Category Archives: Hijab

Hijab-wearing ‘flash mob’ protests at right-wing bloggers’ conference

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Protestors at RightOnlineMINNEAPOLIS — A group of around ten women in Muslim headscarves crashed the RightOnline conference for about ten minutes Saturday, protesting what they said was an incident targeting Muslim women Thursday night.

The event was the latest spark kicked up by the proximity of Netroots Nation and RightOnline. The two conferences are blocks apart – RightOnline is being held in a hotel many Netrootsers are staying in – and interaction between the progressives at Netroots and the conservatives at RightOnline has been inevitable.

A spokesperson for the group of women told TPM they weren’t sure of the identity of the man responsible for the Thursday incident – when two hijab-wearing women were followed by a man with a cell phone camera who reportedly asked them why they were dressed the way they were “in America” – but rumors that the incident involved an employee of conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart were rampant at Netroots.

The women who arrived at RightOnline were Netroots attendees, and were accompanied by blogger Joe Aravosis and gay rights advocate/provocateur Dan Choi.

The spokesperson for the “flash mob,” Allison Nevitt, told TPM that there was a larger message to their protest beyond the Thursday incident, which Nevitt said had been reported to Minneapolis police. “The point was mostly that Muslim women are an equal part of this nation, and that we have an equal right to exist here,” Nevitt said.

TPM, 18 June 2011

Update:  See “Right-wing blogger charged with harassing Muslim women”, above.

Soccer referee banned for wearing hijab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sarah BenkiraneMONTREAL — A former Lac St. Louis soccer referee is blowing the whistle on rules she said prevent her from practising her religion.

Sarah Benkirane, 15, was told after two years of refereeing for the soccer association that she was out of a job, after a complaint surfaced over her wearing her hijab while calling games.

“For me it’s not really an option to take it off,” she explained of her traditional Muslim head scarf. “It’s part of my religion. It’s part of who I am. It’s the way I express myself, so I think I should be allowed to wear it as long as I’m not causing any harm to anybody else and I’m not.”

Under Rule 4 of the FIFA guidelines, which govern the Lac St. Louis Soccer Association, players must not only avoid wearing any item which threatens to cause choking or injury, but also “must not have any political, religious or personal statements.” All rules for players also pertain to referees under FIFA rules.

Edouard St. Lo, executive director of the Lac St. Louis Soccer Association said he agrees with the regulations. “It’s not just safety, because it does talk about political, religious and any kind of personal feeling that the person wants to display on the field. That’s why they’re all wearing the same thing,” he said.

Benkirane has drawn support from some parents, who have signed a petition allowing her to play. “Absolutely she should be able to wear it – it’s her choice,” said one mother.

CTV, 18 June 2011

Update:  See “Soccer referee refused right to wear hijab a second time”, CTV, 20 June 2011

French court hears first case against women who refuse to accept veil ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Meaux veil court case
Hind (right) with supporters outside the court

A French court Thursday heard the country’s first case against women refusing to obey a new law banning the wearing of Islamic face veils in public.

The two women, who wear the niqab, were ordered to appear before the court in the town of Meaux, about 40 kilometres east of Paris, for going to the local town hall on May 5 with their faces veiled.

Both the women live in the Paris region. One of them could not be present at the hearing. The other woman, Hind, 31, a mother of a three-year-old, was barred from entering the courtroom after refusing to remove her veil for the duration of the hearing. “I accepted to undergo an identity check (by briefly showing her face). But they refused all compromise,” she told the German Press Agency dpa.

The two women were booked by police after showing up at Meaux town hall with a birthday cake for Mayor Jean-Francois Cope, who is also leader of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservative ruling Union for a Popular Majority (UMP). The cake was made of almonds, a word which sounds like the French word for fines (amendes), and was meant as a dig at the government over the timid application by the authorities of the two-month-old law.

While several women have been booked by police, only one has been fined so far, according to Rachid Nekkaz, founder of Don’t Touch My Constitution, a group lobbying against the ban.

Hind said she hoped to be fined, so that she could challenge the law, which she sees as an attack on her freedom of religion, in the European Court of Human Rights.

DPA, 16 June 2011

‘Spooks unmask burka death squads’ – Daily Star announces a ‘world exclusive’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Brit spooks have stopped SIXTY terror plots involving Black Widow bombers. Many of the Muslim women who were pulled in were carrying explosives, we can reveal. Other radicals as young as 17 had bomb materials stashed in their homes across the country.

The operation started when a dozen women in the London and Greater Manchester areas were picked up in security sweeps but allowed to go free. They were put under surveillance and led the spooks to more than 30 terror group leaders. But it is feared there are at least 20 of the Black Widow bombers still at large and ready to carry out their deadly missions.

A senior security source said: “The terrorists rely on a woman in a black flowing dress not being stopped. They can’t be searched easily because of their strict rules and it’s hard to see what they are hiding under their robes. A lot of people would think twice about searching them for fear of offending religious rules or being accused of sexual harassment or indecency.”

A senior security source has revealed that in the past year between 50 and 60 attacks have been averted after spies infiltrated Muslim terror cells.

Female suicide bombers have been used by the Taliban and rebels in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and by groups including the Tamil Tigers and Hamas to target civilians and soldiers.

