Angus Mackinnon examines the rise in discrimination against Muslims in France, justified as a defence of laïcité.
Category Archives: Secular
Maryam Namazie calls for ban on niqab … with assistance of Channel 4
For reasons best known to themselves, the producers of Channel 4’s 4thought.tv slot decided to give Maryam Namazie a platform to demand a ban on the niqab. You can watch it here.
Namazie was allowed to present herself as an ordinary ex-Muslim who turned against the niqab as a result of her experiences in Iran (where, in fact, there is no legal enforcement of the face-veil). There was no indication that Namazie is a leading figure in the Worker-Communist Party of Iran, a crazed far-left sect with a long history of Islamophobia.
French veil law: Muslim woman’s challenge in Strasbourg
A young Muslim woman is challenging France’s full-face veil ban at the European Court of Human Rights, based in the French city of Strasbourg. The woman argues that the niqab, and the burka body covering, accord with her “religious faith, culture and personal convictions”. She denies being under any pressure from her family to wear them.
A leading French feminist group has urged the ECHR to uphold the ban, arguing that it liberates women. “The full-face veil, by literally burying the body and the face, constitutes a true deletion of the woman as an individual in public,” the head of the International League for Women’s Rights, Annie Sugier, said in a letter to the court.
Baby-Loup hijab ban upheld by appeals court
A French court has upheld the controversial sacking of a childcare worker who wore a headscarf to work.
In a case that has gripped France for five years, a Paris appeals court ruled on November 27 that the dismissal of nursery worker Fatima Afif was legal.
Baby-Loup, the crèche employing Fatima Afif in the multicultural Parisian suburb of Chanteloup-les-Vignes, fired her in 2008 after she refused to remove her Islamic headscarf at work.
Secular France bans religious signs in public educational institutions. But the Court of Cassation ruled last March that privately-owned Baby-Loup had discriminated against its employee on religious grounds. France’s highest court then sent her case to the Paris appeals court for retrial.
The judge followed the advice of the state prosecutor, who had asked for the sacking to be confirmed in the name of France’s secularism. Wednesday’s ruling states that the crèche had a “public service mission” and had a right to “impose neutrality on its personnel”.
Stephen Timms MP defies critics of Islamic festival in Newham
Stephen Timms MP has defended his support for a controversial Islamic conference, calling criticism of it “misplaced” and saying he would attend the event again if asked.
Veteran campaigner Peter Tatchell criticised Mr Timms and London Mayor Boris Johnson for supporting the Global Peace and Unity Festival (GPU) held at the ExCel centre in Newham last weekend, which critics say promotes hate preachers.
Mr Tatchell said: “It is appalling that the mayor, City of London police and prominent public figures are endorsing an event that promotes at least seven speakers with bigoted, violent views. It’s the equivalent of supporting an event with BNP and EDL hate speakers.”
Mr Timms hit back against the critics, saying he had spoken at previous GPU events and found them “a useful way to communicate with a significant group of constituents”. He said: “I have never believed that speaking at an event involved endorsing the views of all the other speakers, so I think the criticism is misplaced.”
Quebec profs don hijab in Muslim solidarity
Showing solidarity to the Muslim minority, two renowned Montreal professors have donned hijab in a protest against the proposed ban on religious symbols in the Parti Québécois’ secular charter.
“I wear it as a kind of sign of solidarity,” Concordia University history professor Nora Jaffary told CBC on Monday, November 25.
So much for a calm, respectful debate on the values charter
The Parti Québécois government says it wants a calm, respectful debate on its proposed “values” charter.
So, how’s that going?
Well, on Sunday, a columnist in Le Journal de Montréal likened the niqab worn by two Montreal daycare educators, a photo of whom sparked a controversy last week, to the hood worn by members of the violently racist Ku Klux Klan.
And on Saturday, La Presse reported, two participants walked out of a debate on secularism after they were repeatedly interrupted and heckled because they were not in favour of banning Muslim veils.
Don Macpherson reports on the hysteria generated by supporters of the proposed Charter of Values which would prohibit public employees in Quebec from wearing “conspicuous” religious symbols at work.
French veil ban before Europe rights court
European judges will on Wednesday hear the case of a 23-year-old French woman who claims the country’s highly contentious ban on full-face veils violates her rights.
The Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) will hear arguments in the case brought by a plaintiff known only by her initials SAS, with a ruling expected in early 2014.
Anne Marie Waters resigns from One Law for All
Anne Marie Waters seems to be making a habit of resigning these days. Last month she left the Labour Party – citing its support for multiculturalism, selection of Ken Livingstone as its London mayoral candidate, and imposition of legal restrictions on hate speech as reasons for her departure – and now she has resigned from her post as joint spokesperson for the anti-sharia campaign One Law for All.
Last week Waters’ co-spokesperson Maryam Namazie posted Waters’ resignation letter on the OLFA website. Waters says in it that she still believes the “fight against sharia and Islamism” is “one of the most important and urgent causes we face in the 21st Century”. But rather than conducting this struggle through OLFA she will be “working with other people and groups to speak out for democracy, liberty, and the right to freedom of speech and association”. No doubt she has in mind her friends at the Danish-Swedish “counterjihad” publication Dispatch International, to which she has become a regular contributor (her most recent article is entitled “Stoning to death is now a moderate position in the UK”).
Veteran Quebec politician says Qur’an is a book of ‘conquest and violence’
The founder of the Action Democratique says his current party, the CAQ, should be staking out a tough stand in favour of the PQ’s proposed Charter of Values.
Jean Allaire says his views on the wearing of religious symbols are much closer to those of the PQ than those of the CAQ, which favours a ban only for civil servants in positions of authority such as judges and police officers.
Allaire told La Presse he read the Koran and concluded that it is a book about conquest and violence and bearded men wrongly use it to convince women that they should wear headscarves.