Category Archives: Women

Muslim girl barred from taekwondo tournament over hijab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

MONTREAL – A Muslim girl barred from competing in a taekwondo tournament because of her hijab was adamant yesterday that she would give up neither her sport nor her head covering. “I won’t take it off for any reason,” said 11-year-old Bissan Mansour. “Even if I can’t go to tournaments, I can continue to practise until I become world champion.”

Bissan and four of her teammates, all Muslims of Lebanese descent from the Ultimate Tae Kwon Do Club in Montreal, were told they could not compete in the Raymond Mourad provincial tournament in Longueuil unless they removed their hijabs, which were deemed a safety risk that violated competition rules.

Ottawa Citizen, 16 April 2007

Islamophobic attitudes slammed at National Union of Journalists conference

Posted on by Bob Pitt

NUJDelegates called on the NUJ executive to step up efforts to stamp out “pernicious and insidious” press Islamophobia on Sunday.

Glasgow delegate Ruth Allan noted that Islamophobia “follows the KKK rulebook, which states that vulnerable ethnic minorities need to be isolated from the mainstream, so that they can more easily be attacked.”

South Yorkshire delegate Phil Turner damned Cabinet Minister Jack Straw’s comments about Muslim women covering their faces, arguing that what Mr Straw said had been designed to whip up racism “in a way not seen since the days of Enoch Powell.”

But Press and PR delegate Gillian Hammond endorsed Mr Straw’s comments, asserting: “The full-face niqab can become a disguise for people with sinister purposes – there are people out there who are up to no good and it needs to be said.”

Executive member Michelle Shawstreet applauded the “brave” Daily Star chapel who, led by Steve Usher, forced management to withdraw the “inflammatory, racist and deeply offensive Daily Fatwah page” in October last year by walking out.

Morning Star, 16 April 2007

UK Muslims ‘more loyal than most’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslims in the UK are more likely to identify strongly with Britain and have confidence in its institutions than the population as a whole, a poll suggests. The survey says they are also more likely to take a positive view of living side-by-side with people of different races and religions.

The majority of Muslims do not believe the veil is a barrier to integration – unlike most of the wider population.

Gallup interviewed 500 Muslims and 1,200 members of the wider population. The full results of the survey – described as the most comprehensive poll on Muslims and non-Muslims to date – will be published later this week.

Fifty-seven per cent of the Muslims polled said they identified strongly with their country, compared with 48% of the general public. Muslims were also more likely to express confidence in the police (78% to 69%), national government (64% to 36%), the justice system (67% to 55%) and elections (73% to 60%).

Nearly three-quarters of the Muslims said they felt loyal to the UK, and 82% said they respected other religions. But just 45% of the wider population said Muslims living in the UK were loyal to the nation, and only 55% said they were respectful.

The poll found the general public were more likely to prefer living in a neighbourhood made up mostly of people who shared their religious or ethnic background (35%) than Muslims were (25%).

Only 13% of British Muslims said they believed that women removing the veil was necessary for integration, compared with 55% of the wider population.

BBC News, 15 April 2007

Reported in the Sunday Telegraph under the headline “Muslims will not waver over veils”.

Update:  See “European Muslims show no conflict between religious and national identities”, Gallup, 26 April 2007

German media, politicians launch chauvinist campaign over ‘Muslim takeover’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Spiegel Mekka DeutschlandCampaigns alleging that a nation is being ‘swamped’ by foreigners have always been part of the repertoire of right-wing extremist politics. The influx of immigrants, their culture and language is regarded as a threat to one’s ‘own’ people and – depending upon which version is being promulgated – Western or German culture.

In recent times, the danger of being ‘swamped’ has been replaced by that of a ‘Muslim-takeover’, with the difference, however, that such agitation is not limited to right-wing extremist circles. Magazines such as Der Spiegel, Christian Democratic and Social Democratic politicians, and former liberals or leftwing intellectuals have now joined in the chorus.

Der Spiegel appeared on March 26 with the headline, “Mecca Germany. The quiet Muslim takeover.” The front page showed the familiar sight of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, swathed in darkness with the Islamic crescent moon and star above.

Regular Spiegel columnist Franz Josef Wagner commented, “Our symbols of justice wear a headscarf or a burka. What sort of country do we live in that our laws are no longer valid?”

The deputy chairman of the Christian Democratic Union’s (CDU) parliamentary faction Wolfgang Bosbach told the press he had long feared “the fact that we are gradually importing moral values from other cultures into Germany, even making them the basis of the legal system.”

The feminist Alice Schwarzer opined that the German legal system had “for a long time, been systematically infiltrated by Islamist forces” and Edmund Stoiber, the Bavarian state premier and Christian Social Union (CSU) chairman, warned, the “rule of law in Germany” should not “kow-tow to the Koran” or let itself be “undermined.”

What has occasioned this extreme agitation? It revolves around a divorce case being heard by the Family Court in Frankfurt am Main, in which a German woman of Moroccan origin wants to divorce her Moroccan husband.

World Socialist Web Site, 14 April 2007

Asylum seeker and baby sexually attacked in Glasgow

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An Algerian woman and her one-year-old baby were sexually assaulted in broad daylight in Glasgow in a racially aggravated attack.

The 33-year-old woman was pushing her son in his pram through the Yoker area of the city when a group of young men threw stones at them and kicked the woman. One man then exposed himself, indecently assaulted the woman and attempted to perform an indecent act on the one-year-old boy.

