The west should stop using the liberation of Muslim women to justify its strategy of dominance, argues Soumaya Ghannoushi.
Category Archives: Women
The rights of women
“It was Katha Pollitt, writing in The Nation last month, who made me see it. Pollitt, a noted feminist writer, wondered why the American liberal-turned-neocon David Horowitz – founder of the bizarrely named Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week – had suddenly developed an interest in the rights of women. Specifically, Muslim women. ‘Life is not a picnic for women in China, India, Africa and Latin America’, wrote Pollitt. ‘Why no interest in them?’ She speculated that by focusing on the oppression of women, Horowitz had found an easy way to target the Muslim world.
“In his ‘age of horrorism’ essay last year, Martin Amis also developed a feminist sensibility. Amis, whose novels so often feature flat, cartoon-like women, connected the failure of Islamic states with the ‘obscure logic that denies the Islamic world the talent and energy of half its people … the suppression of its women’. Well, there is definitely work to be done regarding the rights of Muslim women, but a lot also needs to be done for all the non-Muslim women oppressed around the globe.”
Noorjehan Barmania in the Guardian, 14 December 2007
‘The deadly face of Muslim extremism’
Two members of the so-called Muslim Canadian Congress add their voices to the anti-Muslim campaign provoked by the tragic death of Aqsa Parvez.
National Post, 12 December 2007
For a response, see muslimmatters.org
Quebec union leaders call for hijab ban
MONTREAL — No public servant – including Muslim teachers and judges – should be allowed to wear anything at work that shows what religion they belong to, leaders of Quebec’s two biggest trade union federations and a civil-servants’ union told the Bouchard-Taylor commission Monday.
“We think that teachers shouldn’t wear any religious symbols – same thing for a judge in court, or a minister in the National Assembly, or a policeman – certainly not,” said Rene Roy, secretary-general of the 500,000-member Quebec Federation of Labour. “The wearing of any religious symbol should be forbidden in the workplace of the civil service … in order to ensure the secular character of the state,” said Lucie Grandmont, vice-president of the 40,000-member Quebec union of public employees.
Dress codes that ban religious expression should be part of a new “charter of secularism” that the Quebec government should adopt, said Claudette Carbonneau [pictured], president of the Confederation of National Trade Unions. Such a charter is needed “to avoid anarchy,” Carbonneau said Monday, presenting a brief on behalf of the federation’s 300,000 members at the commission’s hearing on the integration of immigrants in Montreal. That’s the same point of view as the 150,000-member Centrale des syndicats du Quebec, which includes 100,000 who work in the school system, the commission heard.
The unions’ anti-religious attitude – especially the idea to ban hijabs on teachers – got a cold reception from groups as disparate as a Muslim women’s aid organization and the nationalist St.-Jean-Baptiste Society of Montreal. “What that would do is close the door to Muslim women who want to teach,” said Samaa Elibyari, a Montreal community radio host who spoke for the Canadian Council of Muslim Women. “It goes against religious freedoms that are guaranteed in the (Quebec) Charter of Rights.”
Elibyari said Muslim women routinely face discrimination in the workplace. They don’t need unions on their back, too, she said. “When a young teacher calls a school to see if she can do an internship, and is asked on the phone straight out: ‘Do you wear the veil?’; when a cashier at a supermarket is fired and her boss tells her ‘The customers don’t want to see that,’ referring to the veil; when a secretary gets passed over for promotion even if she succeeds in all her French exams, and is told ‘take off that tablecloth’ – is that not discrimination?” Elibyari asked.
Canadian Muslim women’s soccer team fights ban
Sixteen-year-old Sheena Alami calls the flap over Islamic hijab headscarves that has sidelined her Edmonton soccer team shocking. “I was really disappointed that this whole issue was taking place in Canada because we’re supposed to be a multicultural society accepting of different cultures and religions,” she said yesterday.
The Alberta Soccer Association has temporarily banned Alami and her teammates on the Al-Ikhwat (Sisterhood) soccer team from playing until it makes a ruling on the safety of hijabs on the field. Alami, a Grade 10 student at Harry Ainlay Composite High School and the daughter of Afghani immigrants, says she’s worn a headscarf while playing soccer and basketball for years.
Thirteen of the 18 women on the team wear hijabs, and they secured a letter of support from the Edmonton and District Soccer Association. “They said, ‘No problem’,” she recalled. “And we were so relieved and so happy.”
The summer went smoothly but shortly after the indoor season kicked off last month, a Calgary referee barred Safaa Menhem, 14, from playing while wearing a hijab – and an ASA ban on the entire Edmonton Al-Ikhwat team followed.
