Open Democracy has published an extract from a pamphlet by Johanne Mygind and Anders Rasmussen which explores the contradictions at the heart of the Islamophobic populism of the Danish People’s Party, whose packaging of their anti-Muslim politics as based on a concern for the rights of women and the LGBT community stands in sharp contrast to the party’s own record on these issues.
Category Archives: Women
Court rules against headscarf ban in Swiss school
NZZ am Sonntag reports that the Administrative Court in the Swiss canton of Thurgau recently lifted a headscarf ban imposed by a school in Bürglen.
Tulsa bank urged to abandon head-scarf ban
An Oklahoma bank’s requirement that branch visitors remove anything covering their faces discriminates against Muslims, a civil liberties group says.
The Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations called Wednesday on Valley National Bank in Tulsa to change a policy that requires visitors to the $221 million-asset bank’s four branches to remove their hats, hoods and sunglasses so bank employees can see their faces.
The policy – which Valley National says is a security measure – prevented a Muslim woman from entering a Valley National branch in Tulsa on Oct. 9, the council says. An employee allegedly told the visitor she would have to be escorted to and from the teller unless she agreed to remove her hijab, a loose-fitting garment that some Muslim women wear over their heads.
“Recognize that a religious headdress is different than a hat,” Adam Soltani, the council’s executive director, told American Banker. “In Oklahoma, there has never been an instance of anyone impersonating a Muslim woman to rob a bank or anywhere else.”
When did Islamophobic attacks become the norm for the French media?
When last week’s cover of normally stern French magazine Le Point appeared online, the consensus on social networks said it was a hoax. Le Point is no tabloid. It is a serious and well respected conservative magazine.
Running the headline: “Brazen Islam…in school cafeterias, hospitals, and swimming pools” the cover featured a niqab-clad woman arguing with a French policewoman. It had to be a joke, but sadly it wasn’t.
Blackburn pupils win headscarf fight
A new school headscarf is set to be introduced following pressure from pupils. Pleckgate High School, Blackburn, saw girls rebel after bringing in a uniform hijab, complaining it was ill-fitting or against their Islamic principles.
‘They just see the hijab and they start shouting abuse’ – white Muslim revert talks to Sun about experiences
The young Muslim woman in the hijab hardly noticed the man she passed in the street – until he stopped, spat and swore at her. But then as a white-skinned blonde in Islamic garb, religious convert Amy Sall is used to attracting attention. What has shocked her since she became a Muslim has been the level of hostility she has attracted from complete strangers.
Fascists embrace Cristina Odone
The New Daily Patriot is a popular far-right Facebook page which provides links to media reports that are of interest to fascists. It supports both the English Defence League and the British National Party (while inclining more towards the latter) and happily promotes the activities of openly neo-Nazi groups like the National Front.
This non-sectarian approach extends to the sort of material that is recommended on the page, which includes articles by individuals who are not themselves racists or fascists but whose views provide support and inspiration for those who are. Today, for example, the NDP has posted a link to an appalling piece of crap that appeared on Cristina Odone’s Telegraph blog yesterday, in which she harshly criticises the elected leadership of the Muslim Council of Britain (who, as is the way with this sort of article, are inevitably described as “self-appointed”) for failing to condemn actions such as the recent reported beheading of a young Afghan woman by her in-laws for refusing to become a prostitute.
German court rules Muslim woman has right to wear headscarf at work
A German dental practice which refused to hire a young Muslim woman because she insisted on wearing a headscarf at work broke the law, it was reported on Thursday. The court ruling is the first of its kind for the country.
Outrage in Russia over hijab school ban
Several Muslim families pulled their daughters out of schools in Russia’s south after the girls were told they were not allowed to wear their hijabs, a top Muslim said on Monday.
The Mufti of the southern Stavropol region Muhammad-Haji Rakhimov said he had received complaints from several parents whose daughters were for the first time not being allowed into their schools wearing their hijabs. The situation resembles a “stalemate” because both the Muslim parents and school authorities refuse to budge, and several girls including second-graders have not been to school for two weeks now, he said.
“The parents of these girls are not letting them go to school, which can lead to the child welfare services taking them away,” Rakhimov said. He could not explain the authorities’ sudden change in school policies. “There have not been any problems before this month.”
He added that there were now “many girls” in the Stavropol region who were being kept out of school for this reason, and their parents were too poor to send them to private schools.
One such institution is a rural public school in the village of Kara-Tyube, close to the overwhelmingly Muslim region of Dagestan. The school’s list of rules posted on its website says that students’ appearance should be in line with the “business style used in a secular society, excluding provocative elements”.
French women demonstrate against discrimination
Around 50 women gathered Saturday afternoon outside the city hall at Rennes to denounce the Islamophobic discrimination faced by veiled women. The collective, made up of Muslims and non-Muslims, women veiled and non-veiled, sought by this action to call on public opinion to combat prejudice.