Category Archives: Hijab

Drunk abused Muslim woman in headscarf

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A mother-of-three ­racially abused a ­Muslim woman before spitting in the face of a police officer, a court has heard.

India McConnell, of Netley Road, Newbury Park, stood in front of a woman wearing a burka before shouting a racist slur and telling her to “go home”. Redbridge Magistrates’ Court heard the 27-year-old had been drinking the previous day and all night before the incident at 8.45am in Ilford Lane at its junction with Winston Way on October 4.

In a statement read out by the prosecution lawyer, a witness said Miss McConnell pulled up her top mimicking the ­woman’s head scarf before shouting the abuse. The witness said the woman was with four children, two in prams, who were “horrified”. He asked why she was shouting to which she ­replied: “This is England. She should go back home.”

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US Army agrees to review rule against headscarfs

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The U.S. Army has agreed to review one of its policies that prevented a 14-year-old Muslim girl in Tennessee from marching in a homecoming parade while wearing her Islamic headscarf.

Freshman Demin Zawity had been enthusiastically participating in Ravenwood High School’s Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps and was looking forward to the parade, her mother Perishan Hussein told a local news station.

However, just before the event Zawity was told she’d have to remove her headscarf, called a hijab, because it wasn’t an official part of the uniform. Even though she volunteered to tuck it under her shirt and wear the uniforms’ cap on top of it, she was told it still was a problem, her mother said.

Heartbroken, Zawity dropped out of the program and her family wrote to the Council on American-Islamic Relations for help. They didn’t want to sue, but simply wanted a policy change, an apology and a chance for Zawity to be readmitted to the program.

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Air France accepts that Muslim women don’t have to remove veils on plane

Posted on by Bob Pitt

French cabin crews have no right to tell Muslim women to remove their burqa aboard Air France flights – despite a nationwide ban on full face veils, the airline has ruled.

Islamic passengers can be ordered to remove the garment while waiting in French airports to board the plane at the gate. But once on board, they are free to put their burqa back on, according to an internal memo to staff from Air France’s legal department.

The company’s lawyers said: “Flight crews on board planes can not ask a person to uncover their face if they are hiding it. The law can only be enforced by police and other public officials on the ground.”

But pilots said they had “no issue” with women wearing burqas during flights – as long as they had been through security checks before the flight. One told French daily Le Figaro:

“As long as burqa-wearers have been checked before getting on board, then I can’t see the problem. Security on board a plane does not have much to do with whether one’s face is visible or not. Besides, on long-haul flights a lot of passengers hide their face with eye masks when they go to sleep.”

Daily Mail, 9 November 2011

Swedish court bans niqab-wearing women

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Three women wearing head scarves completely shielding their faces were denied entry to a Gothenburg courtroom on Friday during the remand hearing of one of the suspects in the Röda Sten murder plot case.

“I am responsible for order in this court room and I feel I can’t achieve that if I am unable to see the faces of the people present,” said district court judge Stefan Wikmark to Swedish TV4.

The three women were stopped as they were trying to enter the courtroom for the remand hearing 26-year-old Abdi Aziz Mahamud who is under suspicion for plotting the murder of Swedish artist Lars Vilks at an art exhibition in Gothenburg in September. All three women were wearing niqabs covering them from head to toe.

One of the guards at the Gothenburg District Court prevented them from stepping into the court room, referring to the ban on face coverings, according to TV4’s affiliate in Gothenburg. The decision to refuse the women from entering the court room while wearing their traditional garb was taken by Wikmark during the remand negotiations.

The Local, 28 October 2011

CAIR asks Sherburne County sheriff to allow woman’s headscarf in jail

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A civil rights group Thursday asked a sheriff to accommodate a Muslim woman’s religious beliefs and let her cover her head with a scarf.

