Category Archives: State Oppression

Georgia courts to allow religious head coverings

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Lisa_ValentineGeorgia courtrooms will allow religious headgear after last year’s arrest of a Muslim woman who refused to remove her headscarf in a west Georgia courthouse.

The Judicial Council of Georgia voted unanimously this week to allow religious and medical headgear into Georgia courtrooms. It also allows a person to request a private inspection if a security officer wants to conduct a search.

“If this had been a nun, no one would have required her to remove her habit,” said Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Carol Hunstein, who heads the Judicial Council. “I think this is a good rule, and I think it’s clear.”

The policy shift stems from the December 2008 arrest of Lisa Valentine, who was ordered to serve 10 days in jail for contempt of court after she refused to remove her hijab at a courtroom in Douglasville, a town of about 20,000 people west of Atlanta.

Associated Press, 24 July 2009

See also CAIR press release, 24 July 2009

US court reverses ban on Tariq Ramadan

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Tariq Ramadan cartoon (1)A federal appeals court in Manhattan on Friday reversed a lower-court ruling that had allowed the government to bar a prominent Muslim scholar from entering the United States on the ground that he had contributed to a charity that had connections to terrorism.

The scholar, Tariq Ramadan, 46, a Swiss academic, was to become a tenured professor at the University of Notre Dame, but the Bush administration revoked his visa in 2004 and again denied him a visa in 2006. The government cited evidence that from 1998 to 2002, he donated about $1,300 to a Swiss-based charity that the Treasury Department later categorized as a terrorist organization because it provided money to Hamas, the militant Palestinian group.

Professor Ramadan said in a later court affidavit that he was not aware of any connections between the charity, the Association de Secours Palestinien, and Hamas or terrorism, and that he believed that the organization was involved in legitimate humanitarian projects. “I have condemned terrorism at every opportunity,” he wrote.

In its ruling on Friday, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held unanimously that the government was required to “confront Ramadan with the allegation against him and afford him the subsequent opportunity to demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that he did not know, and reasonably should not have known, that the recipient of his contributions was a terrorist organization.”

The panel sent the case back to the lower court for a determination on whether Professor Ramadan had been confronted with the allegation, and then given a chance to deny it. If that did not happen, the panel said, a new visa hearing should be held.

“I am gratified that the court has found that my exclusion from the United States is without basis,” Professor Ramadan said in a statement on Friday. Professor Ramadan, who had frequently visited the United States in the past, lecturing and attending conferences, said he was eager to “engage once again with Americans in the kinds of face-to-face exchanges” that were “crucial to bridging cultural divides.”

New York Times, 17 July 2009

France: Racist campaign against burqa threatens democratic rights

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Though disguised under a hypocritical cover of secularism and protecting women’s rights, the anti-burqa campaign is a racist assault on basic individual liberties. It is also particularly dangerous in that it sets precedents whereby the state can outlaw political or religious beliefs it deems contrary to its interests.

“No credence can be given to claims that Muslim women’s rights can be defended by whipping up an anti-Muslim atmosphere and forcing women to modify their beliefs and conduct under the threat of punishment by the state.”

World Socialist Website, 14 July 2009

France begins hearings on banning the veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

French lawmakers opened hearings Wednesday on whether to ban the burka, calling in experts who said France should act to discourage Muslim women from wearing the head-to-toe veil.

Islam expert Abdennour Bidar called the full veil a “pathology of Islam” embraced by hardline Salafists who tell Muslim women to cover themselves as a way to “get back to their roots”. “It’s up to the republic to help Islam in our country choose its destiny and help French Muslims resist this pressure,” said Bidar. “We must find ways to prevent the burka from spreading.”

Anthropologist Dounia Bouzar said young women had in recent years taken to wearing the full veil after being indoctrinated by “gurus” who pervert Islam’s teachings. She suggested that measures be adopted under France’s security laws barring citizens from concealing their identities by covering their faces, be it with a niqab, a ski mask or even a paper bag. Such a measure would apply equally to all citizens and ensure that France’s five million Muslims do not feel stigmatized for their religion, she argued.

As the hearings got under way, the leader of the governing right-wing majority in parliament came out in favour of a law banning the burka but said it should be preceded by a period of “dialogue” of six months to a year. “We must prohibit what should be prohibited but only after having explained why,” said Jean-Francois Cope, a leading figure in Sarkozy’s UMP party, in an interview to Le Parisien newspaper.

AFP, 8 July 2009

See also Bloomberg, 8 July 2009

Now Christopher Hitchens supports a ‘burka ban’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Christopher Hitchens“Last week French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced his support for legislation to ban the burka, the dark, heavy and not-too-comfortable garment worn by many Muslim women. The question arises: Is this forcible French secularism run amok, or a prohibition that Americans, who often believe we have struck a better balance between church and state, might entertain? I would say the latter….

