Category Archives: Hijab

Swiss basketball player fails to overturn headscarf ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sura Al-ShawkA Swiss basketball player has failed in her bid to have a court overturn a headscarf ban when she plays in league games.

A local court in the canton of Lucerne said in a ruling published Wednesday that the ban doesn’t breach the rights of the player, who is Muslim.

Sura Al-Shawk, a 19-year-old Swiss citizen of Iraqi origin who plays for STV Luzern, sought permission from the Swiss basketball association to wear a scarf. ProBasket said in August she can’t because it could increase the risk of injury and the sport has to be religiously neutral.

ProBasket said it followed the rules of FIBA, basketball’s world governing body.

Associated Press, 27 January 2010

UK poll: 66 per cent back ban on niqab in public places

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Most people in Britain hold a critical opinion on the veils worn by some Muslim women, according to a poll by Angus Reid Public Opinion. 67 per cent of respondents say that garments that conceal a woman’s face represent an affront to British values, while 25 per cent disagree with this notion. However, 58 per cent of respondents believe the government should not be allowed to tell individuals what they can and cannot wear.

Angus Reid Global Monitor, 27 January 2010

Full poll here.

Unfortunately, the apparently reassuring opposition to state interference didn’t prevent 66% of respondents backing a ban on the niqab in public places, 75% a ban in schools and universities, and 85% a ban at airports.

Parliamentary inquiry condemns veil as ‘un-French’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Islamic full-body veil should be banned from French public offices, hospitals, trains and buses, according to a parliamentary investigation which reported yesterday. In a bad-tempered final session, the committee of inquiry angered many members of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s ruling centre-right party by rejecting their demands for an outright ban on the burka or niqab. After a muddled and heated six-month investigation, the committee decided that such a ban might be declared unconstitutional under French and European law.

Instead, a narrow majority of the 32 members accepted a compromise suggested by Mr Sarkozy and the Prime Minister, François Fillon. They called for a solemn, but unenforceable, parliamentary motion declaring the full-length veil – a marginal but growing phenomenon in France – to be “un-French”. They said that this should be followed soon by a law forbidding people to cover their faces in “official” public spaces, from hospitals to post offices.

The committee’s recommendation split the ruling Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) down the middle. The party’s parliamentary leader, Jean-François Cope, immediately announced that he would push ahead with his own draft law calling for an outright ban. Officially, Socialist MPs boycotted the final meeting of the inquiry, alleging that it had been “polluted” by party politics and hijacked by “faction fighting” within the UMP. Several leading socialist politicians defied the boycott, however, and support an outright ban.

The possibility of a law against the full-length veil was first raised last summer by a Communist MP.

Independent, 16 January 2010

Cf. Raphaël Liogier, “France’s attack on the veil is a huge blunder”, Comment is Free, 26 January 2010

Banning the burqa is simply not British

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“‘As I was once strolling through the inner city, I suddenly happened upon an apparition in a long caftan with black hair locks. Is this a Jew? was my first thought … but the longer I stared … the more my first question was transformed into a new conception: is this a German?’

“That is the passage from Mein Kampf in which Adolf Hitler describes how, walking as a student through the less salubrious streets of Vienna, he had suddenly understood the true threat that the Jews presented to the Germanic way of life. I hadn’t read those words since I was a student, but somehow they returned to my mind last week, prompted by the UK Independence party’s announcement that it would campaign to ‘ban the burqa’.”

Dominic Lawson in the Sunday Times, 24 January 2010

French MPs to denounce Muslim veils, ban later

Posted on by Bob Pitt

France’s parliament is likely to call in a resolution for a ban on Muslim face veils in public but take longer to turn that policy into law, deputies said on Thursday.

A parliamentary commission studying the sensitive issue, which has been discussed alongside a wider public debate about French national identity launched by President Nicolas Sarkozy, is due to publish its recommendations next Tuesday.

Polls say most voters want a legal ban on full-length face veils, known here by the Afghan term burqa although the few worn in France are Middle Eastern niqabs showing the eyes. Critics say a law would stigmatize Muslims and be unenforceable.

Jean-Francois Cope, parliamentary floor leader for Sarkozy’s conservative UMP party, told France Inter radio said the plan was for “a resolution to explain and then a law to decide.” A parliamentary resolution would not be legally binding.

Andre Gerin, head of the commission, agreed that deputies needed more time to draft a law, but told the daily Le Figaro: “The ban on the full facial veil will be absolute.”