Last year, two women bombed two Moscow subway stations killing at least 38 people and injuring over 60. Chechen “shahidkas” or Black Widows attacked Russian troops in Chechnya and were among a group that took 850 hostages in the Moscow theatre siege in 2002. The stand-off lasted two-and-a-half days. Russian forces killed 38 attackers and at least 129 hostages.

Daily Star on Sunday, 12 June 2011

Yet another anti-Muslim scare story from the Star. Of course, they provide no evidence at all that the security services have uncovered “sixty terror plots involving Black Widow bombers”. And if you read to the end of the report, the only quotes the Star‘s intrepid reporter can get from the police give no support to the story at all.

You do wonder what point there is in Richard Desmond formally distancing the Star from the English Defence League when this sort of irresponsible journalism feeds the culture of ignorant bigotry in which the racist far right can thrive and grow.

Casuals United Daily Star burka death squads story

French court bars Muslim woman from wearing headscarf, judge insults her faith

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Collectif contre l’islamophobie en France reports on the disgraceful treatment of a Muslim woman in Béziers who attended a court hearing over the custody of her child.

She was told by a police officer that that she would have to remove her headscarf out of respect for the judge, by order of the court, otherwise the hearing would take place in her absence. When she tried to enter the courtroom wearing a headband rather than a scarf she was barred by the clerk who told her “no, no, veils are prohibited” and made her remove the headband before she was allowed in.

During the hearing the judge told the woman that she was a “bad mother” because she had allowed her son to convert to Islam, which the judge described as “an act of barbarism towards children”, adding “don’t tell me that the Muslim religion is better than any other religion”. Despite the evidence that the child wanted to remain with his mother the judge stated that it was not for the child to “choose and lay down the law in this court”.

The CCIF has condemned the the court’s treatment of the young woman and has called on the minister of justice to take disciplinary action against the judge.

British couple challenge French veil ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Muslim husband and wife are using a British legal team to launch a landmark human rights challenge to the French ban on face-covering veils.

The couple are taking the French government to the European Court of Human Rights over its prohibition on wearing the niqab and burka in a case of importance across the European Union. They are seeking damages and a ruling that the ban on the full-face veil is “unnecessary, disproportionate and unlawful”. They also contend the blanket ban restricts their right to free movement across the EU.

The husband is a French national living with his wife and two children in the West Midlands. They are being represented by Robina Shah from the Birmingham-based Immigration Advisory Service, who has lodged their application with the human rights court in Strasbourg, and barrister Ramby de Mello.

Ms Shah said: “The case clearly is of importance to my clients. As a result of the ban they have had to leave their country of nationality, as the ban restricts their freedom of choice, and that of their daughters.”

The couple wish to remain anonymous, saying there is “considerable hostility” in both the UK and France to Muslim women who go fully veiled in public.

Asian Image, 9 June 2011

Court upholds Catalan city’s veil ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Spanish court has upheld a ban by a city on face-covering Islamic veils worn in municipal buildings.

In 2010, the city of Lleida became the first Spanish one to impose such a ban. But the Catalan regional Superior Justice Tribunal suspended it following an appeal by a Muslim association that claimed it violated basic rights.

The court ruled Wednesday that the northeastern city was within its rights to ban the clothing in municipal buildings for security and identification purposes. It also backed Lleida’s argument that the veils are discriminatory.

Other Spanish towns have taken similar steps but their burqa bans have yet to take effect.

Lleida’s one is largely symbolic since only about 3 percent of Lleida’s population is Muslim and very few wear face-covering garments.

Associated Press, 9 June 2011

Woman weightlifter fights to compete in hijab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Kulsoom AbdullahA 35-year-old weightlifter is battling to be able to compete in the sport she loves while wearing a hijab instead of the body-hugging uniform that’s required.

Kulsoom Abdullah, who was born in the United States to Pakistani parents, discovered weightlifting at her gym, Crossfit, in Atlanta in 2008. She entered her first open competition last year, and was thrilled to find out that she was actually pretty good in the competitive sport. She can lift 70 kilos (about 154 pounds) to her shoulders, and 60 kilos (or about 132 pounds) over her head, in a move called the “clean-and-jerk.” Last December, she qualified for the American Open Weightlifting Championships, which would have been her first national competition.

But when her coaches asked whether she would be able to wear her modified uniform – which covers everything but her face, hands, and feet – the organizers told told them no.

Abdullah talked to some lawyer friends, who told her that other athletes had won their bids to wear different clothing for religious reasons. So she tried again, this time personally writing to USA Weightlifting with her request, and asking the group if it could compromise on a uniform.

Officials with the group wrote back and said they had to follow the rules of the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF), which mandates collarless uniforms and doesn’t allow exceptions.

“I was really disappointed because I was really looking forward to it,” she told The Lookout. “I had never thought I would qualify at the national level.”

“It is like saying, if you are different, you can not compete,” she wrote on her web site. “I am not asking people to change, I am just asking to participate and be able to dress the way I do.”

Now, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim advocacy group, is taking up Abdullah’s cause, and trying to lobby weightlifting organizations to revise their rules in time for her to compete in a July national competition. CAIR officials are arguing that USA Weightlifting is in violation of the Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act, which forbids sports bodies from discriminating based on “race, color, religion, sex, age, or national origin.” Not allowing Abdullah to wear her hijab is discrimination, CAIR maintains.

The Lookout, 9 June 2011