Category Archives: Women

Muslims ‘facing most faith bias’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslims in the UK are more likely to face discrimination based on religion rather than race, a study says. The report, by the Open Society Institute (OSI), says Islamophobia is adding to the problems of the UK’s most disadvantaged faith group.

Since 2002 increasing Islamophobia had added to the long-established problems of the group in areas such as education, employment and housing, researchers found. Eighty percent of UK Muslims have reported being victims of Islamophobia since September 11 and more than a third complain of being singled out by authorities while using UK airports. Young Muslim women were the most likely to report discrimination in the aftermath of September 11 and believed this was related to their decision to wear traditional dress.

“In the post-September 11 environment, religion is more important than ethnicity in indicating which groups are more likely to experience racism and discrimination,” the report concluded.

BBC News, 22 November 2005

Stay-at-home protest as schools ban Islamic dress

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Parents and pupils in one of Britain’s largest Muslim communities have clashed with their council after the introduction of a ban on girls wearing strict Islamic dress to school. At least three girls are staying away from classes in protest at the ban in the London borough of Tower Hamlets. Others face possible expulsion by continuing to wear the clothing in defiance of the restriction.

Sunday Times, 7 November 2004

Speech by Abeer Pharaon at Labour Party fringe meeting

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“This is about the fundamental freedom to choose. Those who chose not to wear the Hijab have joined forces with those who chose to wear it.”

Speech by Abeer Pharaon (Coordinator of Assembly for the Protection of Hijab) at the fringe meeting organised by National Assembly Against Racism at the 2004 Labour Party Conference.

From the Pro-Hijab website.

The Front National and the hijab ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

It was ironic that the French government’s attack on the right of young Muslim women to observe their religion while pursuing their education met with a distinct lack of enthusiasm from the extreme right-wing Front National. FN leader Jean-Marie Le Pen commented at one point that he supported the wearing of the veil … because it meant he didn’t have to look at ugly women: “Le voile musulman: il nous protège des femmes laides” (Le Monde, 22 April 2002). Some on the Left have used the FN’s semi-opposition as an argument in favour of the hijab ban.

However, the following article by FN general secretary Carl Lang, “Vous avez aimé l’immigration? Vous allez adorer l’islamisation” (You liked immigration? You’ll love Islamicisation), from Le Pen’s publication Français D’Abord! (15 December 2003), shows that the main reason the FN failed to throw its weight behind the hijab ban was that the measure failed to deal with what the FN argues is the real problem – the encroaching Islamicisation of French society arising from an influx of Muslim migrants.

It is also worth noting that, as the French press pointed out, the overwhelming majority of FN voters supported the hijab ban. They presumably took a more pragmatic view, reasoning that while the measure fell short of a complete block on Muslim immigration and the extirpation of Islam from France, it was at least a step in the right direction.

Continue reading →

Islamophobia divides the left in France

Posted on by Eddie Truman

The new school term in France is the first under the new law which bans Muslim girls from wearing a Muslim headscarf to school. The vast majority of the young women involved (in general between fourteen and eighteen years old) have agreed under duress to remove the headscarf in school. The hundred or so who have refused have been separated from their fellow-pupils and kept in a separate room (often with separate break-times, no right to use the library and no attention from teachers, despite the legal obligation to provide teaching). Over the next three weeks they will be called to disciplinary committees and expelled from schools. They will join an unspecified number who have been too intimidated to turn up at school since the passage of the law.

John Mullen (LCR Montreuil) on Socialist Unity Network website

Liberals can also be fundamentalists

Posted on by Eddie Truman

“The secularist arguments behind the hijab ban in France amount to nothing more than a denial of freedoms of expression and choice. Those who look upon the hijab with disdain will now feel at liberty to abuse those who wear it, given that the state legitimises their feelings. This state oppression will alienate the Muslim population in France. It will result in Muslim women being stigmatised. Secular fundamentalism is as abhorrent as religious extremism.”

Yasmin Ataullah writing in the Guardian, 3 September 2004