Category Archives: Women

Australia: anti-Muslim pastor launches new right-wing party

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Rise Up Australia PartyA controversial pastor has formed a new political party he claims will uphold Christian values and protect freedom of speech. Catch the Fire Ministries pastor Danny Nalliah said the Rise Up Australia Party would also highlight issues such as the burqa and the failure of multiculturalism.

“Immigrants who make Australia their home, while free to celebrate their own ethnic backgrounds, must respect Australian culture,” he said. “Rise Up Australia Party is totally opposed to the introduction of Sharia law in Australia – it is incompatible with our democracy and particularly curtails the civil rights and freedoms of women.”

Dr Nalliah and another pastor were involved in a five-year legal battle after the Islamic Council of Victoria claimed comments they made about Muslims breached the state’s religious vilification laws. The case was settled after the Court of Appeal overturned VCAT’s decision to uphold the complaint.

Herald Sun, 22 June 2011

See also Catch the Fire Ministries press release, 22 June 2011

And “Pastor launches anti-multicultural party”, AAP, 22 June 2011

The Geert Wilders admirer who says she’s concerned about the rights of Muslim women

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Baroness Cox insists her chief motivation is protecting vulnerable women who are hoodwinked by sharia courts into believing that these courts have the power to make judgments. Few will disagree with the idea of reining in any attempt to usurp British law. But I cannot help feeling slightly uncomfortable that the chief proponent of this Bill is the kind of person who extends an invitation to a virulent Islamaphobe like Geert Wilders.”

Jerome Taylor interviews the author of the Arbitration and Mediation Services (Equality) Bill in the Independent.

Meanwhile, over at the Jewish Chronicle, Melanie Phillips has come out in support of Cox’s bill, and explains why Sharia tribunals have nothing in common with Beth Din courts: “Jews believe that the law of the land is the law…. By contrast, Muslims promoting sharia believe that Islamic law must supersede the law of the land because sharia is divinely ordained and recognises no superior secular authority.”

Hijab-wearing ‘flash mob’ protests at right-wing bloggers’ conference

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Protestors at RightOnlineMINNEAPOLIS — A group of around ten women in Muslim headscarves crashed the RightOnline conference for about ten minutes Saturday, protesting what they said was an incident targeting Muslim women Thursday night.

The event was the latest spark kicked up by the proximity of Netroots Nation and RightOnline. The two conferences are blocks apart – RightOnline is being held in a hotel many Netrootsers are staying in – and interaction between the progressives at Netroots and the conservatives at RightOnline has been inevitable.

A spokesperson for the group of women told TPM they weren’t sure of the identity of the man responsible for the Thursday incident – when two hijab-wearing women were followed by a man with a cell phone camera who reportedly asked them why they were dressed the way they were “in America” – but rumors that the incident involved an employee of conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart were rampant at Netroots.

The women who arrived at RightOnline were Netroots attendees, and were accompanied by blogger Joe Aravosis and gay rights advocate/provocateur Dan Choi.

The spokesperson for the “flash mob,” Allison Nevitt, told TPM that there was a larger message to their protest beyond the Thursday incident, which Nevitt said had been reported to Minneapolis police. “The point was mostly that Muslim women are an equal part of this nation, and that we have an equal right to exist here,” Nevitt said.

TPM, 18 June 2011

Update:  See “Right-wing blogger charged with harassing Muslim women”, above.

Soccer referee banned for wearing hijab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sarah BenkiraneMONTREAL — A former Lac St. Louis soccer referee is blowing the whistle on rules she said prevent her from practising her religion.

Sarah Benkirane, 15, was told after two years of refereeing for the soccer association that she was out of a job, after a complaint surfaced over her wearing her hijab while calling games.

“For me it’s not really an option to take it off,” she explained of her traditional Muslim head scarf. “It’s part of my religion. It’s part of who I am. It’s the way I express myself, so I think I should be allowed to wear it as long as I’m not causing any harm to anybody else and I’m not.”

Under Rule 4 of the FIFA guidelines, which govern the Lac St. Louis Soccer Association, players must not only avoid wearing any item which threatens to cause choking or injury, but also “must not have any political, religious or personal statements.” All rules for players also pertain to referees under FIFA rules.

Edouard St. Lo, executive director of the Lac St. Louis Soccer Association said he agrees with the regulations. “It’s not just safety, because it does talk about political, religious and any kind of personal feeling that the person wants to display on the field. That’s why they’re all wearing the same thing,” he said.

Benkirane has drawn support from some parents, who have signed a petition allowing her to play. “Absolutely she should be able to wear it – it’s her choice,” said one mother.

CTV, 18 June 2011

Update:  See “Soccer referee refused right to wear hijab a second time”, CTV, 20 June 2011

French court hears first case against women who refuse to accept veil ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Meaux veil court case
Hind (right) with supporters outside the court

A French court Thursday heard the country’s first case against women refusing to obey a new law banning the wearing of Islamic face veils in public.

