Category Archives: Women

Muslim garb ‘confronting’, says Aussie PM

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Most Australians found the full traditional garb of Muslim women confronting, Australian prime minister John Howard said today.

“I don’t mind the headscarf but it’s really the whole outfit, I think most Australians would find it confronting. I don’t believe that you should ban wearing headscarfs but I do think the full garb is confronting and that is how most people feel. Now, that is not meant disrespectfully to Muslims because most Muslim women, a great majority of them in Australia, don’t even wear headscarfs and very few of them wear the full garb.”

News.com, 27 February 2006

Note that while Howard is reported as ruling out a change in the law regarding any form of Islamic dress, in the actual quotes he only rules out a ban on the headscarf.

Good for Dobbo

Posted on by Bob Pitt

DobboMPs supportive of the government during the Commons debate on the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill included Frank Dobson who said:

“I do not believe that anyone – Rowan Atkinson or anyone else – needs the right to incite hatred against someone because of their religion. He has apparently said that we should look at things from the point of view of the comedian. Other people in the world are just as important as comedians. Muslim women who have been assaulted, abused and spat on for wearing the hijab are as important to me as Rowan Atkinson, for all his sense of humour.”

Not so sure I agree with you about Rowan Atkinson’s sense of humour, Frank, but otherwise – spot on.

Muslim woman kicked out of US court over hijab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Tacoma judge is under fire for kicking a Muslim woman out of his courtroom after she refused to remove her head-scarf. “I felt humiliated,” said 37-year old Mujaahidah Sayfullah, who has worn her head-scarf in court before.

She says she couldn’t believe it when first the bailiff and then Tacoma Municipal Court Judge David Ladenburg told her as she sat in the audience that either her head-scarf could go – or she could. “He said, ‘well, if you’re not gonna do it then I’m going to have to ask you to remove yourself from the courtroom,'” she said.

She left, fearing the judge would take it out on the relative who was on trial.

Judge Ladenburg stands by his decision. “It’s my understanding and belief that the Muslim religion does not prohibit the removal of head-coverings either for males of for females,” he says…noting that unless he learns that an exception should be made, there’s a courtroom standard that must be upheld.

Ladenburg says it wasn’t religious discrimination…but Mujaahidah says it sure felt like it, and that’s why she’s telling her story. “Just for it to be exposed, and the public be aware that people are able to blatantly discriminate based upon their position of power,” she said.

The Council on American-Islamic relations has sent a note to Ladenburg, notifying him of the allegations against him. Ladenburg says he plans to respond.

KOMO 1000 News, 30 January 2006

AWL explains the veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Over at the Workers’ Liberty website, Mark Sandell tells us that the veil is just “the public expression of women and girls being oppressed and owned by ‘their’ men”.

Opposition to the headscarf ban in French schools, according to Sandell, was restricted to a “motley crew of cultural relativists, numskull ‘anti-imperialists’, and assorted religious bigots”.

Solidarity, 26 January 2006

Students’ anger over ‘veil ban’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslims are urging Imperial College to reconsider a dress code which prevents them wearing a full religious veil.
The college has banned students, staff and visitors from wearing clothing which obscures the face, such as veils, “hoodies” or motorcycle helmets. The measures where introduced last year in an attempt to tighten security.

Imperial College says the dress code has been agreed by the Student Union, but the Federation of Student Islamic Societies says it is “unacceptable”. The federation (Fosis) said the veil, or niqab, was “central to the religious beliefs of those who wear it” and, by banning it, Imperial College was “forcing students to choose between their religion and education”.

Fosis president Wakkas Khan, said: “The decision taken by Imperial College to maintain the ban on the veil has shocked Muslim students across the country. The majority of universities have responded excellently to accommodate the needs of Muslim students, but regrettably, and rather disappointingly, it would seem that Imperial College is not amongst these institutions.”

The college said its new college dress code followed the “security concerns raised by the terrorist incidents which had occurred over the summer”.

BBC News, 17 January 2006

See also “FOSIS astonished by Imperial College policy”, FOSIS press release, 16 January 2006

Dutch MPs to decide on burqa ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Dutch government will announce over the next few weeks whether it will make it a crime to wear traditional Islamic dress which covers the face apart from the eyes.

The Dutch parliament has already voted in favour of a proposal to ban the burqa outside the home, and some in the government have thrown their weight behind it. There are only about 50 women in all of the Netherlands who do cover up entirely – but soon they could be breaking the law.

Dutch MP Geert Wilders is the man who first suggested the idea of a ban. “It’s a medieval symbol, a symbol against women,” he says.

“We don’t want women to be ashamed to show who they are. Even if you have decided yourself to do that, you should not do it in Holland, because we want you to be integrated, assimilated into Dutch society. If people cannot see who you are, or see one inch of your body or your face, I believe this is not the way to integrate into our society.”

Mr Wilders has explicitly linked his wish for a burqa ban with terrorism. “We have problems with a growing minority of Muslims who tend to have sympathy with the Islamo-fascistic concept of radical Islam,” says Mr Wilders.

BBC News, 16 January 2006

Vatican warns Italian women against Muslim marriages

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Vatican cardinals have warned Italian women against tying the knot with the rising numbers of Muslims in Italy, citing what they say cultural and religious diversities.

Church officials say that Italy has seen 20,000 marriages in 2005 between Catholic women and Muslims, whose population touches the one million mark, the BBC News Online reported Monday, December 26.

Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the Vicar General of Rome, had said that cultural differences over issues such as the role of women and education of children make it difficult for Catholic women to marry Muslims. “The experience of recent years leads us as a general rule to advise against or in any case to discourage these marriages,” he wrote in a document released last month.

“Mixed Catholic and Muslim couples who intend to have a family have other difficulties above and beyond those experienced by other couples, when one considers cultural and religious diversity,” wrote cardinal Ruini, a conservative thinker close to late Pope John Paul II.

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Muslim leader attacks ‘ridiculous’ burqa ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Muslim political leader in the Netherlands on Wednesday dismissed as “ridiculous” a motion in parliament to forbid women from wearing burqas in public, calling it an overreaction to an issue that barely exists in the country.

A motion to ban burqas robes that cover the entire body and veil the face passed in an 80-70 vote in parliament late on Tuesday, and the government is drafting a Bill to make the proposal into law. The immigration minister has promised to report back to the 150-member parliament by February.

It is “an overreaction to a very marginal problem” because hardly any Dutch women wear burqa, said Ayhan Tonca of the Muslim political organisation known by its acronym CMO. “It’s just ridiculous,” Tonca told The Associated Press.

The idea was proposed by maverick lawmaker Geert Wilders, a politician known for his criticism of religious fundamentalism and for his anti-immigration policies. Burqas are “medieval, and unfriendly to women”, Wilders said in a telephone interview.

“This measure will serve to promote integration by preventing Muslim women from separating themselves from Dutch society, and by giving comfort and support to moderate Muslims.”

Associated Press, 23 December 2005