Category Archives: State Oppression

Norwegian court rules hijab ban illegal

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Norwegian administrative court on Friday said a ban on police women wearing the Islamic headscarf was illegal, in response to a government refusal in 2009 to allow officers to don the hijab.

The Norwegian Equality Tribunal said in a non-binding opinion that the ban ran counter to the country’s freedom of religion and anti-discrimination laws by depriving a whole category of women from access to the police profession.

“The official objective is for the police to mirror Norwegian society as a whole,” the tribunal wrote in its ruling. “The society is multi-cultural and diverse, and the police should also illustrate this diversity, precisely to allow it to maintain trust at large” among the population, it added.

After a Muslim woman said she wanted to become a police officer, but did not want to remove her hijab, Norway’s centre-left government last year first approved a police decision to allow its female officers to wear the Islamic headscarf.

However, the ruling coalition quickly backtracked after the decision sparked outrage and charges from the largest member of the opposition, the far-right Progress Party, that it was allowing the “gradual Islamisation” of the country.

The justice ministry, which theoretically can choose to ignore the ruling, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

AFP, 20 August 2010

Germany: FDP politician calls for ban on veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The liberal parliamentarian Serkan Toeren has demanded a ban on the burqa in Germany. Toeren, who represents the Free Democratic Party (FDP) in the Bundestag, says it was time to have an open debate on the issue. Toeren, whose constituency is in Lower Saxony, said the full body covering worn by some Muslim women, obscuring the face, posed a threat to public security, and undermined the individuals.

“Wearing a full-body veil like the burqa is a breach of human dignity.” Toeren told the German daily Leipziger Volkszeitung. Women who choose to wear the burqa voluntarily cannot be accepted either, because individuals cannot control human dignity.”

According to Toeren, the burqa robs women of their dignity and freedom: “It is supposed to make women more or less invisible, and not present. The burqa is a mobile women’s prison.”

The FDP spokesman for integration, who is of Turkish origin, does not accept religious reasons as justification for wearing the full-body veil. “The burqa is not a religious, but rather a political symbol against our state order and a means of suppressing women,” said Toeren.

Deutsche Welle, 20 August 2010

MP pleased that women who wore niqab have gone

Posted on by Bob Pitt

MP Philip Hollobone says he is pleased that the only two women in Kettering who wear burkas have left.

Inam Khan, chairman of Kettering Muslim Association, said the two women, whose husbands were doctors at Kettering General Hospital, left the town shortly after Mr Hollobone first criticised the burka in February.

The Kettering MP, who is trying to change the law to ban the burka, which some Muslim women wear to cover their face, said: “I’m pleased to hear that. Wearing the full face veil is inappropriate. To hear that no-one in the town is wearing one is a sign of an integrated society.”

Despite having no constituents who wear one, Mr Hollobone has tabled a private members bill in the House of Commons calling for the burka to be banned.

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Bethpage, New York: officials say mosque closure was politically motivated

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Officials at a mosque on Long Island that was shut down on the eve of Ramadan say they are the victims of fallout from the recent Ground Zero mosque controversy.

The Masjid Al-Baqi has occupied a building at 320 Central Avenue in Bethpage for the past 12 years but last week, it was forced to close after inspectors from the Town of Oyster Bay appeared to do a surprise inspection.

“First and foremost there was no certificate of occupancy,” said Deputy Town Supervisor Leonard Genova. “Then there were plumbing issues and a gas leak. It’s our responsibility as a town to make sure people are protected from such hazardous conditions.”

Genova said they inspected the mosque after receiving more than a hundred emails and letters from Bethpage residents voicing their concerns about a second proposed mosque at 600 Broadway, the site of a former Jewish community center. Some of those residents also asked the town to inspect the Masjid Al-Baqi.

“With all that’s going on the world there’s a heightened sensitivity to this issue,” said Genova. “Once we found the violations though, we had to make sure they were adequately addressed.”

Town officials said this is not a question of “politics” but the need to protect congregants from unsafe conditions.

Mosque officials though question the timing. They showed News 4 New York documents that indicate they had been working with the town since April 2008 to change their certificate of occupancy. The building has a CO but from the days when it was a pizza restaurant, not a place of worship.

“There is no question this is a political issue,” said Syed Quadri, secretary of the mosque. “If the conditions are so poor, why did they not close it down twelve years ago?”

“Unfortunately, the controversy over the Ground Zero mosque has affected my client,” said Steven Morelli, an attorney for the mosque. “They are members of our community they have the same right to pray as we all do. That is a basic Constitutional right.”

Morelli is prepared to file a discrimination suit against the Town of Oyster Bay if the mosque is not re-opened soon. Meanwhile, during the holiest month in Islam, congregants of this Bethpage mosque are without a spiritual home.

“We just go there stand in the parking lot and stare at the building,” said Quadri. “We hope we can re-open and hope we’ll be able to pray.”

NBC, 18 August 2010

Australia: judge orders witness to remove niqab in court

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An Australian judge has ruled that a Muslim woman must remove her full veil while giving evidence before a jury in a fraud case. The judge in Perth said she did not consider it appropriate that the witness appear with her face covered.

The prosecution said the woman – identified only as Tasneem – would feel uncomfortable without her niqab, which would affect her evidence. But the defence said the jury should be able to watch her facial expressions. The 36-year-old woman’s wish to wear the veil was a “preference”, said defence lawyer Mark Trowell QC and was “not an essential part of the Islamic faith”.

