Category Archives: State Oppression

Quebec federation of nurses’ unions backs repressive ‘charter of values’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

FIQThe federation of Quebec nurses’ unions (FIQ) says it will support the province’s proposed secular charter, if it’s passed.

The federation, made up of 60 unions representing nurses and other health-care professionals, based its support on the results of a telephone survey it conducted with its members. “Our responsibility was to see what they were thinking about it, and you see the result today that a very high majority is supporting the charter,” said Michèle Boisclair, vice-president at the FIQ.

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‘I am a Muslim, not a terrorist’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The long-awaited report from the UK Government’s Extremism Taskforce was published yesterday. It contains key recommendations regarding online extremism and countering institutions whereby people can become vulnerable to radicalisation. The recommendations include new ASBO-like Terror and Extremist Behaviour Orders: methods that aim to cause shock, rather than help eradicate the real causes of extremism. And with the report referencing previous discredited strategies, it risks further stigmatising Muslim communities.”

Imran Awan, deputy director of the Centre for Applied Criminology at Birmingham City University, and co-author of the study Extremism, Counter-terrorism and Policing, writes at Open Democracy, 5 December 2014

Signs of revolt mount as French universities reject secular charter

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Université de MontréalQuebec’s largest university is panning the province’s secular charter as a useless measure, adding to signs of a growing revolt against the Parti Québécois’s controversial bill.

The French-language University of Montreal is challenging the very basis of the government’s argument for its legislation. When the minister responsible for the charter, Bernard Drainville, introduced it in September, he said it was meant to address a “crisis” over religious accommodations that had festered for years and created tensions in Quebec.

The U of M searched its human-resources files going back 20 years and found no incidents whatsoever involving conflicts over religious accommodations. Whatever minor incidents occurred were quickly settled by applying the university’s internal rules, a spokesman said.

The university decided at a meeting of faculty, student representatives and administrators on Monday that the government’s legislation serves no purpose.

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Trial begins in legal challenge to no-fly list

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Rahinah Ibrahim (2)An eight-year legal odyssey by a Malaysian university professor to clear her name from the U.S. government’s no-fly list went to trial Monday in federal court in San Francisco.

Rahinah Ibrahim claims she was mistakenly placed on the list because of her national origin and Muslim faith. She has fought in court since her arrest at San Francisco International Airport in January 2005 to clear her name.

Several similar lawsuits are pending across the nation, but Ibrahim’s legal challenge appears to be the first to go to trial.

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French veil law: Muslim woman’s challenge in Strasbourg

Posted on by Bob Pitt

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.

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Quebec profs don hijab in Muslim solidarity

Posted on by Bob Pitt

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.

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So much for a calm, respectful debate on the values charter

Posted on by Bob Pitt

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.

Montreal Gazette, 25 November 2013

French veil ban before Europe rights court

Posted on by Bob Pitt

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.

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Lib Dem parliamentary candidate calls for niqab ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Lennon Nawaz and CarrollFresh from assisting the former (but entirely unreformed) English Defence League leader Stephen Lennon to carry out a cynical rebranding exercise, and then joining his protégé in spreading inflammatory anti-Muslim rumours, Quilliam’s Maajid Nawaz has now taken up the battle against the niqab.

In an article for the Daily Mail‘s RightMinds blog, Nawaz declares: “It’s time we tackled head on the genuine security concerns and social consequences of face-veiling in modern Britain.” The Mail, of course, is notorious for its PC-inspired reluctance to address that issue.

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