Police reports say fewer than 2,000 women in France wear full veils, but deputies such as Gerin – whose constituency in Lyon has many Muslim residents – insist this is a growing trend that Paris must legislate to stop in its tracks.

Gerin said France also had to deal with “the French Taliban who force women to be veiled. By ‘Taliban’ I mean the husband, big brother, family, even the neighborhood, because there is a kind of sharia (Islamic law) in some areas. The full veil is the visible part of this black tide of fundamentalism.”

Reuters, 21 January 2010

No place for veil in Denmark, says prime minister

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The face-covering burqa and niqab veils worn by some Muslim women “have no place in Danish society”, Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen has said.

“They symbolise a view of women and humanity that we totally oppose and that we want to combat in Danish society,” he said. Denmark was “an open, democratic society where we look at the person to whom we are talking, whether it’s in a classroom or on the job. That is why we don’t want to see this garment in Danish society.”

Mr Rasmussen said his centre-right government was “discussing ways of limiting the wearing” of the veils without violating the Scandinavian country’s constitution.

The prime minister’s comments came a day after the publication of a report which showed that use of the burqa was “extremely rare” in Denmark, though no figures were given, and that the niqab was worn by “between 100 and 200” women.

Some 100,000 Muslim women live in Denmark, representing about 1.9 per cent of Denmark’s total population of 5.5 million. Some 0.15 per cent of the Muslim women wear the niqab, according to the report.

AFP, 19 January 2010

See also Politiken, 19 January 2010

Joan Smith tells Muslim women how to dress

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Joan_Smith“Islam doesn’t demand that men cover their faces before they go out, but its more extreme advocates place special conditions on how women dress outside the home. It’s a typical example of patriarchal practice, based on the notion that women should be under the control of their male relatives at all times, and it’s incompatible with any notion of universal human rights….

“In effect, a woman in a niqab is wearing a mask, signalling her deliberate separation from people unlike herself. It’s hard to think of another form of dress which is so highly politicised – or so rejectionist of mainstream culture. This is the point missed by liberal defenders of the niqab and the burka.”

Joan Smith in the Independent, 19 January 2010

Last week the Independent itself published an article in which Muslim women were given space to explain their own understanding of why they wore hijab (and, in one case, didn’t). But Joan Smith doesn’t bother herself with that sort of nonsense. She thinks she knows more about the motives and meaning of Muslim women’s preferred form of dress than Muslim women themselves do.

You might have thought that an avowed feminist would have some sensitivity to the idea that women could legitimately prefer to cover themselves because they find it demeaning to have men judging them by their physical appearance. Back in the day, there was tendency within the women’s movement, much derided by the anti-feminist political right, who preferred to dress in overalls and boots as a stand against the commodification of women’s bodies. But then, those women were mainly of Western origin and white, so obviously that was different.

Update:  See also ENGAGE, 19 January 2009

UMP spokesperson says veiled women should be denied benefits, banned from public transport

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Frederic LefebvreWomen who wear the burka in France should be banned from using public transport or receiving state handouts, a government spokesman has said.

The call came just one day after the head of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party, the UMP, said that Muslim women wearing full face veils should not be granted French nationality. Now UMP party spokesman Frederic Lefebvre has demanded any woman breaking a proposed law making the garment illegal should be “deprived of her rights”.

He said: “When you don’t respect your responsibilities, you should not have access to any benefits. The rights and responsibilities of citizens in France are important. When you ignore rules that make things illegal, like a ban on the burka, you have have some of your rights taken away, like the right to state benefits or using public transport.”

Daily Mail, 19 January 2010

UMP leader wants law banning veiled women from acquiring French nationality

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The head of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party said on Sunday he wants a law to ensure that Muslim women who wear face-covering veils do not acquire French nationality. Xavier Bertrand, head of the conservative UMP party, said the full veil “is simply a prison for women who wear it” and “will make no one believe” a woman wearing it wants to integrate.

Daily Telegraph, 18 January 2010

Banning veil is oppressive, says Salma Yaqoob

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Salma Yaqoob RespectPlans to ban Muslim women from covering their faces in public areas are oppressive, the leader of the Respect party said yesterday.

Salma Yaqoob’s comments came as the UK Independence Party (UKIP) announced a formal policy that would make the wearing of garments such as the burka or the niqab – both of which conceal most of the face – to be illegal.

Nigel Farage, the former UKIP leader and MEP, said: “In a liberal democracy we want to tolerate different religions and cultures and not have a small section of society impose their world view on the rest of us.”

Ms Yaqoob said: “We do not need a man or a woman telling people what to wear.”

Times, 18 January 2010