Category Archives: Women

Muslim woman wearing veil ousted from Italy museum

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The head of one of Venice’s most prestigious museums on Wednesday apologized to an Islamic woman who was asked to leave by a guard because she was wearing a head veil.

The episode, which sparked controversy in the Italian media and rows between centre-left and centre-right politicians, occurred last Sunday in Venice’s Ca’ Rezzonico museum, which houses 18th century Venetian art.

“I’m sorry for what happened and if she ever wants to return to our museum, she will be more than welcome,” director Filippo Pedrocco told Reuters by telephone from Venice. “She will be most welcome among all women,” he said.

The woman, who was visiting the famed museum with her husband and children, had already cleared security when she entered the building and had begun her visit. When she reached the second floor, a room guard told her she had to take off her “niqab”, a veil which leaves only the eyes visible, or leave.

“The room guard was over-zealous. He should not have done it. She already passed security and his only duty was to guarantee the safety of the artwork in his room,” Pedrocco said.

The woman was believed to have been part of a well-off family visiting Venice, one of Italy’s most expensive cities, from Saudi Arabia or a Gulf state.

She refused to take off her veil and left the building, which faces Venice’s Grand Canal and houses works by such 18th century Venetian masters as Giandomenico Tiepolo.

Reuters, 27 August 2008

Turning the tables

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“My sister has worn a face veil for six years. She lives in Birmingham, where it is common to see women shrouded in black, however the sight is more unusual in Southampton, where my parents live and where, at the weekend, my sister was called ‘a ninja woman’.

“This insult is neither the most hurtful – ‘fucking terrorist freak’ – nor the most spurious – ‘Osama-lover’ – to have been levelled at her over the years. But it wasn’t the name-calling that really rankled her and me.

“We challenged the man who made the remark, he denied saying it, even though he said it as I was passing him. My sister called him ‘a lying bigot’, which is all she could muster on a Sunday afternoon in Primark, en route to Clark’s to have her children fitted for new shoes, but she delivered it rather splendidly, to the bemusement of shoppers who, if they hadn’t noticed her before, suddenly found her rather interesting. Her children asked why mummy was shouting at a man.”

Riazat Butt in the Guardian, 27 August 2008

Muslim sprinter wins Olympic sprint dressed head to toe in hijab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sprinters have long been squeezing their muscular frames into the most eye-wateringly skimpy, tight and revealing costumes imaginable.But one female athlete at this year’s Olympics is bucking the trend for bulging lycra and naked torsos.

In 2004, Bahrain’s Ruqaya Al Ghasara, a devout Muslim, was the first athlete to ever take part in an Olympics wearing a hijab. Today, Al Ghasara won her heat of the women’s 200m sprint at the Bird’s Nest stadium – despite being clothed head to foot.

Daily Mail, 19 August 2008

Swiss Christian Democrat leader calls for veil ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The president of the centre-right Christian Democratic Party Christophe Darbellay proposed a nationwide veil ban in a recent interview with the broadsheet Tages-Anzeiger. It would also apply to holidaymakers from Arab countries in resorts like Interlaken, where the visitor segment from Middle Eastern countries has seen rapid growth, and female tourists wearing the niqab and burqa are becoming a common sight. Tourism industry representatives have reacted with scepticism to the CDP’s proposal.

Jungfrau Zeitung, 18 August 2008

Hijab-wearing woman kidnapped Madeleine McCann, says Sun

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Is It HerA little girl who cops suspect could be Madeleine McCann asked a woman she was seen walking with, “Can we go back now?” it emerged last night.

The poignant plea in English was overheard by a bank security guard in Brussels, Belgium – and he is convinced the kiddie was missing Maddie.

The guard told detectives the blonde blue-eyed girl looked just like Maddie, who was nearly four when she vanished from her family’s holiday apartment in Portugal on May 3 last year.

She was with a woman the man did not believe was her mother because they were very unalike. The dark-skinned woman, wearing a hijab headdress, spoke in a different language, possibly broken French.

Sun, 11 August 2008

‘Nothing but respect’ for women athletes who are wearing the hijab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hijab Olympics“The Greeks, as we all know, used to compete in the original Olympic games stark naked and smothered in olive oil. That’s no longer the fashion – because we have different cultural ideas about what parts of the body are suitable for public display – and, in fact, some women have taken the trend for Olympic modesty one stage further.

“This year, several women, including Egyptian fencer Shaimaa El Gammal and Bahraini sprinter Rakia Al Gassra, will be competing wearing the hijab.

“I suppose that as a good liberal feminist I ought to be appalled by this, seeing it as a symbol of patriarchal oppression. In fact, I find I rather admire these women.

“I am appalled by the fact that some countries, including Saudi Arabia, have sent male-only teams to the games. But for these women, combining their religious beliefs with their athletic ambitions, I have nothing but respect.

