Category Archives: Hijab

Argenteuil: Muslim woman loses baby after veil attack

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A young pregnant Muslim woman, who was allegedly attacked in the street for wearing a veil has lost her baby, her lawyer announced on Monday.

According to reports in the French media, the woman, who was four months pregnant, was assaulted in the Paris suburb of Argenteuil on June 13th. On Monday, the 21-year-old’s lawyer Hosni Maati told AFP that the woman had since suffered a miscarriage. “Her husband called me this afternoon. She lost the baby,” the lawyer said, before adding that the family were devastated by the tragedy and would not be making any further comment.

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Second attack on Muslim woman in Argenteuil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Coordination contre le Racisme et l’Islamophobie has reported that, following the attack on Rabia B. last month, a second Muslim woman was assaulted by skinheads in Argenteuil on Thursday morning. They dragged her into a side street, beat her, removed her headscarf and cut off some of her hair. When she screamed at them that she was pregnant they replied they “didn’t give a fuck” and kicked her in the stomach. Argenteuil was the scene of clashes on Wednesday provoked by police arresting a Muslim woman wearing a veil.

See also “Seule et enceinte agressée par des skins”, CCIF, 13 June 2013

And “Argenteuil: La colère des habitants après une nouvelle agression raciste”, 20 Minutes, 13 June 2013

Police check of veiled woman sparks clashes near Paris

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse an angry crowd in a town on the outskirts of Paris where clashes erupted on Wednesday night after they questioned a woman wearing a full facial veil, which is banned in France.

A police source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the trouble started when police stopped a 25-year-old woman in the centre of Argenteuil, a suburb north-west of Paris, who was wearing a full-face Muslim veil, or niqab.

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Reims: Young woman wearing hijab is attacked

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Reims demonstration

The attack took place on Sunday afternoon in Reims (Marne). While she was driving with her husband, the young veiled woman was violently set upon by a passer-by.

The 17-year adolescent, an apprentice with the Compagnons du Devoir, started to insult her. According to the prefecture, he repeatedly asked her to remove her headscarf before “pouring a stream of racist abuse on her and her husband”. According to the testimony of the couple and Muslim and anti-racist associations in Reims, the perpetrator “put his hand through the window of the vehicle in an attempt to forcibly remove the woman’s scarf”.

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‘Anti-Muslim backlash’ has been grotesquely exaggerated: Britain remains peaceful and tolerant

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Tony ParsonsThat’s the headline to Tony Parsons’ column in today’s Daily Mirror.

Parsons assures his readers that most of the Islamophobic incidents that followed Lee Rigby’s murder took place online, and “some cretin foaming at the mouth on Twitter or Facebook is simply not the same as having someone stick a bottle through your window, or attack you in the street” (which of course ignores the fact that the former may well inspire the latter). He asserts: “The ‘anti-Muslim backlash’ is somewhere between a grotesque exaggeration and a plain old lie.”

This is just a rehash of the discredited Gilligan thesis. Parsons, however, adds a few ignorant and incoherent arguments of his own.

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Danish supermarket chain lifts headscarf ban following campaign by Muslim women

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Netto hijab campaigners (2)

A well-known supermarket chain in Denmark has announced that employees will no longer be prohibited from wearing the Muslim headscarf at its stores. The move follows a two-week protest in the country led by a group of Muslim women.

The spokesman for Dansk Supermarked, which operates the Netto, Fotex and Bilka stores, told the media on Thursday that the chain has decided to end its policy of prohibiting employees from wearing headscarves. The chain has for the past decade not allowed its employees to wear headscarves at its stores.

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French burqa ban to be heard by the Grand Chamber ECtHR

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Chamber of the ECtHR to which the application in S.A.S. v France (No. 43835/11) was assigned has relinquished jurisdiction to the Grand Chamber, neither party having objected to relinquishment.

Under Law no. 2010-1192 of 11 October 2010, which came into force on 11 April 2011, it is forbidden in France to conceal one’s face in a public place: “Nul ne peut, dans l’espace public, porter une tenue destinée à dissimuler son visage”.

The applicant, a French national who is a practising Muslim, states that she wears the burqa in order to live according to her faith, her culture and her personal convictions. She also wears the niqab veil in public and in private, but not consistently; however, she wants to be able to wear it when she so chooses. She states that her purpose in wearing the burqa or the niqab is not to inconvenience others but to live according to her principles. She also asserts that neither her husband nor any other member of her family puts pressure on her to wear the burqa.

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Ghent: Socialists and Greens overturn hijab ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Belgian city of Ghent has scrapped its ban on civil servants wearing headscarves after its Socialist and Green majority overturned a measure imposed in 2007 when center-right parties dominated the city council.

More than 10,000 adult citizens, or about five times the number required to call the vote, had signed a petition calling for the prohibition to be lifted.

After a four-hour debate lasting almost until midnight on Monday, 29 of the city council’s 51 members voted to rescind the ban on the wearing of religious or political symbols for city officials dealing with the public.

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Study finds Muslim women wearing headscarfs face job discrimination

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In a study, Assistant Professor Sonia Ghumman from the UH Mānoa Shidler College of Business found that Hijabis (Muslim women who wear headscarfs) encountered discrimination when seeking employment.

“We conducted a field experiment to investigate the extent to which individuals wearing religious attire encounter discrimination during the hiring process,” said Ghumman. “We asked students (ages 19-22) from several ethnic backgrounds to seek employment with and without the hijab (headscarf) at retail stores and restaurants in two shopping malls. The malls were located primarily in middle-income cities in the Midwest. The job seekers were paired with an observer and yielded a total of 112 trials.”

The study measured: 1) formal discrimination, marked by explicit negative behaviors such as outright refusal; 2) interpersonal discrimination, a more subtle expression of discrimination both in nonverbal and verbal behaviors; and 3) expectations to receive job offers.

According to Ghumman, the findings revealed that wearing a hijab had a negative impact in all aspects of the hiring process compared to Muslim women who did not wear a hijab. The field experiment tracked several areas of the hiring process, including the permission to complete job applications, job availability, job call backs, interaction time, and perceived negativity and lack of interest by the employer.

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa news report, 23 May 2013