“In a move applauded by all those seeking an end to religious influence in society the Dutch government has started the process of banning the burkha from all public places in the Netherlands. This follows on from similar rulings in Belgium. France enacted laws late last year to prevent religious symbology in schools and despite early objection from fundamentalist groups this has now become universal. Margret De Cuyper of the Den Haag women’s forum hailed it as a victory for a secular Dutch society and for women’s liberation from male formulated clothes of control. She said, ‘Women have lived for too long with clothes and standards decided for them by men, this is a victory’.”
Category Archives: Women
Islam, sex and the western left
An excellent article by Kola Odetola on why Muslim women, in particular working class women, are turning towards organisations that would be classified as fundamentalist in the West; Hamas, Hizbollah etc.
“Curiously missing from the western left’s narrative in the issue of women’s rights in the poor world has been the calamity wreaked upon it by neo liberalism over the last 20 years. While there’s a lot of talk of the poverty created by the colonisation of the third world by the IMF and World Bank, it’s rarely linked to the rise of Islamic consciousness in these parts of the world.
“The fact is the economic genocide perpetrated by the west on the poor world over the last two decades has generated industrial prostitution there on a scale probably unprecedented in the etire history of the human race. Faced with ruin, deafened with spurious western talk of women’s rights – from Africa to Asia, from Latin America, to ‘recently liberated’ Eastern Europe, most women from poor families can now only survive by selling their bodies to men, mostly wealthy most pro west males, in prostitution of one form or another of varying degrees of degradation. In the third world and parts of Eastern Europe, women are now the major bread winners, feeding their families, keeping a roof over their heads, clothes on their backs, by trading their bodies for the means of survival. Imperialism and its local acolytes have turned two thirds of the planet, the home of the overwhelming majority of the world’s females to one giant brothel, underneath the blazing neon lit legend, forever flashing – ‘Women’s rights’.”
Sharia and women’s rights
Charles Levinson provides an interesting account of how Moroccan feminist Latifa Jbabdi won Muslim support for a new family law granting women equal rights in marriage and divorce: “For years Islamists opposed any change to the family law, on the grounds that the old family law was based on Sharia and Sharia was sacred. Well versed in these issues, Jbabdi helped lead a campaign to convince Moroccans that the new law did not contradict Islam. She succeeded and Islamic politicians voted unanimously on her side.”
Jbabdi herself is quoted as saying: “We started asking, is Islam truly against the rights of women? … We undertook a sort of repossession of our Islamic heritage, and read the texts from a feminist perspective. We found that there were many verses that stress equality, and we discovered that Islamic Sharia is not based on ready-made judgments, but rather it is based on a set of guiding principals and ijtihad.”
Teenage punks behind black hijabs
“The unsmiling girl in the black hijab defined her identity thus: ‘I am a Muslim of Arab origin, living within British society.’ Hadil, 18, could not attend a more racially integrated school than Quintin Kynaston in West London where, according to its Ofsted report, ‘the wealth of cultures and faiths is valued, respected and appreciated’.
“Hadil, along with a number of fellow pupils, had taken part in a documentary called ‘Young, British and Muslim’ and here she was up on stage, giving her views to an audience at the National Film Theatre. Yet in reply to the question ‘Do you feel British?’ Hadil shrugged and said: ‘I look at British culture and see no moral values which appeal to me.’
“And it was hard not to bristle, not to think unbecoming, angry thoughts such as: ‘Why endure our repulsive morality a moment longer? Wouldn’t you simply be happier in a Muslim country?'”
Janice Turner in the Times, 24 September 2005
See also Daniel Pipes blog, 24 September 2005
German state plans hijab ban for teachers
Female Muslim teachers in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia will be banned from wearing hijab at schools from next summer, according to a German press report. Officials in the State told Wednesday’s edition of the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung that the hijab ban would take effect from August 2006, Reuters reported.
“Female and male teachers are not allowed to express any world views or any religious beliefs, which could disturb or endanger the peace at school,” North Rhine-Westphalia schools minister Barbara Sommer said. “That’s why we want to forbid (female) Muslim teachers at state schools from wearing headscarves.”
