tarragona), in line with the motion adopted in Lleida, will examine in the second week of June a proposal from CiU, to prohibit the use of the burqa and niqab in public facilities in the municipality.

To date, the CiU initiative has not been seconded by any other relevant council of the Tarragona region, although the PP de Catalunya is “gathering information” in the capital of Tarragona, and its leader, Alejandro Fernandez, advanced to meet the mayor, Josep Felix Ballesteros to reach a consensus position on this matter, “without trying to draw political benefits of such a sensitive issue.”

Fernandez made no secret that he would be in favour of banning the burka “not only in public facilities but also in public places” because “the standard bearer for the progressive multiculturalism has a very clear limit on human rights.”

Barcelona Reporter, 2 June 2010

See also “Spanish towns consider Islamic veil ban: reports”, Expatica, 2 June 2010

Call for veil ban in Australia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

For obviously superficial reasons, I’ve always associated Belgium with expensive chocolates, rather than political acts of bravery. That changed with its decision to ban the burqa. For a tiny country to be prepared to publicly reject this symbol of oppression gave me great hope that other open societies like ours could follow suit.

Since then, of course, an Australian MP, Senator Cory Bernardi, inflamed the Muslim community by describing the burqa as the “preferred disguise of bandits” in the wake of it being used by an armed robber in a Sydney shopping centre.

Notwithstanding the Senator’s cultural foot-in-mouth routine, far greater politicians have also expressed opposition, such as French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who described the burqa as a “sign of subservience” and said that, in France, “we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity”.

And so it should be in this country that a stand is taken to expressly reject the eye-slitted, head-to-toe covering that renders a woman a shapeless non-person. On the basis of human decency and basic equality between the sexes, that position would seem a no-brainer but incredibly such a move is seen by some as intolerant.

What is it about the Australian condition that makes us feel as though we have to continuously apologise for who we are and what we stand for? Tolerating the burqa is not about multicultural harmony, it merely allows us to turn a blind eye to subjugation.

Liam Bartlett in the Sunday Telegraph, 30 May 2010

Lerida bans veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Spanish town of Lerida has become the first in the country to ban the Burka in municipal buildings.

The town council voted to prohibit the “use of the veil and other clothes and accessories which cover the face and prevent identification in buildings and installations of the town hall.”

The vote, by 23 to one with two abstentions, is the first of its kind in Spain, a country where Islamic veils and the body-covering burqas are little in evidence despite a large Muslim population.

The move is aimed at promoting “respect for the dignity of women and values of equality and tolerance,” the town hall said in a statement.

Daily Telegraph, 29 May 2010

Catalan town council to vote Friday on veil ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Spain’s northeastern town of Lerida is to vote Friday to ban the wearing of the burqa in municipal buildings, the mayor’s office said, in an apparent first for the country.

A proposal was being drawn up and the majority socialists were behind the push to ban the face-covering Islamic veil in the municipality’s buildings, a spokesman for the mayor’s office said Wednesday.

The town had asked its legal services to look into the possibility of banning the garment in all public spaces in the name of the fundamental rights of women, the official said.

“We cannot regulate the usage of the burqa in the road, but we can do that in municipal buildings,” he said.

Few women wear the full veil in Lerida, a town in the Catalonia region that has about 140,000 residents, one-fifth of whom are immigrants including from North Africa.

AFP, 26 May 2010

57 per cent of Swiss favour ban on veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A majority of Swiss citizens are in favour of banning the wearing of the burqa, a poll released on Sunday found. According to Swiss television, 57.6% of those interviewed for the survey favoured outlawing the Islamic garb for women which covers the entire body.

Last year, a nationwide Swiss referendum prompted criticism across Europe as nearly 58% of Swiss citizens had voted in favour of a law to ban building new minarets across the country. In Sunday’s poll, 26.5% were against banning the burqa, while 15.9% remained undecided.