The two women, who wear the niqab, were ordered to appear before the court in the town of Meaux, about 40 kilometres east of Paris, for going to the local town hall on May 5 with their faces veiled.

Both the women live in the Paris region. One of them could not be present at the hearing. The other woman, Hind, 31, a mother of a three-year-old, was barred from entering the courtroom after refusing to remove her veil for the duration of the hearing. “I accepted to undergo an identity check (by briefly showing her face). But they refused all compromise,” she told the German Press Agency dpa.

The two women were booked by police after showing up at Meaux town hall with a birthday cake for Mayor Jean-Francois Cope, who is also leader of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservative ruling Union for a Popular Majority (UMP). The cake was made of almonds, a word which sounds like the French word for fines (amendes), and was meant as a dig at the government over the timid application by the authorities of the two-month-old law.

While several women have been booked by police, only one has been fined so far, according to Rachid Nekkaz, founder of Don’t Touch My Constitution, a group lobbying against the ban.

Hind said she hoped to be fined, so that she could challenge the law, which she sees as an attack on her freedom of religion, in the European Court of Human Rights.

DPA, 16 June 2011

‘Spooks unmask burka death squads’ – Daily Star announces a ‘world exclusive’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Brit spooks have stopped SIXTY terror plots involving Black Widow bombers. Many of the Muslim women who were pulled in were carrying explosives, we can reveal. Other radicals as young as 17 had bomb materials stashed in their homes across the country.

The operation started when a dozen women in the London and Greater Manchester areas were picked up in security sweeps but allowed to go free. They were put under surveillance and led the spooks to more than 30 terror group leaders. But it is feared there are at least 20 of the Black Widow bombers still at large and ready to carry out their deadly missions.

A senior security source said: “The terrorists rely on a woman in a black flowing dress not being stopped. They can’t be searched easily because of their strict rules and it’s hard to see what they are hiding under their robes. A lot of people would think twice about searching them for fear of offending religious rules or being accused of sexual harassment or indecency.”

A senior security source has revealed that in the past year between 50 and 60 attacks have been averted after spies infiltrated Muslim terror cells.

Female suicide bombers have been used by the Taliban and rebels in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and by groups including the Tamil Tigers and Hamas to target civilians and soldiers.

Last year, two women bombed two Moscow subway stations killing at least 38 people and injuring over 60. Chechen “shahidkas” or Black Widows attacked Russian troops in Chechnya and were among a group that took 850 hostages in the Moscow theatre siege in 2002. The stand-off lasted two-and-a-half days. Russian forces killed 38 attackers and at least 129 hostages.

Daily Star on Sunday, 12 June 2011

Yet another anti-Muslim scare story from the Star. Of course, they provide no evidence at all that the security services have uncovered “sixty terror plots involving Black Widow bombers”. And if you read to the end of the report, the only quotes the Star‘s intrepid reporter can get from the police give no support to the story at all.

You do wonder what point there is in Richard Desmond formally distancing the Star from the English Defence League when this sort of irresponsible journalism feeds the culture of ignorant bigotry in which the racist far right can thrive and grow.

Casuals United Daily Star burka death squads story

French court bars Muslim woman from wearing headscarf, judge insults her faith

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Collectif contre l’islamophobie en France reports on the disgraceful treatment of a Muslim woman in Béziers who attended a court hearing over the custody of her child.

She was told by a police officer that that she would have to remove her headscarf out of respect for the judge, by order of the court, otherwise the hearing would take place in her absence. When she tried to enter the courtroom wearing a headband rather than a scarf she was barred by the clerk who told her “no, no, veils are prohibited” and made her remove the headband before she was allowed in.

During the hearing the judge told the woman that she was a “bad mother” because she had allowed her son to convert to Islam, which the judge described as “an act of barbarism towards children”, adding “don’t tell me that the Muslim religion is better than any other religion”. Despite the evidence that the child wanted to remain with his mother the judge stated that it was not for the child to “choose and lay down the law in this court”.

The CCIF has condemned the the court’s treatment of the young woman and has called on the minister of justice to take disciplinary action against the judge.

British couple challenge French veil ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Muslim husband and wife are using a British legal team to launch a landmark human rights challenge to the French ban on face-covering veils.

The couple are taking the French government to the European Court of Human Rights over its prohibition on wearing the niqab and burka in a case of importance across the European Union. They are seeking damages and a ruling that the ban on the full-face veil is “unnecessary, disproportionate and unlawful”. They also contend the blanket ban restricts their right to free movement across the EU.

The husband is a French national living with his wife and two children in the West Midlands. They are being represented by Robina Shah from the Birmingham-based Immigration Advisory Service, who has lodged their application with the human rights court in Strasbourg, and barrister Ramby de Mello.

Ms Shah said: “The case clearly is of importance to my clients. As a result of the ban they have had to leave their country of nationality, as the ban restricts their freedom of choice, and that of their daughters.”

The couple wish to remain anonymous, saying there is “considerable hostility” in both the UK and France to Muslim women who go fully veiled in public.

Asian Image, 9 June 2011