Category Archives: State Oppression

French court annuls fine for driver in Muslim veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Lies Hebbadj, Sandrine MouleresNANTES, France — A French court has annulled a fine given to a woman driver wearing an Islamic face veil, months before a ban on wearing the garments goes into effect.

Traffic police in the city of Nantes fined 31-year-old Sandrine Mouleres €22  in April, saying she did not have a clear field of vision, but the court quashed the fine Monday.

Jean-Michel Pollono, Mouleres’ attorney, said the court in Nantes had ruled “we are in a free country, and as a result, everything that isn’t forbidden is allowed.”

The initial fine drew widespread attention amid a nationwide debate over the place of Islamic veils. In September, the French parliament agreed to a ban on face-covering veils – such as the niqab or burqa – from being worn in public. The ban goes into effect in spring.

Associated Press, 13 December 2010

Catalan town becomes first in Spain to ban veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

LleidaA northern Spanish town brought into force Thursday a ban on Islamic face-covering veils in municipal buildings, the first such decree in the country.

The town of Lleida, population 120,000, approved in July a municipal ban on body-covering burqas or face-covering niqab garments at about 130 locations, ranging from civic centres to swimming pools. The law, implemented Thursday, was the first of its kind in Spain, where face-covering Islamic garments are seldom seen despite a sharp rise in immigration from Muslim countries over the past decade.

“I believe the burqa and the hijab, as well as similar garments that completely cover the face are an attack against equality between men and women, they are an attack against women’s dignity,” Lleida mayor Angel Ros said. “I believe also that equality is something which our society has fought several years for and there can be no reason, not religious, not cultural, that attacks this basic principle.”

The law prohibits 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.” Repeat offenders face fines of €600.

AFP, 9 December 2010

Switzerland: federal committee recommends burqa ban in schools, offices

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A government-appointed committee has supported a partial ban on the traditional Islamic burqa and the niqab. The Federal Commission on Women’s Issues calls for traditional full-face veils to be banned in government offices and in public schools. It is a move, the group says, to prevent gender discrimination. But the burqa is not alone in what the commission wants banned. WRS’s Alex Helmick asks Etiennette Verrey, president of the commission, whether women living in Switzerland should have the right to wear the burqa to work even if they work for the state.

WRS, 8 December 2010

California Muslims reported FBI provocateur … to the FBI

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An FBI informer sent to infiltrate a California mosque was made the subject of a restraining order after scaring Muslim worshippers with demands for holy war.

Craig Monteilh was known to members of the Irvine Islamic Center as Farouk al-Aziz, an apparently devout and at times over-zealous Muslim. But when he began speaking of jihad and plans to blow up buildings, senior figures at the mosque reported him the FBI – the very people who sent him. Now the FBI is facing criticism for its use of such stooges which have backfired in a number of cases.

Monteilh claims he was already working for the FBI when he was approached about infiltrating mosques and was told “Islam is a threat to our national security”. He agreed and became Farouk al-Aziz, code name Oracle, a French Syrian in search of his Islamic roots. He was trained by the FBI and claims he was told to infiltrate mosques in Orange County and two other counties.

Worshippers said that in Monteilh’s 10 months at the mosque, he became almost manic in his devotion, attending prayers five times a day but he was secretly recording conversations. However, when he began to tell Muslims he had access to weapons they became convinced he was a terrorist and ironically reported the informant to the FBI.

Daily Mail, 6 December 2010

See also “Mosque infiltration feeds Muslims’ distrust of FBI, Washington Post, 5 December 2010

Update:  And see Wajahat Ali, “Time for FBI to stop spying on American Muslims”, Comment is Free, 7 December 2010

Colorado Muslim woman won’t remove headcarf for jail photo

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Muslim woman who refused to remove her headscarf for a Boulder County jail booking photo has been told she’ll have to explain her refusal to a judge.

Maria Hardman, 19, of Boulder, who says she converted to Islam three years ago, pleaded guilty to an alcohol violation and was sentenced to two days in jail plus community service.

