Category Archives: Spain

Lerida bans veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Spanish town of Lerida has become the first in the country to ban the Burka in municipal buildings.

The town council voted to prohibit the “use of the veil and other clothes and accessories which cover the face and prevent identification in buildings and installations of the town hall.”

The vote, by 23 to one with two abstentions, is the first of its kind in Spain, a country where Islamic veils and the body-covering burqas are little in evidence despite a large Muslim population.

The move is aimed at promoting “respect for the dignity of women and values of equality and tolerance,” the town hall said in a statement.

Daily Telegraph, 29 May 2010

Catalan town council to vote Friday on veil ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Spain’s northeastern town of Lerida is to vote Friday to ban the wearing of the burqa in municipal buildings, the mayor’s office said, in an apparent first for the country.

A proposal was being drawn up and the majority socialists were behind the push to ban the face-covering Islamic veil in the municipality’s buildings, a spokesman for the mayor’s office said Wednesday.

The town had asked its legal services to look into the possibility of banning the garment in all public spaces in the name of the fundamental rights of women, the official said.

“We cannot regulate the usage of the burqa in the road, but we can do that in municipal buildings,” he said.

Few women wear the full veil in Lerida, a town in the Catalonia region that has about 140,000 residents, one-fifth of whom are immigrants including from North Africa.

AFP, 26 May 2010

Catalan town council to debate veil ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Spanish town is to debate calls for a ban on wearing the full-face Islamic veil in public amid growing cross-party opposition to the burqa in the country, a local party said Tuesday.

The moderate Catalan nationalists of the Convergence and Union (CiU) party proposed the ban, calling the veil “an obstacle to the dignity and integration of women in our society,” they said in a statement.

The presence in the town Lerida “of Salafist representatives (hardline Islamists) has facilitated the spread of practices incompatible with the values of sexual equality and respect for women.”

El Pais daily said the town’s socialist mayor Angel Ros has also expressed his opposition to the Islamic veil in the past.

Spain’s Labour and Immigration Minister Celestino Corbacho said Monday he was in favour of a ban on the full veil in work spaces. “Totally covering women with a piece of clothing, whatever the symbolism, completely goes against our society and stops the move towards equality between men and women,” he said.

The council debate in Lerida, a town of some 140,000 inhabitants in north east Catalonia, will take place on May 28.

Expatica, 18 May 2010

Poll: half of Europeans oppose headscarf in schools

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Just over half of Europeans surveyed opposed allowing Islamic headscarves in schools but backed the presence of crucifixes in classrooms, according to a Spanish study obtained by AFP Wednesday.

A total 52.6 per cent of those polled in 12 European Union member states along were “opposed” or “totally opposed” to the use of the garment in schools, according to the study carried out by the research department of BBVA, Spain’s second-largest bank. Opposition to the veil was highest in Bulgaria with 84.3 per cent against and France with 68.7 per cent opposed and it was lowest in Poland with only 25.6 per cent against followed by Denmark with 28.1 per cent opposed.

By contrast 54.4 per cent of those polled were in favour of classrooms displaying crucifixes. In Spain and Italy, two nations with a strong Roman Catholic tradition, support for the use of crucifixes in classrooms stood at 69.9 per cent and 49.3 per cent respectively. Support for the use of crucifixes in classrooms shot up to 77 per cent in Britain and 78.8 per cent in Denmark.

AFP, 28 April 2010

Muslim girl’s headscarf divides Spain

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pressure was mounting in Spain on Friday to resolve the case of a Muslim girl who was expelled from school because she started wearing the Islamic headscarf in class.

Najwa Malha, 16, a Spaniard of Moroccan origin, would not accept to go to another school which admits headscarves, her father Mohammed Malha told the daily El Pais. The governing board of the school in Pozuelo de Alarcon near Madrid recently confirmed the school’s earlier decision not to admit Najwa to class unless she took her scarf off.

Three of Najwa’s classmates, who were also Muslims, started wearing the hijab to show their solidarity with her. But the girls have now removed the scarves for fear of being attacked, after anti-Islamic stickers appeared and were removed from the school gates, reports said.

An internet support forum for Najwa has collected hundreds of signatures while the human rights group Amnesty International also sided with her. Islamic associations have called protests and pledged to take the case to courts.

Najwa’s case has divided politicians, with the governing Socialists generally stressing the need for tolerance and dialogue, while some politicians in the ranks of the opposition conservatives described the hijab as a sign of discrimination against women. Children’s right to education was more important than anything else, Education Minister Angel Gabilondo said, describing the hijab as a “sign of a particular identity which does not attack others.”

