Category Archives: Women

Muslim woman receives damages for headscarf slight

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A 20-year-old Malmö woman has been awarded damages after she was asked to leave a bus for wearing a veil. The woman has received 25,000 kronor ($4,203) from public bus service operator Arriva after an agreement was reached with the Ombudsman against ethnic discrimination (DO), according to local newspaper Sydsvenskan.

The woman was instructed to leave the bus in the southern Swedish city when she refused to remove the niqab veil that she was wearing as part of her sartorial hijab headdress. The bus driver had asked the woman to remove her niqab so that he could identify her, however the woman was using a bus pass that did not require identification.

“The bus driver has not acted according to Arriva’s values. There is no doubt where the fault lies and this is most regrettable. We are happy to pay out the money to make up for it,” said Jan Wildau at Arriva. As a result of the incident the bus driver, who was employed on an hourly basis, no longer works for Arriva.

The Local, 12 April 2008

Columnist challenges women to wear hijab for a day

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Writing in the Louisiana State University newspaper The Daily Reveille, Shirien Elmasraya proposes to her fellow students that they should share her experience of wearing Islamic clothing:

“Ever wonder what it’s like for women that wear hijab – or the head scarf? I certainly get some crazy questions sometimes. ‘Do you take a shower with that on?’ is pretty common. And so is, ‘Do you wear that because you’re bald?’ That one’s my favorite. I certainly don’t mind the questions, and I am happy to answer them whenever I get them. But, now it’s your turn. I challenge the women on this campus to walk a day in my shoes. I challenge women to wear hijab for a whole day on April 25, 2008 and then talk about the experience afterward.”

Muslim hairdresser accuses salon owner of ‘blatant’ religious discrimination

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Wedge logoThe opening shots in a £34,000 employment battle between a pink-haired salon owner and a headscarf-wearing Muslim stylist were fired yesterday with an accusation of “blatant” religious discrimination.

Bushra Noah, 19, is claiming that amount in compensation after being turned down for a job at the Wedge salon, which specialises in “urban, edgy and funky” cuts. Owner Sarah Desrosiers, 32, says it is an “absolutely basic” job requirement that stylists should have their hair on show if they are to cut other people’s.

But Miss Noah argued: “I know my punk from my funk and my urban from my trendy. The fact that I wear a headscarf does not mean that I cannot assist in an alternative form of hairdressing. It is essential to my religion and is non-negotiable. I have been wearing it from the age of 13 and I had never suffered from such blatant discrimination until I visited Miss Desrosiers.”

She told a tribunal in central London how her interview at Wedge, at King’s Cross, left her devastated. She said: “Miss Desrosiers looked at me in shock. She asked me if I wore my headscarf all the time and I explained that I did. She asked me if I ever took it off and I said that I only took it off at home. She said as this is a hair salon it was essential that I did not wear a headscarf. Miss Desrosiers then said how uncomfortable she felt with me being around.”

Daily Mail, 1 April 2008

Hijabs at a Harvard gym

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ruth Marcus“It’s a measure of America’s multicultural journey over the past half-century that we’ve gone from ‘God and Man at Yale’ to Allah and Woman at Harvard. In a contretemps scarcely imaginable in William F. Buckley’s day, Harvard has closed one of its gyms to men for six hours a week so that Muslim women can exercise comfortably. ‘Sharia at Harvard,’ warned blogger Andrew Sullivan. A Harvard Crimson columnist blasted ‘Harvard’s misguided accommodationist policy.’

“Meanwhile, a separate controversy has flared over broadcasting the Muslim call to prayer from the steps of Harvard’s main library during Islamic Awareness Week. Three graduate students, writing in the Crimson, argued that the prayer sowed ‘seeds of division and disrespect’ by declaring that ‘there is no lord except God’ and that ‘Mohammad is the Messenger of God’. Harvard, they wrote, ‘should not grant license to any religious group, minority or otherwise, to use a loudspeaker to declare false the profoundly important and personal beliefs of others.’ …

“My reaction is more along the lines of: ‘Get a grip.’ It’s reasonable to set aside a few off-peak hours at one of Harvard’s many gyms. It’s not offensive to have the call to prayer echoing across Harvard Yard, any more than it is to ring church bells or erect a giant menorah there.

“I share the apprehensions stirred up by the more radical followers of Islam, with their drive to restore the caliphate and subjugate women. But I come to this issue as a member of another minority religion, Judaism, whose adherents often seek flexibility from the majority culture in order to practice their faith. As with Islam, my religion’s more observant believers endorse practices – segregating the sexes at prayer, excluding women from engaging in certain rituals – that I find disturbing, bordering on offensive. I have relatives who would shrink from shaking my hand. Still, I would defend to the death their right not to touch me.”

Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post, 26 March 2008

Cf. Debbie Schlussel’s comments

Swiss minister sparks veil outcry

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Micheline Calmy-ReySwiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey has been widely criticised for donning a white headscarf to meet Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Well-known for her stand on women’s rights, she has provoked headlines such as “Just like a submissive woman”.

Socialist MP Maria Roth-Bernasconi said it was irritating that she had angered feminists in Iran. Ms Calmy-Rey said she was observing protocol. “When you are a guest you respect local customs,” she said.

Social Democrat MP Liliane Maury Pasquier accepted that customs had to be observed. But she was quoted by one newspaper complaining that the minister should have shown solidarity with “the women who fight against wearing the headscarf”.

Swiss daily Le Matin said on Wednesday it was shocked that Switzerland’s “icon of a liberated woman” had been transformed into an image of one who was oppressed.

BBC News, 20 March 2008

Muslim ejected from Louisiana mall over hijab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today called on local, state and national law enforcement authorities to investigate a recent incident in which a Muslim woman was allegedly ejected from a Louisiana shopping mall for refusing a security guard’s demand to remove her religiously-mandated headscarf, or hijab.

CAIR said the 54-year-old woman and her daughter-in-law were leaving the food court of the Oakwood Mall in the New Orleans suburb of Gretna, La., on February 22 when a security guard approached them and allegedly told the older woman that she had two options: remove her headscarf or leave the mall. (The woman’s daughter-in-law was not wearing a headscarf.) The guard did not offer an explanation for his demand.

During the long walk out of the mall, the guard reportedly followed the women and even called for back-up. The daughter-in-law told CAIR that the two women felt “humiliated” by the stares of other shoppers as the guard followed them out of the mall. When two more guards came to the scene, they did not offer assistance to the women, but they did confirm the reason for the first guard’s ejection order. The family, all of whom are American citizens of Palestinian heritage, has retained an attorney and is exploring their legal options.

“It is unbelievable that an American of any faith would be denied access to a public area merely because she wished to carry out the requirements of her faith,” said CAIR National Legal Counsel Nadhira Al-Khalili. “We call on local law enforcement authorities and the FBI to determine whether any civil rights or criminal laws were violated during this disturbing incident.”

CAIR press release, 29 February 2008

Airport tells faithful to take off turbans, veils

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Security at Brisbane Airport has gone into a spin after an unprecedented crackdown on turbans and other culturally-sensitive headgear worn by passengers. A federal investigation has been launched into an edict by the company in charge of the airport’s security to demand passengers remove for security checks religious headwear, including turbans, veils and Jewish skull caps.

At least one international flight was delayed at the weekend when staff from the company, ISS Security, demanded 13 people of the Sikh religion remove their turbans and a Muslim woman to take off her face veil. The Department of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development is investigating whether the clampdown by ISS breached federal airport policy.

It is standard airport practice around the world that religious headwear is only removed after conventional screening methods raise an alarm. But ISS employees yesterday said a directive was issued on Saturday demanding all passengers remove their religious headwear for security checks, regardless of whether there was any cause for suspicion. “We were told you have to take them off, or you’ll be stood down,” one worker said.

NEWS.com.au, 26 February 2008

Headscarf row flares again in Danish parliament

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Asmaa Abdol-HamidCOPENHAGEN — Tension about the possibility of a Muslim politician addressing the Danish parliament in a headscarf has flared again, but Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen tried to calm the debate on Tuesday.

“It’s up to parliament to decide dress codes, and if some people were to get up on the podium wearing a [Muslim] headscarf, I would not leave the room,” Rasmussen told reporters. “In my opinion, people’s ideas and points of view are more important than what they wear,” he said, adding however that “it would be beneficial for Danish society if the public sphere were exempt of some religious displays.”

Rasmussen’s comments came after his liberal-conservative government’s ally, the extreme-right Danish People’s Party (DPP), rekindled a row over whether women wearing the Muslim headscarf, or hijab, should be allowed to address parliament. DPP spokesman Soeren Espersen said last week that Asmaa Abdol-Hamid, a Dane of Palestinian origin, should not be permitted to address parliament while wearing a hijab.

She failed in her bid to become the first headscarf-wearing Muslim in Europe to be voted into parliament in last year’s general election, but there is a possibility that she could stand in temporarily for a parliamentarian from the small far-left Unity List Party.

Daily Times, 26 February 2008

See also Islam in Europe, 24 February 2008

Update:  The Copenhagen Post reports that Asmaa Abdol-Hamid has decided to take a one-year break from party politics. She is quoted as expressing her “disappointment in the left wing” over its response to Islamophobia, stating: “while there’s all this hubbub out there over Muslims, with one over-the-top suggestion after the other, the Red-Green Alliance has been disturbingly silent.”