A federal civil rights agency sued Abercrombie & Fitch on Wednesday on behalf of an 18-year-old woman who said she applied for her first job at the company’s store at the Great Mall in Milpitas and was turned down because she wore a Muslim headscarf.
Category Archives: Women
Swedish radio exposes anti-Muslim discrimination by employers
A Swedish Radio News investigation suggests that women who wear a headscarf have a much harder time getting a job.
The P3 radio channel invented two imaginary job seekers who applied for 200 posts. They had essentially identical qualifications, spoke the same number of languages and were both involved in clubs and other activities.
The only difference was that one was wearing a headscarf on her photo and had a non-Swedish sounding name. But there was a clear difference in the result: “Emma Svensson” was contacted by 35 employers, while “Evin Ziadi” only heard back from eight.
France’s ban on the veil has nothing to do with women’s emancipation
If there were any doubt about the motivation for the ban on Islamic face coverings passed by the French national assembly in July, the Sarkozy government’s actions in August have laid them to rest.
The issue isn’t women’s emancipation, for all the pious rhetoric we’ve heard about equality being a “primordial value” of the French nation. It isn’t the danger that terrorists and robbers will hide behind burqas in order to blow up buildings or rob banks – the exemptions in the law for motorcycle helmets, fencing and ski masks, and carnival costumes quickly dispel that argument. And it isn’t about enforcing openness and transparency as an aspect of French culture.
Outlawing what the French call “le voile intégral” is part of a campaign to purify and protect national identity, purging so-called foreign elements – although many of these “foreigners” are actually French citizens – from membership in the nation. It is part of a cynical bid by Sarkozy and his party to capture the anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim animus that has brought electoral gains to the rightwing National Front party and to disarm the Socialist opposition, which has so far offered little resistance to the xenophobic campaign.
Joan Wallach Scott, author of that excellent book The Politics of the Veil, writes in the Guardian, 26 August 2010
Australia: NSW government opposes veil ban bill
NSW Premier Kristina Keneally says her government will not support a ban on the burqa, the head and body veil worn by some Muslim women, because “such a ban has no place in multicultural NSW”.
Christian Democratic Party MP Fred Nile had called on both major parties to allow members a conscience vote on his private member’s bill, which was introduced into Parliament in June. Mr Nile wants NSW to follow a growing number of European countries trying to ban women from wearing in public the burqa and the niqab, a veil with a narrow opening for the eyes.
However, at an interfaith dinner with about 300 religious leaders last night, Ms Keneally announced that cabinet had decided to oppose the Full-face Coverings Prohibition Bill, which is modelled on legislation recently passed by the Belgian Parliament.
“We are fortunate to live in a largely harmonious state where differences in language, culture and faith are rightly seen as things which enliven and strengthen our society,” Ms Keneally said. “It is in this spirit that the NSW Government has decided to oppose the bill seeking to create a criminal offence of wearing a burqa in public places.”
Imane Boudlal rejects Disney’s substitute hijab
The Muslim restaurant hostess whom Disney has prohibited from wearing her hijab, a religious head scarf, while at work has rejected as “offensive” what the entertainment giant describes as an attempt to accommodate her.
The hostess has been sent home from work without pay seven times since Aug. 15 when, just days after the Islamic holy month of Ramadan began, Imane Boudlal, 26, wore her hijab to work. She was offered a choice between working in a location out of view of customers or going home.
Boudlal had tried for two months to reach an accommodation with the company, which said it was considering her request for a “religious accommodation,” requests Disney says it considers.
Disney officials yesterday offered Boudlal a hat to wear on top of a bonnet in place of her own white headscarf that the company has said doesn’t meet the “Disney look.”
After trying on the new uniform, Boudlal told her managers it does not meet her religious needs. Boudlal said she found the hat embarrassing, especially because she would be the only restaurant employee forced to wear it.
“The hat makes a joke of me and my religion, and draws even more attention to me,” Boudlal said. “It’s unacceptable.”