The ASA allowed Menhem to join her teammates on the pitch last week, while wearing a modified hijab tied at the back of the neck rather than under her chin, but has yet to rule on the Edmonton team.
Hijab ban sidelines Edmonton soccer team
A Muslim female soccer team in Edmonton has had to postpone all their games until the Alberta Soccer Association makes a final decision on players wearing headscarves on the field.
Half the girls on the Al-Ikhwat team wear a hijab, a headscarf worn by some Muslim females in keeping with their belief of dressing modestly.
The provincial association has temporarily banned players from wearing hijabs on the pitch after a referee asked a 14-year-old girl to leave a game in Calgary last month. He said her headscarf posed a safety risk.
The Alberta Soccer Association follows international rules that forbid all headgear, including sweatbands, but said it will review safety issues before making a final ruling on hijabs.
Amereen Chowdhry, a Grade 12 student who’s played with the team for a year and a half wearing her hijab, says it’s not dangerous. “Talk to us directly. Ask us what it’s like so we can show then that it’s not a dangerous issue. Our hijabs don’t have pins in it and they are tucked into our jersey,” she told CBC News.
The team plays in the Edmonton and District Soccer Association’s indoor league. Mike Thorne, the group’s executive director, said women wearing hijabs have been playing in Edmonton for more than seven years without any problems.
Giving aid and comfort to Muslim terrorists and their Koranic jihad
The Christian fundamentalist website Movieguide.org is not happy about the new Brian DePalma directed film Redacted. With a summary of the film that it is “Giving aid and comfort to Muslim terrorists and their Koranic jihad”, the website lists its complaints:
“REDACTED is a controversial left-wing movie about two despicable American soldiers in Iraq leading a raid to rape and murder a teenage Iraqi girl and her family. This unbalanced, abhorrent movie will be used as propaganda by the brutal anti-Christian, anti-American Muslim terrorists who want to murder anyone who opposes their totalitarian aims.”
With attitudes towards women making up a substantial part of criticisms of Muslims in the 21st Century it is interesting to note that one of Movieguide.org’s complaints is of “an anti-American diatribe by some goofy-looking young woman on the Internet”.
Muslim woman sues for being forced to remove headscarf in US jail
A Muslim woman arrested for riding a commuter train without a valid ticket has filed a federal lawsuit in the United States, claiming her religious freedom was violated when she was forced to remove her headscarf when she was taken to jail.
Jameelah Medina also said she was intimidated by a deputy who accused her of being a terrorist and called Islam an “evil” religion, according to the suit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.
The suit names the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department and Deputy Craig Roberts of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
After determining her ticket was invalid, the officers told her to get off at the next station, where a deputy would be waiting for her. Roberts handcuffed Medina, put her in the back of a police car and began driving her to a jail.
During the ride, Roberts berated Medina and Islam, according to the suit. Roberts “accused Medina of being a terrorist and supporting terrorism. He stated that Muslims are evil … and that the United States was in Iraq at God’s direction to squash evil,” read the suit.
At the West Valley Detention Center in San Bernardino, Medina was forced to remove her headscarf despite several attempts to explain to a female deputy why she wore it, the suit said.
After several hours, Medina was released without being charged or fined, her lawyer said.
Associated Press, 6 December 2007
See also ACLU press release, 6 December 2007
Calgary girl gets to play in soccer game after minor modification to hijab
CALGARY – A 14-year-old girl who made national headlines over her determination to wear a Muslim headscarf while playing sports was allowed yesterday to compete in a soccer tournament. Safaa Menhem learned just moments before the game that she had been given the go-ahead to wear her hijab with just a few slight modifications. The pint-sized forward received a rousing ovation when she stepped onto the Calgary Soccer Centre pitch for her first shift. “I’m happy I got to play,” a beaming Safaa said after the game, which her team won 4-1.
‘Religious savagery is too much to bear’
“Scour the newspapers and you might just spot the story about a 19-year-old Saudi woman who is to receive 200 lashes for being in the same car as a man who wasn’t her husband or a relative. Her punishment is an act of such barbarity it triggers utter repulsion and fury. Sadly, the best we can do is recoil in horror at a religion prepared to condone the degradation of females….”
Sue Carroll in the Daily Mirror, 28 November 2007
But don’t get the idea that her article is an example of rising intolerance towards Muslims and their faith. Carroll continues:
“We Brits may be lacking on the football pitch but when it comes to tolerance we’re world class. You’d be hard pushed to find a nation more willing to bend over backwards to accommodate minority beliefs and sensitivities…. If Britain were to employ Sudanese tactics and impose its values on minorities living here, you wouldn’t see Parliament Square for the massed ranks of burkhas screaming for retribution.”