Belgium’s third largest city Ghent has banned its employees from wearing Muslim headscarves and other religious or political symbols. The proposal by the Flemish liberal party was approved in the city council by 26 votes to 23.
Category Archives: Women
Hijab and soccer: another red card
The family of a 14-year-old girl is demanding an apology from a referee who refused to allow her to play indoor soccer while wearing a religious head scarf. But the head of referee development for Alberta’s governing soccer body says wearing hijabs can pose a threat to player safety.
Safaa Menhem arrived late in the first half of her game with the Chinook Phantom under-16 girls team at the Calgary Soccer Centre Saturday. After her first shift in the game, the referee told the coach she couldn’t play if she wore her hijab.
At half time, the rest of the team – with the support of parents in the stands – threatened to forfeit the game in protest, but Menhem urged them to keep playing. “She walked off the field with her head down in tears thinking she’d done something wrong, which she hadn’t,” said her eldest brother Hekmet Menhem, 27, who may face disciplinary action for confronting the referee on the field. “The look I saw on her face when she came off killed me. That’s when I snapped.”
The politics of the veil
“‘A kind of aggression’. ‘successor to the Berlin Wall’. ‘lever in the long power struggle between democratic values and fundamentalism’. ‘An insult to education’. ‘A terrorist operation’. These descriptions – by former French President Jacques Chirac; economist Jacques Attali; and philosophers Bernard-Henri Lévy, Alain Finkielkraut and André Glucksmann – do not refer to the next great menace to human civilization but rather to the Muslim woman’s headscarf, which covers the hair and neck, or, as it is known in France, the foulard islamique.”
Laila Lalami reviews Joan Wallach Scott’s recently published book The Politics of the Veil.
Hijab-wearing girl blocked from judo match
WINNIPEG — Manitoba’s sport minister has ordered the agency that governs provincial sports to review a decision that banned an 11-year-old girl from a judo tournament because she wore a Muslim head scarf. “I’ve asked Sport Manitoba to become engaged here and find out what the deal is and come to a resolution in short order,” Eric Robinson told the Winnipeg Free Press yesterday.
Hagar Outbih left a judo tournament in tears Saturday when judo officials in Winnipeg refused to let her fight while wearing the hijab. The girl said she couldn’t believe sports officials would ban her because she wore a head scarf. Safety, not religious reasons, determined the decision, said Judo Manitoba president Dave Minuk. “It could be used to strangle somebody,” he said.
‘The abuse of Muslim women shames us all’
Yet another anti-Muslim piece in today’s Observer from Jasper Gerard who tells us that “it’s not racist to defend Asian women who need help”, although it’s unclear how his insistence on criticising the Muslim community (or “Islamic sorts” to employ Gerard’s preferred term) provides any help at all to Asian women. On the contrary, it merely legitimises the prevailing culture of anti-Muslim bigotry, of which hijab-wearing Muslim women in particular are the frequent victims.
But what can you expect from a writer whose response to the Eagleton-Amis controversy was to opine that “it’s a blessed relief that Amis and co have latched on to Islam” and assert that “Eagleton, not Amis, is the problem”? As for racism, perhaps Gerard might ask himself how he would characterise a non-Jewish journalist who demonstrated a similar obsession with criticising the Jewish community.
Gerard observes that “a study claims to show an analysis of British media reports on Islam demonise Muslims. I’m sure this article will also be chalked up as another ‘attack’.” Only too happy to oblige, Jasper.
Veil bill ‘misses target’ say Canadian Liberals
OTTAWA – Liberals have lost their enthusiasm for forcing veiled Muslim women to show their faces if they want to vote in federal elections. Some Grit MPs now admit the party was wrong to jump on the bandwagon two months ago, joining the three other federal parties in demanding that Elections Canada insist all voters uncover their faces.
At the time, the parties were contesting three crucial by-elections in Quebec, where the issue of veiled voters was part of a heated debate over how far the province should go in accommodating immigrants.
Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion was among those who initially urged Elections Canada to revisit its decision not to compel by-election voters to show their faces. But now that the Tory government has introduced legislation to require precisely that, Mr. Dion is hinting that Liberals won’t support it.
Moncton MP Brian Murphy, who led off debate for the Liberals on the bill, suggested the issue of veiled voters is a tempest in a teapot. He said the legislation is unnecessary, that it targets Muslim women, and possibly violates equality guarantees in the Charter of Rights.
