Category Archives: State Oppression

Banning hijab no rights violation, US court rules

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sheriff’s deputies did not violate a Muslim woman’s rights by forcing her to remove her hijab, a religiously mandated headscarf, in a courthouse holding cell, a federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled Monday.

Souhair Khatib sued Orange County for damages under a federal law that prohibits government agencies from imposing a “substantial burden” on the right to practice one’s religion in a prison, jail or pretrial detention facility. She said her religion forbids her to expose her head or neck to men outside her immediate family.

But in a 2-1 ruling, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said a holding cell, where inmates are kept before being brought into court, isn’t a jail or pretrial detention facility and therefore isn’t covered by the federal law.

The law was intended to protect the religious rights of people who “are sent to reside” in custody, Judge Stephen Trott said in the majority ruling upholding a federal judge’s dismissal of the suit. Trott said a holding cell doesn’t fit that definition because the maximum stay is 12 hours and no one is kept there overnight.

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote an indignant dissent, saying the holding cell is “a full-fledged jail.”

“Can we honestly say that a mammoth facility in the bowels of the Santa Ana courthouse, whose main purpose is to hold inmates while awaiting trial, cannot possibly be a pretrial detention facility?” Kozinski asked. He noted that Congress had declared that the law should be interpreted “in favor of a broad protection of religious exercise.”

San Francisco Chronicle, 4 May 2010

What’s threatening about European attacks on Muslim veils

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The anti-burqa cause is sweeping Europe. In addition to Belgium and France, Italy and the Netherlands are considering bans. Yet the targets of these measures are virtually nonexistent. Mr. Bacquelaine estimates that a couple of hundred women in Belgium wear a full veil. In France, one study estimated that there are 1,900 burqa wearers in a Muslim population of 5 million.

“The idea that this poses a criminal or cultural threat is ludicrous. Those who say they are defending women’s rights have it exactly backward: They are violating fundamental rights to free expression and religious freedom…. Muslims, including the devoutly religious, are in Europe to stay. Banning their customs, their clothing or their places of worship will not make them more European. It will only make Europe less free.”

Editorial in the Washington Post, 1 May 2010

MI5 ‘tried to recruit Muslim spies’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Cageprisoners

A human rights organisation has condemned the intimidation, profiling and attempted recruitment of members of the Muslim community by Special Branch and MI5. Cageprisoners specifically cited the case of Asif Ahmed, who it said was recently detained under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 in Edinburgh airport along with his wife.

Schedule 7 allows police to stop and question travellers at ports and airports “for the purpose of determining whether they are a person who is or has been concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.” Failure to answer questions is a criminal offence.

The Ahmeds were allegedly questioned in detail and an attempt was made to coerce Mr Ahmed into becoming an informer for Special Branch to spy on the Muslim community.

Cageprisoners also published a report titled The Horn of Africa Inquisition, which detailed how the community from the Horn of Africa and those travelling to the region have allegedly been harassed by MI5 and Special Branch through profiling techniques.

Cageprisoners executive director Asim Qureshi said:

“The last seven years of the war on terror have seen the profiling and criminalisation of the Arab and Pakistani communities by UK authorities around the world. The policies that have been implemented through counter-terrorism legislation and Prevent have only been counter-productive as Muslim communities feel marginalised from British society. It is an unfortunate reality that many Muslims feel besieged at this time and the policies of government have done nothing to temper that.”

Morning Star, 1 May 2010

See also “British Muslims on safari ‘stopped by MI5′”, Independent, 1 May 2010

German MEP calls for Europe-wide ban on veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Koch-MehrinAfter Belgium’s parliament voted to ban Islamic full-face veils, the German vice-president of the European Parliament has called for a ban of the burka throughout Europe.

Silvana Koch-Mehrin called the full-body veil an attack on the rights of women in a guest editorial in the Bild am Sonntagnewspaper. “I would like to see all forms of the burka banned in Germany and in all of Europe,” wrote the politician, a member of Germany‘s pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP).

She called the burka a “mobile prison,” saying that those who veil women take away their faces and therefore their personalities. “The complete veiling of women is a blatant acknowledgement of values that we here in Europe do not share,” she wrote.

The Local, 1 May 2010

Veil ban is part of campaign to stigmatise French Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslims in France say the government’s plan to fine women for wearing the Islamic veil is one in a string of political ploys that stigmatise them and pander to anti-Islamic prejudice.

Extracts from the law leaked on Friday propose to fine women 150 euros (200 dollars) for wearing a full-face veil in public, while anyone who forces a woman to wear one would face a year in jail and fine of 15,000 euros.

Some say giving police the power to fine Muslim women in the street is part of a worrying trend, after the government’s “national identity debate” and its targeting last week of a man accused of polygamy and radicalism.

Amid the polygamy controversy, bullets were fired at a mosque in Istres, southern France, and a halal butcher in Marseille. A French Muslim group, CFCM, said this signalled “a rise of racism and Islamophobia.”

“It’s getting tougher and tougher. It’s as if people have had something against us for a long time and now that the politicians are saying it, they are letting it all out,” said Mamadou Alpha Diallo, 73, outside a Paris mosque.

Muslims in France “have the impression that Islam is on trial,” added Dounia Bouzar, an anthropologist and high-profile commentator on Muslim affairs.

