Cheering up their Muslim teammate, a Floridian high school football team decided to don hijab before their season finale game to show solidarity with their Muslim captain who has been taunted repeatedly over her religious outfit.
“Everybody looked at us weird,” West Broward senior Marilyn Solorzano told Sun Sentinel website on Friday, April 20. “I understand now everything she went through and how hard it must have been.”
Detectives are hunting a man who grabbed a Muslim woman by the head and pulled off her face covering in a packed shopping centre.
The thug approached the woman from behind in Touchwood shopping centre, Solihull, on Saturday March 3 at 2pm. As she walked past the Disney Store he ripped the veil from her face and threw it on the floor before walking off.
Cops today released CCTV of the man they believe is responsible in an effort to track the thug down. Chief Inspector Kevin Doyle, from Solihull Police, said:
“Reports of crimes like this are exceptionally rare both in Solihull and the wider West Midlands. We are treating this incident as a hate crime as we believe the woman was deliberately targeted because of her faith, symbolised by her attire. I would urge anyone who recognises the man captured on camera to contact us as a matter of urgency.”
Anyone who recognises the man should contact police on 101 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
Basra Noor, 23, felt violated after a St. Louis County police officer and jail worker forcibly removed her head scarf, or hijab, after her arrest, and now wants an apology and pledge that it won’t happen to any other Muslim women.
See also CAIR press release, 17 April 2012
Update: See “Muslim’s arrest spurs policy review”, STLtoday.com, 18 April 2012
“It is now a year since the French government implemented a ban on the wearing of face coverings in public spaces, aimed at women who wear the full-face veil, popularly and incorrectly referred to as the ‘burqa’. Advocates of the ban argued it would protect gender equality and help maintain public order. A year later, it has done neither.” Hélène Irving reports.
One year after France introduced a law banning women from wearing full-face veils in public, officials report that around 300 have been fined reported.
The ban on wearing the niqab in any public place was introduced on April 11th 2011. It is illegal for any woman to wear the veil except when they are at home, worshipping in a religious place or travelling as a passenger in a private car. Wearing the veil can lead to a fine of €150 ($200) and forced attendance at a citizenship class.
Interior ministry officials reported that “in one year there have been 354 police checks and 299 fines issued reports made,” reported Le Parisien newspaper.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lqi6H0dfoL8
On 26 March 2012 at Juvisy-sur-Orge (in the Essonne department) a young woman wearing a veil was attacked. She was leaving a branch of the state employment agency Pole Emploi and returning to her car. She was violently asssaulted, threatened with a knife and insulted as a “dirty terrorist” and “dirty Arab”, while the individual tried to tear off her veil and steal her watch. Although the attackers could be identified by a DNA test, the prosecutor refused, because it “costs too much money”.
Collectif contre l’Islamophobie en France, 3 April 2012
Via LoonWatch
The maverick politician spoke to Muslim women directly, told local men to respect their wives’ opinions and mobilised his female supporters to hit the doorsteps. One week on, the women who secured Galloway’s victory speak out.
Helen Pridd reports in the Guardian, 5 April 2012
The Archbishop of Canterbury believes that British Muslim women can “help assert themselves” by wearing a veil. Speaking at The Sunday Times Literary Festival in Oxford, Rowan Williams questioned the view that women hid behind veils and warned against “what we sometimes think of wrongly as stereotypes”.
The Toronto Star reports.
A Dutch designer has created a hijab aimed at convincing the world football governing body Fifa to overturn its ban on women wearing headscarves on the pitch.
Players were prevented from wearing the hijab at top levels of the game for safety reasons, and because of rules stating that religious symbols were not allowed.
Critics say the ban promotes inequality at the highest level of the world’s most popular game.
A Facebook page called “Let Us Play“, which supports players’ rights to wear a headscarf has already generated more than 60,000 likes.
And speculation is growing that the ban could be lifted this summer if the Dutch-designed hijab is given Fifa’s seal of approval.