Nadiya Takolia defends the hijab.
Or, as CiF Watch would have it: “iEngage’s Nadiya Takolia demonstrates again how proponents of, or at least apologists for, the most reactionary movements within Islam continue, under the veneer of human rights, to attempt to avoid being held responsible for an adherence to reactionary, racist, and violent political agendas.”
Evidence from FIFA’s medical experts on why the ban on Muslim women footballers wearing the Islamic headscarf or hijab should remain in place was deeply flawed and had no foundation, the campaign’s principal supporter said on Friday.
Prince Ali Bin Al-Hussein of Jordan, whose presentation to soccer’s law-making body IFAB six weeks ago saw the approval of the headscarf pending health and safety checks, said he was “shocked and disturbed” by the evidence presented on Thursday. “If it is true, I would accept it, but I believe it was without foundation,” he told reporters.
FIFA’s medical advisers say new designs are needed because headscarves worn by Muslim women players could lead to head and neck injuries. Michel D’Hooghe, chairman of FIFA’s medical committee, says samples received from two designers “represented a danger” to players’ health.
Soccer’s rules-making panel has said it intends to approve headscarves following a campaign by FIFA executive committee member Prince Ali of Jordan. However, the panel asked for more medical advice before it meets on July 2.
D’Hooghe says his group of doctors tested the scarves and believed they could lead to head and neck injuries, plus overheating. Modified designs are expected to arrive at FIFA “in the coming days,” the Belgian doctor said.
Nearly 88,000 racist incidents were recorded in Britain’s schools between 2007 and 2011, the BBC has found.
Data from 90 areas shows 87,915 cases of racist bullying, which can include name calling and physical abuse. Birmingham recorded the highest number of incidents at 5,752, followed by Leeds with 4,690.
In response to the local authority figures, obtained under a Freedom of Information request, the Department for Education said racism needed to be “rooted out”.
Today Liberty announced it is intervening in the European Court of Human Rights case concerning the criminalisation of face coverings in France.
New research shows that that there is a link between the banning of the veil in France and increased levels of hostility towards veiled Muslim women.
The Research from the Department of Criminology at the University of Leicester suggests that the veil ban stigmatises veiled Muslim women as “criminals” and fosters Muslim “otherness”. Even if not explicitly inciting hate-motivated violence, the law in its application contributes to a climate of intolerance of Islam in the West.
Irene Zempi, who led the study, will present her research on Islamophobia at a Departmental Research Seminar at the University of Leicester tommorrow.
American philosopher Martha Nussbaum, author of the recently published book The New Religious Intolerance, examines the spurious justifications given for banning the niqab and burqa.
She concludes that “traditions of religious liberty and equality in both the United States and Europe” are under threat as the result of “a climate of fear and suspicion, directed primarily against Muslims”.
Wakeelah Salaam had been shopping by herself for less than ten minutes at the Bridegwater Commons Mall when a security guard approached her and told her to remove her traditional Muslim face covering.
“He said, ‘ma’am, I’m telling you, you cannot wear that mask in here. He came as close to me as though he was going to kiss me, and then he made the hand gesture like he was going to lift it up for me,” Salaam said.
Banning and criminalising the Muslim face veil tests the very foundations of modern liberal society, warn researchers from Queen Mary, University of London and the University of Sussex.
The paper ‘Reasons to Ban? The Anti-Burqa Movement in Western Europe‘ examines the move to legislate against, and to criminalise face-veiling which has swept across the EU recently.
Tales of a comically bizarre episode during a meeting of the FIFA medical committee has supporters of the headscarf for Muslim women footballers fear that their project is being stalled.