AFP, 30 April 2010

Anger at Belgian face veil ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslims, academics and human rights groups have hit out at a looming public ban in Belgium on the full face veil, following a decision in the country’s parliament to make the wearing of the article of clothing illegal.

“I think they’re trying to wind us up,” Souad Barlabi, a young woman wearing a simple veil, said outside the Grand Mosque in Brussels, the Belgian capital, around the time of Friday prayers. “We feel under attack,” she said.

Amnesty International, a human rights group, said the measures must be reviewed by the upper house of parliament as they raise concerns about whether Belgium is in breach of international rights laws.

“A complete ban on the covering of the face would violate the rights to freedom of expression and religion of those women who wear  the burqa or the niqab,” said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty’s expert on discrimination in Europe. “The Belgian move to ban full face veils, the first in Europe, sets a dangerous precedent.”

In Le Soir, a French newspaper, Michael Privot, an Islamic scholar, said Belgium “now joins Iran and Saudi Arabia in that exclusive but unenviable rare club of countries to impose a dress code in the public domain”.

Al Jazeera, 30 April 2010

Ed Balls jeered by BNP supporters for rejecting veil ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ed Balls at Morley hustingsSchools Secretary Ed Balls received a frosty reception from voters as he went head to head with the British National Party in a soapbox debate in West Yorkshire today.

Mr Balls, who has a notional majority in the seat of Morley and Outwood, was jeered and booed by some members of the public in Morley town centre as he answered questions.

Four other candidates – Chris Beverley for the BNP, Anthony Calvert for the Conservatives, James Monaghan for the Liberal Democrats, and David Daniel for the UK Independence Party – joined Mr Balls as they mounted soapboxes to address voters directly. A microphone was passed round the crowd during the 40-minute event, organised by The Independent newspaper, and questions were asked on issues including schools, the economy, jobs and immigration.

A question posed from a male member of the crowd regarding Belgium’s decision to ban the burka led to one of the biggest responses from the audience. He asked the candidates: “They’re doing this (banning the burka) in the interest of women’s rights, social inclusion, anti-terrorism and security. What I want to know is which of the parties are going to have the gumption to take an issue like that and really address it?”

Mr Balls answered: “We have people here who are Christian and Muslim and Jewish, and I think British values of tolerance and fair play and mutual respect mean that you don’t say to people that because of their particular religion, or the colour of their skin that they are second class.”

Some members of the audience clapped and cheered in support of Mr Balls while others booed and held aloft BNP posters.

Yorkshire Post, 30 April 2010

See also BBC News, 30 April 2010

Belgian parliament votes to ban wearing of veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Belgian lower house of parliament on Thursday approved a bill to ban wearing the full Islamic face veil in public, a move that could make Belgium the first European country to make the practice a criminal offence.

The draft law, cast as a security measure by proponents, was overwhelmingly backed by 136 lawmakers. Just two abstained.

The bill, which would ban all clothing that covers or partially covers the face, could become law in the coming months as the upper house, or Senate, is not expected to block it.

However, the collapse of Belgium’s coalition government last week and the prospect of an imminent election could cause a delay because parliament would have to be dissolved.

Belgium’s French-speaking liberals, who proposed the veil law, argued that an inability to identify people who have hidden their faces presents a security risk and that the veil was a “walking prison” for women.

The bill’s chief promoter, Daniel Bacquelaine, said local mayors could suspend the ban during festivities such as Carnival when people traditionally wear costumes, including masks.

Reuters, 29 April 2010

See also BBC News, 29 April 2010

IRR publishes briefing paper on the French move to ban the veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

IRR logoAs Belgium and France move to ban the burqa, the IRR European Race Audit (ERA) publishes today a briefing paper on ‘The background to the French parliamentary commission on the burqa and niqab’.

It examines how André Gerin, the Communist Party mayor of Vénissieux, ignited the debate on the voile intégral in a country where, it is estimated, that a total of 2,000 women wear the burqa. It describes the various arguments used to justify the ban from upholding laïcité to opposing the rise of Salafism and defending the freedom and dignity of women.

Institute of Race Relations news release, 28 April 2010

Download the briefing paper here.

Europe ‘too soft’ on Muslims, says Jerusalem Post

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Jerusalem Post offers its take on moves across Europe to ban the wearing of the veil:

Those who support such legislation realize that an easygoing multiculturalism works only when there are basic shared values and a willingness to integrate. But European multiculturalism has deteriorated into rudderless moral relativism and a pusillanimous reluctance to criticize radical Islamic customs for fear of being branded an Islamophobe.

Sadly, some Jewish leaders, such as Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, chief rabbi of Moscow and leader of the Conference of European Rabbis, have helped foster such unfounded fears. “Sixty-five years after the liberation of Auschwitz,” wrote Goldschmidt in the New York Times in February, in an op-ed opposing the idea of bans on the burka, “Europeans can permit themselves to be squeamish about how things start and how things, if left unabated, can end.” As a rabbi, he added, “I am made uncomfortable when any religious expression is restricted, not only my own.”

Goldschmidt has got it wrong. Europeans have a right to feel uncomfortable. But not, as Goldschmidt argues, because Europeans are being too hard on Muslims. Rather, because they are being too soft.