Nannies and childcare assistants could soon be banned from wearing the Islamic veil in France, even when working at home, after a controversial law bill was adopted by the French Senate late last night.
Category Archives: Hijab
‘FIFA has to give same opportunities to everyone’ says vice president
Andrew Warshaw interviews FIFA vice president, Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein of Jordan, over his proposal – recently endorsed by FIFA’s executive committee – to allow Muslim women footballers to wear the hijab during matches.
Majority of Dutch back queen wearing headscarf to mosque
Queen Beatrix wore a headscarf while visiting a mosque in Oman this week, as a sign of respect for local custom. The Party for Freedom (PVV) criticized her, saying she was supporting the oppression of women under Islam.
According to a Maurice de Hond poll, 79% of the Dutch think she acted properly. 20% think the Queen shouldn’t have worn a headscarf. 53% also think that Beatrix should wear a headscarf when visiting a mosque in the Netherlands. Among PVV voters, 47% think the Queen acted properly, 53% disagree.
Dutch queen dismisses mosque visit criticism
Dutch Queen Beatrix has dismissed as “nonsense” criticism of her decision to wear a head scarf during a recent visit to a mosque in the United Arab Emirates.
National broadcaster NOS reports that the queen’s unusually forthright comment came Thursday in Oman to Dutch reporters covering her state visit this week.
Muslim student sues Connecticut university
A Muslim woman is suing the University of Bridgeport, alleging that the school failed to investigate her claims that a fellow student sexually harassed her and instead retaliated by reporting her to the FBI based on a false claim that she was a terrorist.
Balayla Ahmad filed the federal lawsuit Tuesday saying that she was sexually harassed by a male student for months in 2009 and that university officials showed “deliberate indifference” to her repeated complaints. She said college officials recklessly disseminated false accusations by the harasser that they had good reason to believe were unreliable and threatened her with arrest by the FBI.
Sweden’s education authority rejects blanket ban on veils in schools
Sweden’s education agency on Wednesday rejected a blanket ban on veils but said that teachers had in some situations the right to ban students from wearing them.
A general ban on Islamic garments such as the full-face niqab or full-body burqa could be considered a violation of religious freedom, the National Agency for Education said. The agency had been asked to clarify its guidelines on in which situations it was possible to ban facial coverings.
Lessons in which students could be required to remove veils included those involving laboratory experiments or metal and machinery work, the agency said.
Muslim bride sues mayor of Lyon over order to remove headscarf
A newly-wed Muslim couple are suing the mayor of Lyon after a local official insisted the bride remove her veil at the town hall wedding ceremony.
The bride, identified only as Nassima A., was asked to remove a veil which was covering her hair during her wedding ceremony at a town hall in Lyon in June.
“Nassima thought it was an order and did not think twice about removing her veil. She thought she had to do it to get married and took it off in front of everybody,” says her lawyer Gilles Devers in an interview with the French daily Libération. He says she felt humuliated during the ceremony.
The deputy mayor of Lyon’s 9th district, Fatiha Ben Ahmed, who asked the bride to bare her hair, told the bride that she looked “very pretty” without a veil.
PVV attacks Queen Beatrix for wearing headscarf during visit to Abu Dhabi mosque
Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, who is in Abu Dhabi, wore a headscarf when she visited the Sheikh Zayed Mosque this morning out of respect for the customs, traditions and conventions of Islam, says Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal. The queen is on a two-day state visit to the United Arab Emirates.
“Not to have worn one during a visit to a mosque wasn’t an option. In that case, the invitation to visit to the mosque, one of the most important in the United Arab Emirates, would’ve had to have been refused,” explained Mr Rosenthal.
His comments come in response to criticism from the Freedom Party (PVV) about the clothing worn by Queen Beatrix and Crown Princess Máxima who, with her husband Prince Willem-Alexander, is part of the royal party visiting the UAE. The PVV had complained that, by wearing a headscarf, the queen was lending legitimacy to the oppression of women under Islam.
Hijabs don’t hinder prison guards
Last week, Quebec moved to allow Muslim women prison guards to wear hijabs on the job, but it only did so as part of a settlement of a human rights complaint filed four years ago. If the issue arises in other provinces, governments should not wait for a human rights commission ruling before permitting the wearing of hijabs.
The Quebec complaint was filed by a Muslim woman in training to be a prison guard, and although permission was granted as part of a settlement between Quebec’s Public Security Department and the human rights commission, the woman’s victory is rather a hollow one – she has long since dropped her guard training and is pursuing a different career.
However, the decision will hopefully pave the way for other Muslim women interested in correctional careers, in Quebec and in the rest of Canada. Accommodating the hijab as part of a guard’s uniform is no different than allowing Sikh RCMP officers to wear their turbans instead of the regulation hats. Turbans have never interfered with the ability of a Mountie to do his job, and it will be the same for the hijab, as long as women guards wear head scarves with Velcro fastenings that allow for quick removal in an emergency.
Editorial in Calgary Herald, 2 January 2012
‘Only’ six veiled women fined since April, says French interior minister
France’s interior minister says that since a ban on face-covering Islamic veils took effect in April only six women have been convicted and fined.
Claude Gueant said in an interview with the daily Le Monde published Monday that no woman has been sent to a citizenship class – another potential punishment.
Controversy surrounded the law. Muslim leaders, most of them opposed to burqa-style veils, say it stigmatizes all followers of Islam.
Gueant says police cited a total of 237 women but only six were convicted. He expressed surprise that nearly a quarter of the women police questioned had converted to Islam.
Backers say the law is aimed at ensuring France’s secular values and gender equality and nipping radical Islam in the bud.
Associated Press, 2 January 2012
In reality, one French Muslim woman – Hind Amas – has been sentenced to 15 days’ “citizenship service” after being convicted of wearing the veil, and faces a possible two years in prison and €30,000 fine because she has refused to accept the sentence.
In the Le Monde interview Gueant stated that in 2012 there would be neither controversy nor rows over Islam or the presence of Muslims in France. He described Islam as “open, tolerant, vibrant, fully integrated into our society” and claimed that he was opposed only to “radical Islam”.
Presumably Gueant was tailoring his message to the readers of a liberal newspaper, but the actual practice of the Sarkozy government towards Muslims and other communities of migrant origin is very different. Cf. “France stiffens citizenship requirements”, Los Angeles Times, 2 January 2012
(Admittedly, Gueant’s measures don’t go far enough for some critics.)