The woman, who cannot be identified, had her headscarf torn from her head. She escaped by snatching her son from his pram and running away, leaving behind the pram, headscarf and a baby’s bottle.

She took her son to hospital and he was released later that day. Her son was assaulted but she rescued him before the man could commit any sexual act.

Police are appealing for the young men involved to come forward and identify the man who committed the assault. The suspect is described as a white male, aged 20 to 25, with very short hair, who is tall and thin. He was wearing white and blue track suit trousers.

Continue reading →

Police probe racist slurs sprayed on prof’s door

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Racist graffiti at McMasterA McMaster University professor who organized a campus day in support of Muslim students says racial slurs sprayed onto her office door have left her in complete shock.

Hamilton police have launched a hate crime investigation into the racist attack condemned by Hamilton’s Muslim community and McMaster officials. Investigators believe the incident is a backlash against last week’s Wear a Hijab Day, an event organized by associate French professor Muriel Walker to help sensitize people about Islam.

“What have I done, not just to deserve this, but to inspire this kind of strong reaction?” she said. “I am still in disbelief.”

Campus cleaning staff discovered the racist and profane graffiti on Walker’s door early Tuesday morning. They also found copies of controversial Danish editorial cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed glued to her door.

“Did I really do something that bad to trigger this whole hysteria?” Walker said

Hamilton Spectator, 12 April 2007

See also “Hate graffiti targets McMaster professor”, Toronto Star, 12 April 2007

Update:  See “Racist cowards at work”, Toronto Star, 13 April 2007

And “McMaster professor was targeted before, she says”, Globe & Mail, 14 April 2007

Australian media accused of Islamaphobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

British firebrand Yvonne Ridley has accused Australia’s media of being hostile towards Muslims, as Labor demanded to know why the Islamic convert was allowed into the country.

The former investigative reporter, in Melbourne for a major religious conference, was quoted in news reports saying Australians were among the world’s worst Muslim haters. But Ms Ridley said her comments were wrongly recorded and she had no problem with the Australian people – only the Australian media, which she accused of Islamophobia.

“The time has come to change the media attitudes towards Muslims in this country,” she told the annual Australian Islamic Conference at the University of Melbourne, staged by non-profit Muslim group, Mercy Mission. “What I actually said to the journalist was there is a horrendous problem of Islamophobia in Australia – it isn’t the ordinary citizens, it’s the media.”

“It’s very, very sad the way the media has reacted,” she said. “Suddenly I’m no more a British journalist, I’m a firebrand Islamic convert. “I’ve always been quite outspoken in my views but I didn’t become an extremist until I put on a hijab.”

Meanwhile, Labor leader Kevin Rudd called on the federal government to explain why Ms Ridley was allowed to enter Australia.

AAP, 7 April 2007

US right wing smears Pelosi as ‘subservient’ for wearing headscarf

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Right-wing bloggers in the US have been sneering at Nancy Pelosi for wearing a headscarf during her visit to the Umayyad mosque in Damascus – “yielding to a misogynistic culture’s expectations”, “behold Pelosi queen of the dhimmis”, you know the sort of thing. However, as one critic points out, Little Green Footballs et al are being rather selective in their Islamophobia: “Apparently they never saw Laura Bush when she visited al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.”

Think Progress, 4 April 2007

Hijab day: women at Canadian university show support

Posted on by Bob Pitt

For a small piece of cloth meant to conceal the hijab has never been a more conspicuous or controversial symbol. It may be more visible than ever today at McMaster University, where a professor organized a Wear My Hijab day. Women, whether Muslim or not, were invited to wear a head scarf all day to show support for those who regularly wear it.

Professor Muriel Walker, who teaches French literature at Mac, organized the hijab day. “It can be difficult for women to wear the hijab,” she said. “I want this to help sensitize people about Islam … you should not be afraid of Muslims.”

Hamilton Spectator, 4 April 2007

Yusuf Islam’s manager refutes ‘veil’ allegations

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Yusuf Islam’s manager Marc Marot has refuted allegations that his client refused to speak to non-veiled women at the Echo Awards in Germany on the night of Sunday 25 March as reported by some media. He describes the allegations surfacing on the internet as “baseless and stupid” – especially as millions of people have seen Yusuf being interviewed by women on television during the course of the last decade.

Yusuf Islam (formerly known as Cat Stevens) received the prestigious Lifetime Achievement award at the German “Echo” awards for his “lifework as a musician and as an ambassador between cultures” at the ceremony which was recorded in Berlin and broadcast on RTL that evening. He also performed his single “Maybe There’s A World”.

Marot says: “The accusation that Yusuf doesn’t speak or interact with women who are not veiled is an absurdity. He plainly has no issues with working and interacting with women and did so in a perfectly normal manner over the awards weekend, even signing autographs and posing for photographs with many of the legion of men and women who had queued for hours at both the airport and hotel.

“In his normal daily life women feature amongst some of the most influential people in his core team, including the joint President of US record label: Atlantic records, the marketing directors of both Polydor and Atlantic records, his set designer, his TV promotions manager and his video commissioner, all of whom are in almost daily contact with Yusuf. At the moment he’s in a London edit suite with BBC TV director Janet Fraser Crook and producer Serena Cross working on the edit of the BBC Sessions concert recently filmed in London. These are not the actions of a misogynist.

“It would seem that certain sections of the media feel that for every good news story featuring a Muslim, a balancing bad news story must be invented to maintain the level of ignorance that surrounds the Islamic faith.”

PR Newswire, 2 April 2007