Last week the Belgian Constitutional Court rejected a claim to annul the ban on face coverings, better known as “burqa ban”. This ban prohibits the wearing of clothing that covers the face, or a large part of it, in the public space. The Constitutional Court concluded that the ban does not violate fundamental rights such as the right to freedom of religion, the right to freedom of expression and the right to private life, provided that the ban is not interpreted in such a way that it also covers places of worship.
Category Archives: Women
Racist attackers punched pregnant woman and tore off friend’s hijab
Two women punched a pregnant woman and pulled her friend’s hijab from her head in a racial attack. Eileen Kennedy, 28, and a 15-year-old female, assaulted Umaimi Musa at Royston Road, Glasgow, on September 3. The teenager also assaulted Ms Musa’s friend Mary Marandran, then five months pregnant.
Nottinghamshire Muslim family suffers further harassment
Offensive graffiti attacking Allah and Islam has been painted outside a Muslim family’s home weeks after a cross wrapped in ham was left by their door.
The 31-year-old mother and two sons, eight and 10, say they have suffered five or six racist incidents since they moved to Bingham, Notts, in October.
The graffiti was painted on their path on Saturday morning.
Parliamentary report exposes employment discrimination against Muslim women
The All Party Parliamentary Group on Race and Community has expressed concern regarding high levels of Black, Pakistani and Bangladeshi female unemployment in its new report on the issue. The report follows a five month inquiry.
The report and inquiry was written and undertaken in partnership with the Runnymede Trust, which acts a secretariat for the group.
It argues that discrimination is present at every level of the recruitment process, and cites examples of women changing their names or removing religious dress, such as the hijab, for job interviews.
Germans polled on views about Islam
Two weeks ago the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported the results of an Allensbach Institute survey of German attitudes towards Islam (a rather clunky and not entirely reliable English translation of the article has been provided by the Russian journal Vestnik Kavkaza).
Ontario teachers’ union ‘under fire for workshop on Islamophobia’
The union representing Ontario’s elementary school teachers is coming under fire for running an anti-Islamophobia workshop as part of a series of seminars on how to teach students about equality.
The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO) began putting the anti-Islamophobia workshop together in 2011 following a request from one of its local presidents for such a seminar “as a response to the collective victimization of the Muslim community” after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to an ETFO report from August.
Critics of the workshop, however, are slamming the ETFO for developing an anti-Islamophobia seminar that will not pro-actively address the fact that women and girls are treated as second-class citizens in some circles of the Islamic faith.
Hijab handout clears US misconceptions
Fighting misconceptions associated with Muslim headscarf, Muslim students at California State University arranged a hijab handout to their colleagues to educate them about criticism and negative image drawn by media over the past decade.
“The goal was to teach what Islam really is because there’s so much negativity going around about Muslim people who are portrayed so negatively in the media,” Amina Hasan, organizer for the Muslim Student Association (MSA), told Daily 49ER, the university’s news website, on Sunday, December 2. “We’re regular people just like anyone else.”
The event, held last Thursday on a rainy afternoon, was sponsored by students of MSA at California State University Long Beach (CSULB).
Feminist scholar’s book on hijab’s rise wins award
At first, feminist religion scholar Leila Ahmed was alarmed by the growing visibility of young American Muslim women wearing headscarves. She feared that a politicized, male-dominated fundamentalism had migrated from her native Egypt to her adopted United States.
Instead, Ahmed reached what she admits was an “astonishing” conclusion: “Islamists and the children of Islamists … were now in the vanguard of those who were most fully and rapidly assimilating into the distinctively American tradition of activism in pursuit of justice,” Ahmed wrote in her book, A Quiet Revolution: The Veil’s Resurgence, from the Middle East to America.
Many women who wore the hijab, or headscarf, “now essentially made up the vanguard of those who are struggling for women’s rights in Islam,” Ahmed wrote.
For her 2011 book documenting a century of trends in the politically and socially loaded question of the hijab, Ahmed has received the 2013 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion.
France and the veil – the dark side of the law
French anti-veil laws are steeped in racism and have opened the door to abuse against Muslims, argues Valeria Costa-Kostritsky.
Welsh Muslims report widespread racist abuse
The Institute of Race Relations draws our attention to a Wales Online report on a new study of racism and race equality in Wales by Professor Heaven Crawley that was commissioned by Race Council Cymru.
It found people from minority ethnic backgrounds in Wales are still experiencing racism in health, education and housing services, as well as in employment. And in many cases when racism occurs, it found victims are not reporting or challenging it, but instead changing their behaviours, language and clothing to “fit in”.