She told the Boulder Daily Camera on Friday that removing her headscarf for the photo would violate her beliefs because the Quran calls for Muslim women to wear the scarf except in the company of close family.

A police report said Hardman’s blood-alcohol level was 0.19, more than twice the legal limit, after she crashed her motor-scooter in August. Alcohol consumption is generally considered to be banned by Islam. Hardman said she drank punch provided at a party without knowing it contained alcohol. She said she left after she found out.

Hardman said she was told to remove the scarf for the photo Wednesday, when she reported to the jail to do paperwork in preparation for a two-day work crew as part of her sentence.

She said her attorney spent three hours trying to persuade officials to let her wear the scarf for the photo. She said jail officials eventually allowed her to leave without taking her photo, but it’s not clear whether she began serving her sentence.

Larry Hank, who oversees the jail, said Hardman will have to explain her refusal to the judge in her case and that jail officials are preparing a motion to explain their reasoning.

The newspaper reported Hardman’s attorney is also working on a motion. No hearing has been scheduled.

Associated Press, 4 December 2010

Update:  See “Student Voice: ‘I am a Muslim and I love this country'”, Colorado Daily, 6 December 2010

Judge issues permanent injunction on Oklahoma Sharia law ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A federal judge in Oklahoma has issued an order putting on hold the certification of a ballot measure that forbids state courts from considering or using international laws, as well as Sharia, or Islamic law. That permanent injunction will allow the judge more time to consider the constitutional issues raised by State Question 755, which was approved by voters earlier this month.

Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange had earlier issued a temporary restraining order in favor of the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which had sued to nullify the law completely.

“While the public has an interest in the will of the voters being carried out,” wrote the judge in Monday’s order, “the court finds that the public has a more profound and long-term interest in upholding an individual’s constitutional rights.”

The language of her 15-page order indicated Miles-LaGrange has initial doubts about the constitutionality of the ballot measure. She said the case goes “to the very foundation of our country, our Constitution, and particularly the Bill of Rights. Throughout the course of our country’s history, the will of the ‘majority’ has on occasion conflicted with the constitutional rights of individuals.”

CNN, 29 November 2010

Preston: anti-fascists angry at police handling of racist protest

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Socialist Worker reports that anti-fascists in Preston are complaining that police intervention has allowed the English Defence League to hold its anti-Muslim demonstration in the Flag Market in the centre of the town, close to where the majority of Preston’s Asian community live, and despite Unite Against Fascism having already booked that area for its own anti-EDL protest. Socialist Worker earlier reported that police told Preston councillors that the EDL is a peaceful, non-racist organisation and that the real threat of public disorder came from UAF.

Secularism treats faiths unequally, Canadian conference told

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bill 94 protestSecularism penalizes practitioners of some religions more than others, a conference on a bill to ban the niqab face veil from schools, hospitals and government offices was told yesterday.

“It works best with Protestantism. It’s a little more awkward with Catholicism. It’s quite a poor fit with Judaism and Islam,” Wendy Brown, Heller Professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley, said at the meeting at Concordia University. It was organized by the Centre de recherches interdisciplinaires sur la diversite au Quebec, a non-profit research institute.

Secularism is based on the belief that the state should be neutral toward different religions. But in fact, it favours those whose cultural heritage is Christian, she said. “All religions don’t comport equally well with that model. Muslims who might consider themselves secular are not perceived as such simply because of the clothing they wear or the fact that they might pray in public. If a Christian were to do that, we might think of them as a zealot,” Brown added.

She was among academics from the U.S., Belgium, France and local universities at the conference on Bill 94, which will require citizens to uncover their faces when giving or receiving government services, whether in hospitals, schools, day-care centres, universities, social services or government offices.

Brown added that it is a mistake to equate secularism and women’s equality. In a presentation yesterday, she contrasted fashion photographs of four-inch heels with images of modestly clad Muslim women to cast doubt on the assumption that western women enjoy greater freedom from male influence. “Much of the debate about burqa and hijab casts us as free, equal, and emancipated and them as un-free, unequal, and living by the rule of religion, and that’s nonsense,” Brown said.

Montreal Gazette, 20 November 2010