Category Archives: Women

German state bans hijab-clad teachers

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The western state of North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany’s most populous, has banned teachers in public schools from wearing hijab.

The state’s regional parliament, where the conservative Christian Democrats hold a majority, adopted a law banning hijab on Wednesday, May 31. The law was voted against by the Greens and the Social Democrats. North-Rhine Westphalia became the eighth of Germany’s 16 federal states to ban hijab in public schools.

The Muslim minority blasted the hijab school ban as unconstitutional. The Central Council of Muslims in Germany said the new law does not treat all religions as equal, banning only the hijab and not the Christian cross or other religious symbols.

The constitutional court, Germany’s highest tribunal, ruled in July 2003 against a decision by the Baden-Wuerttemberg state to forbid a Muslim teacher from wearing hijab in the classroom. But it said Germany’s 16 states could issue new legislations to ban the Muslim headscarf if they believe it would influence children.

A number of states, including Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia, still allow hijab at schools. Others, including Baden-Wurttemberg, Saarland and Lower Saxony, ban teaching staff in state schools from wearing symbols that express religious, political, or ideological affiliation, including hijab.

Islam Online, 1 June 2006

Salma Yaqoob replies to Nick Cohen

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Last week a little piece of history was made in Sparkbrook as I was elected to serve as Respect’s first Birmingham city councillor. For Respect, it was an important breakthrough. But it was significant too that I became the only female Muslim councillor in the city. This was a small step to the left in a city where too many people turned to the far right. Not for Nick Cohen, who sees only ‘…a slice of the electorate in a poor part of Britain that is so lost in identity politics and victimhood that it will vote for those who stoke their rage, no matter how worthless they are.’ This bigoted perception of Muslims has nothing in common with the realities of our lives or our struggles.”

Comment is Free, 13 May 2006

Saudi woman insulted in Germany over veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Saudi woman claims to have suffered humiliation and abuse at a German airport for refusing to take off her veil in public for a security inspection. Saudi daily Al-Watan reported on Wednesday that the incident occurred two days ago at Munich airport, exposing the growing animosity and anti-Muslim sentiment in Western countries.

The paper quoted the woman as saying that she and her daughter were returning home after spending time in Germany for medical treatment. They stopped at the inspection point and the mother asked a female inspector if she needed to take off her coat but got no answer, while another female employee answered brusquely that she had to remove it.

“After we crossed the inspection point,” the woman said, “an employee came to me and asked to remove my veil, which I refused to do, asking her to use the electronic detector and pass it on my head. “The employee refused and started yelling at me, attracting the attention of the people around, so I asked her if I can do it in an isolated place or behind a curtain … So she started cursing me as she indicated a small room,” the woman said. “I was trying to fight my tears and told her that her behavior is not respectful and does not reflect the democracy they talk about,” she said.

The woman then said that “a man came close to me and also started yelling at me and hitting me on the shoulder screaming ‘this is Germany’. “Then,” the woman said, “the supervisor intervened and called on the employee who hit me to apologize, but he refused and started yelling again without taking into considering my old age and illness”.

UPI, 10 May 2006

German minister wants to end discrimination against Muslims … by banning hijab from schools

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Muslim minority in Germany is suffering from a growing religious discrimination with many Germans wrongly associating Islam with terrorism, a federal minister admitted on Sunday, May 7.

“Muslims are lately being confronted with mounting rejection which feeds from fear,” Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries told the weekly Welt am Sonntag. She said many Germans were not able to properly distinguish between Islam and terrorism. “As a consequence many Muslims are faced with discrimination because of their faith as some people link the Muslim faith automatically with Al-Qaeda and terrorism,” added Zypries.

The Interior Ministry is sponsoring a mobile exhibition touring the country to draw the line between Islam as a faith and the practices of some Muslims. It aims to distinguish between Islam as a religion that preaches peace and tolerance and parties condoning violence in the name of Islam, said the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the sponsor. The exhibition would visit universities, schools, parliaments, municipalities and cultural centers in the different states.

European officials said recently that the bloc is set to remove derogatory terminology about Islam like “Islamic terrorism” and “fundamentalists” in its new lexicon of public communication.

The minister proposed the introduction of school uniforms to avoid sparking furor over Muslim students wearing hijab. “All school pupils should wear the same school uniform,” she said. The minister believes such uniforms would also help prevent religious and social discrimination in Germany.

Islam Online, 7 May 2006

Hijab-clad Muslim TV host sparks Danish furore

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Asmaa Abdol-HamidA debate has been heating up among Danish viewers over the appearance of the first hijab-clad talk show presenter on the Danish television.

Asmaa Abdol-Hamid, a 24-year-old Danish Muslim of Palestinian origin, appeared last week on the DR2 network to host an eight-part programme on the fallout of Danish cartoons lampooning Prophet Muhammad. The female Muslim host has been selected to co-present the talk show with Danish reporter Adam Holm, an ardent proponent of press freedom, debating on Danish society’s pressing issues.