The type of cover-up freedom lovers need not fear
“Whenever the spotlight turns on the Muslim community, it is usually in relation to a negative act: terrorism, local crime or accusations of Islamic demagogy. Muslims seem to find themselves at the centre of every problem – the obscure or negative is magnified and, like in some grotesque circus show, Muslims become the ‘other’. Once again, Muslim women’s dress, and in particular the hijab, is under attack. Bronwyn Bishop labelled it an act of defiance, and then in the same breath opined that women who wear the hijab are as free as slaves.”
Amal Awad in the Sydney Morning Herald, 31 August 2005
Australian politician defends call for headscarf ban
Liberal backbencher Bronwyn Bishop has defended her push to ban Muslim girls from wearing headscarves at public schools, despite widespread condemnation from school groups, Muslim leaders and fellow politicians.
“I think it is because a lot of people are thinking about it and I think it’s time people stood up to be counted,” Ms Bishop told ABC radio. “It has become the icon, the symbol of the clash of cultures, and it runs much deeper than a piece of cloth. The fact of the matter is we’ve got people in our country who are advocating – and I’m talking about extremist Islamist leaders – the overturning of our laws which guarantee freedom.”
Ms Bishop said she had no problem with members of other faiths adorning themselves with religious symbols, such as Christians wearing a cross or Orthodox Jews a yarmulke. “I have no concerns about people who wear a cross or people who wear a skull-cap because I haven’t heard any leaders of those communities stand up and say the very fabric of our society should be overturned,” she said.
Australian Secondary Principals Association president Ted Brierley said it was a non-issue among schools. “I’m not aware of any schools that are making this an issue,” he said.
Woman defies law banning the burqa
A Moroccan woman living in a small town in Belgium has single-handedly triggered a national debate on multiculturalism after refusing to obey a municipal injunction to stop wearing a burqa.
The woman has now prompted politicians in the Dutch-speaking north of Belgium to talk about changing federal law, after she became the first person in Belgium to be fined for wearing the all-enveloping veil and robe. She has so far refused to pay the £80 fine, or even to co-operate with police and municipal authorities in the Flemish town of Maaseik.
The burqa, together with a smaller type of face mask, the niqab, has been banned by bylaw in the cities and towns of Ghent, Antwerp, Sint-Truden, Lebbeke and Maaseik. The mayor of Maaseik, Jan Cleemers, said he acted after six women started wearing burqas, alarming locals. Five of the women stopped wearing the garments.
A police inspector in Maaseik said the head-to-toe covering of Bouloudo’s wife, who has refused to speak to police or give her name, offended and alarmed locals. “You cannot identify or recognise someone when they’re wearing a burqa, especially at night. It’s not normal, we don’t have that in our culture,” he said.
‘Never mind what the woman thinks, wearing a veil is offensive to me’!
“A robustness of attitude against the subordination of women is growing among us, and the wearing of the full veil is seen (accurately, despite the protests of some Muslims) as an outward manifestation of that subordination. It is not acceptable; it has to stop; and we should say so….”
Matthew Parris in the Times, 27 August 2005
Ban hijab not Bakri – Rod Liddle
Rod Liddle finds it ironic that “it is the Charles Moores of our world – the high church, High Tory Right – who are the most persuasive and clear-headed in their public antipathy towards Islam and towards those who would, under the banner of political correctness, afford this still primitive creed some sort of equivalence with post-reformation Christianity”.
On the other side are “those Left-liberal multiculturalist commentators who continue to delude themselves that Islam as a whole is easily compatible with the Western notions of freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, democracy and equality. As a result, we now have a false dichotomy – between something called moderate Islam and this rogue creature, extremist Islam”.
Banning a marginal figure like Omar Bakri is, from Liddle’s perspective, irrelevant. It is Islam as a whole that has to be taken on, by “ensuring that Muslim schoolchildren receive a secular education and banishing the hijab”.
I’m always amused by these commentators who preach the virtues of “post-reformation Christianity”. This would include the US Christian Right and Ian Paisley, would it?