The poll was conducted for the German-language SonntagsBlick newspaper, interviewing a total of 502 people aged 14-59, from all regions of Switzerland.

The local council in Aargau, a canton (state) in the north of Switzerland along the German border, voted overwhelmingly earlier this month to work on an initiative to make wearing the burqa in public places illegal across the country. Most major parties backed the move.

News 24, 23 May 2010

Clapham Common is a ‘Muslim ghetto’ claims US TV presenter

Posted on by Bob Pitt

This exchange between right-wing US TV presenter Bill O’Reilly and political commentator Imogen Lloyd Webber would be funny if it weren’t for the fact that a lot of US citizens get their information from Fox News.

Lloyd Webber attacks the proposed French ban on the veil as “a massive mistake”, “an infringement of women’s rights”, “completely counterproductive” and “an act of discrimination” – which is not at all to O’Reilly’s taste. He counters that the French “are really worried about these Muslim ghettos”, which he associates with riots and suicide bombing.

O’ Reilly insists: “The same thing’s going on in London. You have neighbourhoods in London, they’re totally Muslim, they speak Arabic. You walk in those neighbourhoods, you’re not in England – you’re not there, you’re in Kuwait.”

“I can’t actually think of one in London”, Lloyd Webber replies. “Clapham Common”, suggests O’Reilly, bizarrely. Lloyd Webber responds that “Clapham Common is full of posh people with push-chairs”!

 

The veil is a ‘war against women’ and Australia should ban it too

Posted on by Bob Pitt

It would seem there are some things in Australia we are not allowed to discuss. A ban on the burqa is clearly one of them. But the time has come to get over our fears and cultural fragilities – and grow up. The call to ban the burqa is receiving serious consideration in European parliaments. And it should here, too.

Belgian legislators voted last month to outlaw the burqa in public places. On Wednesday, a bipartisan resolution passed by the French parliament deploring the burqa – on the grounds of “dignity” and “equality of men and women” – was presented to the French cabinet, and a ban is expected later this year. Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Canada are also grappling with the issue.

But in Australia, in a sign of cultural timidity and intellectual weakness, we seem intent on shunning any meaningful debate about the burqa and its place in a liberal democracy.

Virginia Haussegger in The Age, 21 May 2010

Haussegger quotes Malalai Joya in support of her argument, omitting to inform her readers that the Afghan politician has condemned proposals to ban the veil, on the grounds that it is “against the very basic element of democracy to restrict a human being from wearing the clothes of his/her choice”.

See also “Nile vows to continue fight against the burqa “, Sydney Morning Herald, 21 May 2010

NSW Parliament rejects veil ban bill

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Reverend Fred Nile today tried to introduce a bill to the NSW Parliament calling for a ban on the burqa, a head and body veil worn by some Muslim women. But his motion to have a private member’s bill read and debated failed by three votes to 29 – only he and two Shooters’ Party members voted for it.

The Christian Democrats MP wanted NSW to follow a growing list of European countries that have moved to ban women from wearing the full head and body covering in public.

Mr Nile’s Full-face Coverings Prohibition Bill was modelled on legislation recently passed by the Belgium Parliament. He says concealment of a person’s face – male or female – for any purpose, including terrorism, anarchism or discrimination against women, should be banned.

“We must do all we can to protect women, especially Muslim women, from discrimination and oppression so they live an open lifestyle,” Mr Nile said. “The wearing of the burqa is a form of oppression which has no place in the 21st century.” It also presented a security risk, he said, citing terrorists in the Middle East and Russia who had launched attacks while concealing their identity or weapons under a burqa.

Mr Nile introduced a similar bill in 2006 and 2002, prompting widespread condemnation.

Sydney Morning Herald, 20 May 2010

Catch the video of Reza Aslan commenting on the French plan to ban the veil.

See also “Burqa debate stopped in NSW upper house”, Sydney Morning Herald, 20 May 2010