“They don’t want me to look like a Muslim,” Boudlal continued. “They just don’t want the head covering to look like a hijab.”
Norwegian court rules hijab ban illegal
A Norwegian administrative court on Friday said a ban on police women wearing the Islamic headscarf was illegal, in response to a government refusal in 2009 to allow officers to don the hijab.
The Norwegian Equality Tribunal said in a non-binding opinion that the ban ran counter to the country’s freedom of religion and anti-discrimination laws by depriving a whole category of women from access to the police profession.
“The official objective is for the police to mirror Norwegian society as a whole,” the tribunal wrote in its ruling. “The society is multi-cultural and diverse, and the police should also illustrate this diversity, precisely to allow it to maintain trust at large” among the population, it added.
After a Muslim woman said she wanted to become a police officer, but did not want to remove her hijab, Norway’s centre-left government last year first approved a police decision to allow its female officers to wear the Islamic headscarf.
However, the ruling coalition quickly backtracked after the decision sparked outrage and charges from the largest member of the opposition, the far-right Progress Party, that it was allowing the “gradual Islamisation” of the country.
The justice ministry, which theoretically can choose to ignore the ruling, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Germany: FDP politician calls for ban on veil
The liberal parliamentarian Serkan Toeren has demanded a ban on the burqa in Germany. Toeren, who represents the Free Democratic Party (FDP) in the Bundestag, says it was time to have an open debate on the issue. Toeren, whose constituency is in Lower Saxony, said the full body covering worn by some Muslim women, obscuring the face, posed a threat to public security, and undermined the individuals.
“Wearing a full-body veil like the burqa is a breach of human dignity.” Toeren told the German daily Leipziger Volkszeitung. Women who choose to wear the burqa voluntarily cannot be accepted either, because individuals cannot control human dignity.”
According to Toeren, the burqa robs women of their dignity and freedom: “It is supposed to make women more or less invisible, and not present. The burqa is a mobile women’s prison.”
The FDP spokesman for integration, who is of Turkish origin, does not accept religious reasons as justification for wearing the full-body veil. “The burqa is not a religious, but rather a political symbol against our state order and a means of suppressing women,” said Toeren.
MP pleased that women who wore niqab have gone
MP Philip Hollobone says he is pleased that the only two women in Kettering who wear burkas have left.
Inam Khan, chairman of Kettering Muslim Association, said the two women, whose husbands were doctors at Kettering General Hospital, left the town shortly after Mr Hollobone first criticised the burka in February.
The Kettering MP, who is trying to change the law to ban the burka, which some Muslim women wear to cover their face, said: “I’m pleased to hear that. Wearing the full face veil is inappropriate. To hear that no-one in the town is wearing one is a sign of an integrated society.”
Despite having no constituents who wear one, Mr Hollobone has tabled a private members bill in the House of Commons calling for the burka to be banned.
Australia: judge orders witness to remove niqab in court
An Australian judge has ruled that a Muslim woman must remove her full veil while giving evidence before a jury in a fraud case. The judge in Perth said she did not consider it appropriate that the witness appear with her face covered.
The prosecution said the woman – identified only as Tasneem – would feel uncomfortable without her niqab, which would affect her evidence. But the defence said the jury should be able to watch her facial expressions. The 36-year-old woman’s wish to wear the veil was a “preference”, said defence lawyer Mark Trowell QC and was “not an essential part of the Islamic faith”.
The woman is a witness in a case against the head of an Islamic school accused of gaining work funding by inflating student numbers. She has lived in Australia for seven years and has worn the niqab since the age of 17, only removing it in front of her family and male blood relatives.
Disney restaurant worker files complaint over hijab ban
A Muslim woman who works as a hostess at a Disney-owned restaurant filed a discrimination complaint against the entertainment giant Wednesday, saying they have repeatedly sent her home without pay for refusing to remove her headscarf at work.
Imane Boudlal said she has worked as a hostess at Storyteller’s Café in Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa for two years and began wearing her hijab Sunday but was told she would have to remove it or take a job working out of public view.