The appearance of hijab-wearing Asmaa has drawn mixed reactions from Danish women’s groups. Feminist Forum, a Danish women’s organization, said Abdol-Hamid’s TV presence “strengthens ethnic and gender equality in Denmark”. But another feminist group, the Women for Freedom association, echoed a different stance. “The choice of Asmsa Abdol-Hamid (…) is an insult to both Danish and Muslim women,” claimed Vibeke Manniche, the association’s head. “She sends the signal that an honourable woman cannot go out unless her head is covered.”

But DR2 network defended its decision to allow Asmaa’s TV presence, saying “headscarf-wearing women are part of Danish society and we need to accept this fact”.

Islam Online, 5 April 2006

See also Daily Times, 5 April 2006

Weekend coverage of the Shabina Begum case

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The weekend papers provided a platform for pundits to offer their views on the House of Lords decision in the Shabina Begum case. These are, predictably, uniformly hostile to Shabina. Thus we have Fiona Phillips in the Daily Mirror (“‘I’m an intelligent girl,’ Shabina told me, ‘and no one tells me what to do.’ Clearly, though, her brother does”) and Carole Malone in the Sunday Mirror (“this uppity young woman not only needs to be brought down a peg or two, she needs to learn that in Britain rules and respect are a damn sight more important than what you wear”). Jasper Gerard in the Sunday Times dismisses Shabina’s point that “there are girls pressured to wear headscarves who don’t want to” (“here Shabina surely shoots her case out of the sky: if girls are subject to any unwelcome pressure to cover up, then far from giving in, perhaps schools should ban all religious clothing”), while Joan Smith in the Independent on Sunday says that “the decision marked the moment in Britain when the State, faced by religious extremism, drew a line” and claims that Shabina is among those who “advocate ideas that are quite at odds with the values of the society in which they live”.

School wins Muslim dress appeal

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A school which was told it unlawfully excluded a Muslim pupil for wearing a traditional gown has won its appeal at the House of Lords. The Court of Appeal had said Denbigh High School had denied Shabina Begum the right to manifest her religion in refusing to allow her to wear a jilbab. But in a unanimous ruling, judges at the House of Lords overturned that.

After the ruling, Miss Begum said: “Obviously I am saddened and disappointed about this, but I am quite glad it is all over and I can move on now. I had to make a stand about this. Many women will not speak up about what they actually want. I still don’t see why I was told to go home from school when I was just practising my religion.”

BBC News, 22 March 2006

‘Today’s true feminists’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

According to one Cinnamon Stillwell, “the real radical women in the world go largely unremarked by the feminist movement. Today’s true heroines are those who do battle with the gender apartheid, violence and oppression practiced against women in the Muslim world” … and, in addition, preferably act as uncritical cheerleaders for the Israeli state.

Stillwell claims that “The oppression of women in Muslim culture and the threat it poses to women’s rights all over the world is clearly the next frontier for the feminist movement”. And who are the heroines of this new movement? As you might predict, they include Wafa Sultan, Brigitte Gabriel, Nonie Darwish, Irshad Manji, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Oriana Fallaci and Phyllis Chesler.

San Francisco Chronicle, 22 March 2006

Another example of how a progressive cause can be harnessed to an Islamophobic agenda.

Dutch convert to Islam: veiled and viewed as a ‘traitor’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

BREDA, Netherlands – Rabi’a Frank sees her Dutch home town through the narrow slit of the black veil that covers her face. The looks she receives from the townspeople are seldom kindly.On a recent winter afternoon, the wind tugged at her ankle-length taupe skirt, olive head scarf and black, rectangular face veil as she walked to her car from an Islamic prayer meeting in downtown Breda. Two blond teenagers on bicycles stared, their faces screwed into hostile snarls. Other passersby gawked. Some stepped off the sidewalk to avoid coming too near.

She tried to act like it didn’t offend her. But it did. She knows what they think of Muslim women like her. “If you cover yourself, you are oppressed – that’s it,” said Frank, a lanky, 29-year-old Dutch woman who converted to Islam 11 years ago, about the time she married her Moroccan husband. “You are being brainwashed by your husband or your friends.” Or, you’re a potential terrorist.

Washington Post, 19 March 2006

Muslim woman denied job for scarf sues

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Muslim woman who claims she was denied employment after she refused to remove a head scarf worn for religious reasons is accusing a Des Moines convenience store chain of violating her religious rights. In the lawsuit, Aaliyah Withers-Johnson claims officials at Git-N-Go Convenience Stores Inc. told her she could not work for the company if she insisted on wearing the head scarf, known as a hijab, worn as part of her Islamic faith. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Des Moines, accuses the company of racial and religious discrimination.

Withers-Johnson, who also is black, claims she wore the scarf to her initial job interview for a position as a store clerk on March 11, 2005, was offered a position and told to report six days later for training. But at the training session, Withers-Johnson claims she was immediately pulled aside by a company official and told she would not be able to start ‘”because of the thing you are wearing on your head,’” the lawsuit said.

Des Moines Register, 6 March 2006