“A lot of rubbish is talked about the hijab. Since France banned girls from wearing them in schools in 2004, there has been a steady stream of media stories and comment suggesting that Britain should do the same. Feminist friends tell me that the headscarves are a symbol of female subjugation, a way to deal with male lust by forcing women to cover up, and that as such, they should not be tolerated in a gender-equal society. The women who wear them, they say, have been pressured into it by their communities.

“Well, yes and no. We all wear the kind of clothes we wear partly because of social pressure – and our own culture still says, for example, that it is more acceptable, and less sexual, for men to walk down the street topless than it is for women. Many patriarchal religions do indeed hold highly disturbing views about women, which should be challenged, but we should confront those ideas via education and debate, not by forcing young women to reveal parts of their bodies they would rather keep covered. If women say that they want to wear a headscarf, I’m afraid we have to take them at their word. What could be more anti-feminist than telling women that they don’t really know what they think?

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Veiled athletes challenge stereotypes in Beijing

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ruqaya Al GhasaraThe women in Roqaya Al Ghasara’s home town in Bahrain are so proud of their pioneering Olympic sprinter that some of them got together to design and sew a set of tailor-made aerodynamic veils for her to run in.

Egyptian fencer Shaimaa El Gammal, a third-timer at the Olympics, will don Islamic headgear in Beijing for the first time. She says it is a sign she is come of age and she feels more empowered than ever.

This year’s Games will see a sizable sprinkling of veiled athletes who are determined to avoid offending devout Muslims back home while showing skimpily dressed rivals there is nothing constricting about wearing “hijab”.

Two of them, Bahrain’s Al Ghasara and veiled Iranian rower Homa Hosseini, won the honor of being flag bearers for their countries at the opening ceremony’s parade of athletes.

“The hijab has never been a problem for me. In Bahrain you grow up with it,” said Al Ghasara, wearing a white baseball cap over a black veil that covers her hair and neck. Her baggy running gear exposes only her face and hands.

“There are more women in sport all the time from countries like Qatar and Kuwait. You can choose to wear the hijab or not. For me it’s liberating,” added Al Ghasara, whose close-fitting running veils come in red or white, the Bahraini colors.

Reuters, 11 August 2008

See also Gulf Daily News, 11 August 2008

Hijab-wearing women complicit in their own oppression – A.C. Grayling

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“When I hear or read an eloquent Muslim woman defending the headscarf or the more extreme forms of covering which, they say, are so liberating, I am reminded of that dangerous idea: the idea of complicity in one’s own repression, the state of willingly accepting and enacting what the oppressor, or the oppressive mindset, dictates….

“Tradition and religion between them – such partners – make shackles of iron. And the shackles are mainly worn by women. They are forged as much in the fires that burn down girls’ schools as in the cool conceit of those who celebrate the fact that an iron shackle can look like a piece of cloth draped over a head.”

A.C. Grayling in the Guardian, 7 August 2008

Policy U-turn on hijab in Irish schools

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Department of Education outlined its policy on students wearing hijab in a letter to a Dublin school as long ago as 2005. It told a Dublin teacher that she should allow a student to wear the hijab, a Muslim headscarf covering the head but not the face, during PE.

The clearly defined policy contrasts with the lack of guidance given to a principal in Gorey Community School last year when the same issue arose. He was told that it was up to the school’s board of management to decide whether pupils could wear Muslim headdress.

The advice issued in 2005 is contained in a letter released under the Freedom of Information Act. Brian Hayes, Fine Gael’s education spokesman, said it showed that the department had shifted opinion on the wearing of the hijab since first issuing advice three years ago. “It shows that instead of drawing up clear guidelines and sticking to them, the department has just confused its position in the intervening period,” he said.

In 2005, Matthew Ryan, the principal officer in the department’s post-primary administration section, issued a clear directive to Our Lady’s Grove in Goatstown. In a letter he stated: “Where a school admits a person of a religious denomination but then seeks to impose a dress code requirement which runs contrary to that student’s religious beliefs, it may constitute unlawful discrimination against that student.”

The letter states that the Equal Status Act 2000 prohibits a school from discriminating against a student on religious grounds. “It follows that this department would expect schools to allow students of that denomination to wear the hijab and indeed it is our understanding that this approach is being followed by schools,” the department wrote at the time.

Liam Egan, the father of the girl from Gorey Community School whose wearing of the hijab prompted her principal to seek advice from the department, said that equality legislation had not changed since 2005. “The law has not changed, so why has the department changed its position? Since 7/7, this has become more of a political issue. My daughter wore the hijab all through her first year in school and it was not contentious. Then, at the end of the year, it suddenly became an issue,” he said.

Sunday Times, 3 August 2008