Earth Times, 23 April 2010

Spain – student banned from school for wearing hijab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Najwa MalhaA 16-year-old schoolgirl has been banned from classes in Spain after refusing to remove her Islamic headscarf, re-igniting the national debate over the hijab.

Najwa Malha, who was born is Spain to Moroccan immigrants, has been excluded from classes at the state-run Camilo Jose Cela School in the Madrid suburb of Pozuelo after being told that her hijab was in violation of school dress code.

The decision has sparked debate in Spain where there are no clear guidelines over the wearing of Islamic headdress in state schools. The enforcement of dress codes is left up to individual school boards but previous cases of exclusion have been overturned by the state with the argument that the constitutional right to an educational overrides the school’s right to determine its own policies.

“I feel totally discriminated against,” said Miss Malha, who said she began wearing the hijab two months ago as an expression of her religious belief. Her father, Mohamed, told Spanish newspaper El Pais that he had originally objected to his daughter wearing the hijab to school. “I asked her to reconsider […] because I figured it would cause her problems,” he said.

Last November, a Muslim lawyer was ejected from Spain’s national court, where she was defending a client, because she refused to remove her headscarf.

Daily Telegraph, 16 April 2010

Update:  See also Bikya Masr, 19 April 2010

Muslims ‘provoked violence’ by praying in Cordoba cathedral

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Cordoba2

A confrontation between Muslim tourists and guards employed by the Roman Catholic bishop at the world-famous Cordoba cathedral saw two people arrested and two guards injured last night.

Trouble broke out when the visitors knelt to pray in the building, a former mosque turned into a Christian cathedral in the 13th century, where a local bishop, Demetrio Fernández, recently insisted that a ban on Muslim prayers must remain.

Half a dozen members of a group of more than 100 Muslims from Austria had started praying among the marble columns and coloured arches of the vast building when security guards ordered them to stop.

“They provoked in a pre-planned fashion what was a deplorable episode of violence,” the bishop’s office said in a statement.

Guardian, 2 April 2010

See also the Times, 2 April 2010

Poll shows support for ‘burka’ ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

More than half of voters in four other major European states back a push by France’s Nicolas Sarkozy to ban women from wearing the burka, according to an opinion poll for the Financial Times.

As Mr Sarkozy presses ahead with plans to ban the wearing of the burka in public places, the FT’s latest Harris poll shows the move is not just strongly supported in France, but wins enthusiastic backing in the UK, Italy, Spain and Germany.

The poll shows some 70 per cent of respondents in France said they supported plans to forbid the wearing of the garment which covers the female body from head to toe. There was similar sentiment in Spain and Italy, where 65 per cent and 63 per cent respectively favoured a ban.

The strength of feeling in the UK and Germany may seem particularly surprising. Britain has a strong liberal tradition that respects an individual’s right to full expression of religious views. But here, some 57 per cent of people still favoured a ban. In Germany, which is also reluctant to clamp down on minority rights, some 50 per cent favoured a ban.

“This poll shows that the number of people in France opposed to the burka is going up and that is the product of debate on burka and national identity,” said Professor Patrick Weil, an expert on national identity at the University of Paris-Sorbonne. “But the figure is clearly going up in other countries in Europe like the UK as well, and that reflects the growing concern that there is about this issue in some parts of Europe.”

In the US, concerns about the issue are far less strong than in Europe. Just 33 per cent of Americans surveyed by Harris supported a ban, a far lower figure than the 44 per cent who said they supported it.

In Europe, while opposition to the burka was strong, few respondents said they were prepared to support the ban as part of a wider drive towards secularism in their country. Asked if they would support the burka ban if it were accompanied by a clampdown on wearing all religious icons such as the Christian crucifix and the Jewish cappel, only 22 per cent of French people said they supported such a move. In Britain, just 9 per cent of people said they would back such a move.

Financial Times, 1 March 2010

Muslim lawyer ordered not to wear headscarf at Spanish court

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Spanish female lawyer has filed a complaint against a judge who ordered her to leave the courtroom because she was wearing the Muslim headscarf, press reports said Wednesday.

Moroccan-born Zoubida Barik Edidi, 39, was assisting a colleague at a trial related to Islamist terrorism at the National Court on October 29, when judge Javier Gomez Bermudez told her she could not stay in the room because of the headscarf she was wearing with her gown. Barik replied she had been to other trials with her scarf on. “I am the one who gives orders here,” Gomez Bermudez answered.

Barik has filed a complaint at the judges’ organ CGPJ, accusing Gomez Bermudez of discrimination and abuse of power, and arguing that Spanish law did not prohibit lawyers from covering their heads.

Earth Times, 11 November 2009