“It is now a year since the French government implemented a ban on the wearing of face coverings in public spaces, aimed at women who wear the full-face veil, popularly and incorrectly referred to as the ‘burqa’. Advocates of the ban argued it would protect gender equality and help maintain public order. A year later, it has done neither.” Hélène Irving reports.
Category Archives: State Oppression
299 women reported under veil ban law says French interior ministry
One year after France introduced a law banning women from wearing full-face veils in public, officials report that around 300 have been fined reported.
The ban on wearing the niqab in any public place was introduced on April 11th 2011. It is illegal for any woman to wear the veil except when they are at home, worshipping in a religious place or travelling as a passenger in a private car. Wearing the veil can lead to a fine of €150 ($200) and forced attendance at a citizenship class.
Interior ministry officials reported that “in one year there have been 354 police checks and 299 fines issued reports made,” reported Le Parisien newspaper.
How the US justice system treats ‘radical’ Muslims
Prosecutors call Tarek Mehanna a dangerous radical, but he says he’s being punished for not turning into an FBI informant.
Sheikh Raed Salah wins appeal, immigration tribunal rules that deportation order was ‘entirely unnecessary’
Demonstration outside Royal Courts of Justice in support of Raed Salah last July
Sheikh Raed Salah, the leader of the Islamic Movement in Israel, has won an appeal against his deportation from Britain, according to the group that invited him to the country.
Mark Ockelton, the vice-president of the UK’s Upper Immigration Tribunal, ruled that the government’s decision to deport Salah “appears to have been entirely unnecessary”, and upheld his deportation appeal, a statement from the Middle East Monitor (MEMO) said on Saturday.
UOIF Le Bourget congress underway amid fears of anti-Muslim backlash
Hundreds of Muslims began a four day Islamic congress in Paris on Friday, as fears grew of a religious backlash following the Toulouse killings.
More than 200 organisations from all over France are taking part in the four-day event which comes just weeks after Al Qaeda-inspired gunman Mohamed Merah shot dead seven people.
Many think the tragedy has led to French Muslims being marginalised further and feel there is a need to reassure the wider French community. 22-year-old Sara Taharaoui from a south-eastern Paris suburb said: “The whole Muslim community condemns what happened with Mereh. Terrorism isn’t part of the Islamic religion and we are here to condemn his acts.”
Some Muslims said they felt increased scrutiny after the French government decided to ban several foreign Muslim clerics from entering France. The men were due to give speeches at the conference.
Some political analysts think President Nicolas Sarkozy is playing up fears ahead of first-round leadership elections in a fortnight. Many think he’s not done enough to distinguish between the radical few and the mainstream Muslim community.
Babar Ahmad should be freed now
Yusuf Smith comments on the BBC Newsnight interview with Babar Ahmad.
French Muslim women defy veil ban
The Toronto Star reports.
French government bans four speakers from attending UOIF conference, ‘regrets’ invitation to Tariq Ramadan
France said Thursday it had banned four Muslim preachers from entering the country to attend an Islamic conference, saying their “calls for hatred and violence seriously damage republican principles”.
France also “regrets” that Swiss intellectual Tariq Ramadan has been invited to the meeting of the Union of Islamic Organizations in France (UOIF), a statement from Foreign Minister Alain Juppe and Interior Minister Claude Gueant said.
Akrima Sabri, Ayed Bin Abdallah al-Qarni, Safwat al-Hijazi and Abdallah Basfar are banned from entering France, while Qatari preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Mahmud al-Masri “decided not to come”, it said.
FBI Islamic training materials gave OK to infringe on targets’ civil rights
Training materials used by the FBI for dealing with American Muslims and other Islamic communities have advised agents they can break the law and impinge on some of their targets’ civil rights.
The instructions were contained in confidential materials reviewed by the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of an internal FBI probe into what sort of training agents were exposed to when dealing with Islam.
FOIA documents show FBI using ‘Mosque Outreach’ for intelligence gathering
For several years, the FBI’s San Francisco office conducted a “Mosque Outreach” program through which it collected and illegally stored intelligence about American Muslims’ First Amendment-protected beliefs and religious practices, according to government documents released today by the American Civil Liberties Union from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the ACLU of Northern California, Asian Law Caucus and the San Francisco Bay Guardian.
The San Francisco FBI’s own documents show that it recorded Muslim religious leaders’ and congregants’ identities, personal information and religious views and practices. The documents also show that the FBI labeled this information as “positive intelligence” and disseminated it to other government agencies, placing the people and organizations involved at risk of greater law enforcement scrutiny as potential national security threats. None of the documents indicate that the FBI told individuals interviewed that their information and views were being collected as intelligence and would be recorded and disseminated.