Sherburne County Sheriff Joel Brott said that he’d meet with the group, the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, but that he wasn’t changing the policy barring female Muslim prisoners from wearing hijabs. “We do not intend to change our policy on this,” Brott said. “We believe it is a safety and security issue. We don’t allow personal clothing in the facility.”

The state chapter of CAIR sent a letter to the sheriff after the Pioneer Press reported Thursday that Amina Farah Ali refused to leave her cell because she’s not allowed to wear her hijab. Ali, 35, a naturalized U.S. citizen who lived in Rochester, Minn., was jailed after she was convicted in federal court last week of sending money to al-Shabaab, a group in her homeland of Somalia that the U.S. government considers a terrorist organization.

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French court backs private nursery over Islamic headscarf sacking

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Baby LoupA French court has ruled that a private nursery had the right to fire an employee for wearing Islamic head-cover, leading its lawyer to hail an advance for secular forces in the country.

An appeal court in Versailles backed up an earlier ruling by a labour court that the Baby Loup nursery in Mantes-la-Jolie was within its rights to sack Fatima Afif in 2008 for refusing to take off her headscarf.

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FIFA to consider amending hijab ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

FIFA vice president Prince Ali Al Hussein will propose that soccer’s governing body agree on “general principles” for the use of Islamic headscarfs. He’ll bring the issue up at the meeting of the executive committee in December. FIFA banned the Islamic scarf covering a women’s neck in 2007, claiming safety concerns.

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JROTC’s headscarf rule keeps girl from parade, spurs bias claim

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Demin ZawityA Ravenwood High School freshman said her Muslim beliefs were put to the test when commanding officers in her Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program told her she couldn’t both wear a headscarf and march in the September homecoming parade.

Demin Zawity, 14, has since quit the JROTC and returned to regular physical education classes, but the Council on American-Islamic Relations sent a letter of complaint to Williamson County Schools Director Mike Looney.

Zawity said she felt like crying when she was told she couldn’t wear the headscarf with her uniform. She’d been wearing it all along, but homecoming marked the first time she was going to wear her JROTC uniform as well. “They were making something that is not such a huge deal into something so dramatic,”she said. “The next day was the parade, and I couldn’t march. If I can’t march, I want it to be because I don’t want to and not because of my religious headwear.”

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MP wants to extend NSW face coverings legislation to Queensland – but claims he isn’t targeting Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Sunshine Coast MP says he may be accused of discrimination in wanting stricter identification laws in Queensland.

Independent Peter Wellington plans to introduce a Private Member’s Bill into State Parliament this afternoon requiring people wearing face coverings or motorbike helmets to remove them when needed for identification. Mr Wellington says the proposal is modelled on recent legislation in New South Wales and can be used by police, court and prison staff and JPs. He says the law is not meant to target women who wear burkas.

“It’s not about trying to discriminate against different religions,” he said. “What it’s saying very clearly … in Queensland there’s one law for everyone. There’s one indisputable standard of cooperation that we all have to abide by and that is if the police want to identify you for a range of purposes you have to reveal your face.”

ABC News, 13 October 2011

Spanish girl thrown out of exam for wearing headscarf

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Spanish schoolgirl has been expelled from school during an exam after refusing to remove her Islamic headdress or hijab, school officials said. “They told me to remove it… they humiliated me in front of my peers,” she told El Mundo newspaper.

The 14-year-old girl, who lives in Madrid, decided to wear hijab this summer. Her parents became outraged by the expulsion and described it an “abuse,” reporting the case to judiciary officials.

This comes while there are no clear guidelines prohibiting the wearing of headscarves in state schools in Spain. Muslims currently account for just over one million of Spain’s 46-million population. Muslims in Spain have been witnessing a growing trend of Islamophobia as e hostility towards the expressions of Islamic symbols and practices grows in the European state.

The discriminatory policies on the rise in Spain clearly breach the country’s Law of Religious Freedom, as well as the International Human Rights law.

Press TV, 8 October 2011

See also Bikya Masr, 5 October 2011