“It is quite plainly designed by men for the subjugation of women. One cannot be absolutely sure that no woman has ever donned it voluntarily, but one can certainly say that, in countries where women can choose not to wear it, then not wearing it is the choice they generally make. This disposes right away of the phony argument that religious attire is worn as a matter of ‘right’. … Western masochism about other people’s ‘culture’ often obscures this obvious fact.

“Think of the things that we all have to do now, like submitting to humiliating searches at airports, or showing our ID to people who have no ‘probable cause’ for demanding it. Can we turn up at airport security wearing a bag over our heads? Can we produce a photograph that shows only our eyes through a slit? Of course not….

“And don’t force me to say this, even though I will: One reason we have to undergo such indignities is because of faith-based suicide attacks on our civil aviation, and so far the perpetrators of this nightmare have not been caught wearing crucifixes or Stars of David around their necks….

“It is depressing that our President, in addressing the Muslim world, takes the most reactionary religious practice as the symbol of rights and identity. The klansman’s hood, remember, is also the symbol of a white Protestant religious ‘identity’ movement.”

Christopher Hitchens in the New York Daily News, 1 July 2009

Veil is ‘a direct and explicit criticism of our Western values’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Hats off (or should that be chapeaux off?) to French President Nicolas Sarkozy for calling for a ban on the burkha in France…. No British politician would be brave enough to do what Sarkozy did or to follow through with what will almost certainly be a nation-wide ban on the burkha. Our politicians are, unlike our European amis, too cowed by political correctness and misguided multiculturalism to speak out on such a difficult topic and risk offending the two-million-strong Muslim population.

“Except the burkha isn’t a Muslim issue. It’s a British issue. It doesn’t just demean the woman who wears it, it also demeans the men and women who have to see her wearing it…. The idea of a ban is certainly not preposterous…. As Sarkozy pointed out the burkha is a political, not a religious, statement…. It is a direct and explicit criticism of our Western values and belief in the equality of men and women.”

Julia Hartley-Brewer in the Daily Express, 29 June 2009

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Row over Islamic dress opens bitter divisions in France

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Laicite trahieIn the northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, with its busy market, fast-food joints and bargain clothes shops, Angelica Winterstein only goes out once a week – and only if she really has to.

“I feel like I’m being judged walking down the street. People tut or spit. In a smart area west of Paris, one man stopped his car and shouted: ‘Why don’t you go back to where you came from?’ But I’m French, I couldn’t be more French,” said the 23-year-old, who was born and raised in bourgeois Versailles.

Once a fervent Catholic, Winterstein converted to Islam at 18. Six months ago she began wearing a loose, floor-length black jilbab, showing only her expertly made-up face from eyebrows to chin. She now wants to add the final piece, and wear full niqab, covering her face and leaving just her eyes visible.

“But this week, after Sarkozy announced that full veils weren’t welcome in France, things have got really difficult,” she said. “As it is, people sometimes shout ‘Ninja’ at me. It’s impossible to find a job – I’m a qualified childminder and get plenty of interviews because of my CV, but when people see me in person, they don’t call back. It’s difficult in this country, there’s a certain mood in the air. I don’t feel comfortable walking around.”

Human rights groups warned this week that the row over niqabs risks exacerbating the growing problem of discrimination against women wearing standard Muslim headscarves. Five years on from the heated national debate over France’s 2004 law banning headscarves and all conspicuous religious symbols from state schools, there has been an increase in general discrimination against adult women who cover their heads.

“Women in standard headscarves have been refused access to voting booths, driving lessons, barred from their own wedding ceremonies at town halls, ejected from university classes and in one case, a woman in a bank was not allowed to withdraw cash from her own account at the counter. This is clear discrimination by people who wrongly use the school law to claim that France is a secular state that doesn’t allow headscarves in public places. It’s utterly illegal and the courts rule in our favour,” said Renee Le Mignot, co-president of the Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Between Peoples. “Our fear is that the current niqab debate is going to make this general discrimination worse.”

Samy Debah, a history teacher who heads France’s Collective against Islamophobia, said 80% of discrimination cases reported to his group involved women wearing standard headscarves. He had rarely seen any instances of women wearing niqabs, even in the ethnically mixed north Paris suburb where he lives. “From our figures, the biggest discriminator against Muslim women is the state and state officials,” he said. “What people have to understand is that the concept of French secularism is not anti-religion per se, it is supposed to be about respecting all religions.”

Horia Demiati, 30, a French financier who wears a standard headscarf with her business suits, said: “I really fear an increase in hatred.” She recently won a discrimination case after she and her family, including a six-month baby, were refused access to a rural holiday apartment they had booked in the Vosges. The woman who refused them argued that she was a secular feminist and didn’t want to see the headscarf, “an instrument of women’s submission and oppression”, in her establishment.

Guardian, 27 June 2009