Quebec mother considers teachers in hijabs a threat
Reminding them of the Christian name of where they were – on Île Jésus – a young mother yesterday urged the chairmen of Quebec’s “reasonable accommodations” commission not to forget their Roman Catholic heritage. Geneviève April also had a warning for Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor: Don’t promote the rise of Islam in Quebec, because it will erode the identity of young French Canadians like her two children, who are exposed to it at school and daycare.
“As a mother, I’m very worried,” said April, 30, whose young son attends a multi-ethnic school that is 70-per-cent allophone and where the pupils are of 45 nationalities. “Children are sponges, and if my children are taught by someone (who is Muslim), they’ll start asking themselves who they are,” said April, the first of two dozen people who addressed the commission yesterday in Laval.
Teachers and daycare workers in hijabs, for example, are a threat, because “children trust the people looking after them, and (wearing the hijab) is practically a kind of subversion, and I think that’s deplorable and shouldn’t be accepted.”
Bouchard, a veteran historian and sociologist who grew up Catholic in Chicoutimi, asked April whether it’s OK for parents to transmit their religion to their children. Absolutely, she replied, but “I don’t want Muslim parents transmitting their religion to my children.”
“Culture and religion are interrelated,” and whereas Islam has no roots here, “Quebec culture is completely filled with allusions to the Catholic religion,” she said, noting that the Highway 15 hotel where the Laval hearings are being held sits on Île Jésus.
At his multi-ethnic school, her son is “in a bath of cultures, and his identity will be put to the test,” April said. If his teacher wears a hijab and many of his classmates are Muslims, her son may one day decide to become Muslim himself, “just to be like his friends, and I wouldn’t like that,” April said.
“That’s why you’d like hijabs to be banned in schools?” Bouchard asked.
“Yes,” April replied.
The strange journey of Ayaan Hirsi Ali
“The former ‘liberal’ who becomes an outspoken right-winger has become an American political archetype. Ronald Reagan and David Horowiz are two prime examples of the breed….
“Recently, a related version of this turncoat persona – former Dutch Member of Parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali – has emerged: a ‘reformed’ Muslim woman who favors crushing Islam under the boot of Western militarism. Once very devout in her Muslim beliefs, Ali has gained a great deal of media attention – including horrific tales of her abuse at the hands of Muslim men – and has transformed into an outspoken critic who bases her calls for the destruction of Islam on feminist and human rights principles….
“She is poised to become the most recognizable face of naked Islamophobia in America. Expect to see her as a ubiquitous guest on cable news channels and frequent contributor of op-eds reinforcing the worst stereotypes about the Muslim world. She’ll validate already disturbingly common narratives about the perfidy of Islam, and she’ll tout the vast superiority of Western thinking in stark terms that would be shocking coming from a more traditional (read: white, Christian) right-wing commentator….
“Hirsi Ali has become a darling of those who believe in the benevolence of Western hegemony; The Economist described her as a ‘cultural ideologue of the new right’…. Her outspoken advocacy on feminist ethical issues – roundly condemning ‘honor killings’ and female circumcision – has also made her a poster-girl for the aggressive brand of atheism typified by figures like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, all three of whom have held her life-story up as an example of the harms caused by religion in general, and Islam in particular. For them, she’s a living testament to the idea that rational liberal interventionists in the post-Enlightenment West have a moral duty to wage a new crusade against the Muslim world.”
Joshua Holland at AlterNet, 12 November 2007
Call to ban council staff from wearing the burka
A group of councillors are proposing that staff at Calderdale Council be banned from wearing the burka and niqab.
Coun Allen Clegg has demanded staff be stopped from wearing the religious Muslim dress because “it intimidates people.” He likened the niqab – the face veil – and the burka, the garment that cloaks the entire body, often including the face, to outfits worn by the Ku Klux Klan.
He told the Courier: “Council workers are often facing the public and I don’t think the public feels comfortable or safe facing someone they essentially cannot see. It’s a matter of common sense. How would you feel if a social worker turned up at your door wearing something that resembled a Ku Klux Klan outfit?”
‘Muslim issue will turn and bite us if we fail to act’
Ruth Dudley Edwards warns that “the catastrophe that the ideological multiculturists have brought upon Britain” may yet spread to the Republic of Ireland.