The woman is a witness in a case against the head of an Islamic school accused of gaining work funding by inflating student numbers. She has lived in Australia for seven years and has worn the niqab since the age of 17, only removing it in front of her family and male blood relatives.

BBC News, 19 August 2010

Catalan mayor closes ‘too popular’ mosque, tells Muslims to ‘pray at home’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Spanish mayor has told Muslim worshippers to “pray at home” and closed the town’s mosque because it was too popular. Angel Ros, the socialist mayor of Lleida, in the northeastern region of Catalonia, complained that the mosque was too full and closed it on Wednesday until further notice.

The building, a former garage used to service trucks, was often filled with crowds exceeding a thousand people, the council said, when the authorised limit for the venue is 240. A new mosque is under construction on the outskirts of the town but work had been stalled because of a lack of financing during the economic crisis.

“The municipality has no obligation to provide places of worship,” Mr Ros said in response to complaints from the town’s Muslim population over the closure. “Those that wish can pray at home, as I do,” he added.

The move follows a recent ban on women wearing the burka or niqab in municipal building in the Catalan town. In June Lleida was the first town council in Spain to introduce a ban, which has since been adopted by half a dozen other councils, including Barcelona, the capital of the region.

Abdelwahab Houzi, the local imam, said the mosque closure had added to the Muslim community’s sense of “persecution” by authorities.

Daily Telegraph, 23 July 2010

Spanish parliament rejects total ban on veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Parliament MadridSpain’s Parliament on Tuesday rejected a proposal to ban women from wearing in public places Islamic veils that reveal only the eyes.

However, the Socialist government has said it favors including a ban on people wearing burqas in government buildings in an upcoming bill on religious issues to be debated after parliament’s summer vacation break.

Following a lower chamber debate, 183 lawmakers opposed the ban, 162 voted for it and two abstained.

The nonbinding proposal had been put forward by the leading opposition Popular Party, which portrayed it as a measure in support of women’s rights. The ruling Socialist Party opposed the ban.

“It is very difficult to understand how it is that our troops are defending liberty in Afghanistan and the government doesn’t have the courage to do so here, in Spain,” said opposition spokeswoman Soraya Saenz de Santamaria in Parliament.

Some analysts had interpreted the proposal as an opposition ploy to build their party’s strength amid the economic turmoil and dismal growth prospects that have dogged the government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

None of the opposition spokesmen consulted had been able to cite a place in Spain where women routinely wear face-covering veils.

“This has been used politically in a search for electoral support,” said Mansur Escudero, president of the Islamic Commission of Spain. He said he last saw a woman wearing a burqa in Spain 10 years ago in the southern city of Marbella, where Saudi Arabia’s royal family and other wealthy Arab clans own large homes and estates.

Escudero said the woman could have been a tourist. The only woman he knew who regularly wore a burqa had lived in the southern city of Cordoba and died about a decade ago.

Associated Press, 21 July 2010

Immigration minister opposes ban on veil – Toby Young not happy

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Toby_YoungIn an interview with the Sunday Telegraph immigration minister Damian Green is quoted as saying:

“I stand personally on the feeling that telling people what they can and can’t wear, if they’re just walking down the street, is a rather un-British thing to do. We’re a tolerant and mutually respectful society.

“There are times, clearly, when you’ve got to be able to identify yourself, and people have got to be able to see your face, but I think it’s very unlikely and it would be undesirable for the British Parliament to try and pass a law dictating what people wore.

“I think very few women in France actually wear the burka. They [the French parliament] are doing it for demonstration effects.”

Elsewhere in the Telegraph, under the headline “By refusing to ban the burka, Damian Green is supporting the humiliation of millions of British women”, Toby Young informs his readers that “the burka is both a symbol and a source of the oppression of Muslim women”.

According to Young: “Few people can be in any doubt that Islam is a deeply misogynistic religion.” As for wearing the veil, according to Young “for most Muslim women it is not a free choice but something they’re forced to do by their fathers or brothers or husbands – and the consequences of disobeying can be a beating or worse”.

To which we can only respond: Few people can be in any doubt that Toby Young is a deeply ignorant bigot.

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Spanish parliament to debate veil ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Spanish lawmakers will debate barring burqas in public, joining other European countries considering similar moves on the grounds that the body-covering garments are degrading to women, the leading opposition party said Sunday.

Top officials of the ruling Socialist Party have indicated they will support the proposal by the opposition Popular Party, making a ban likely unless the country’s highest court rules it unconstitutional.

A debate in Spain’s lower house has been set by the Popular Party for Tuesday or Wednesday, the party said. No vote will be scheduled until after the debate, and Spain’s Parliament usually goes on vacation for a month starting in late July or early August.

Head-covering veils would not be included in a ban as they form a part of traditional Spanish dress, with women often covering their heads with a garment called a mantilla, especially during church services in the south of the country.

Spain has about 1 million Muslims in the nation of 47 million, with most living in the northeastern region of Catalonia and the southern region Andalucia. However, burqas are rarely seen.

Associated Press, 18 July 2010

See also Press Association, 18 July 2010

67 per cent support veil ban in UK

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Two thirds of British people would support a ban on Muslim women wearing face-covering veils in public similar to the one approved by French lawmakers this week, a poll found Friday

An online survey of 2,205 adults for Five News television found 67 percent of respondents agreed that the burkha – the full-face veil – should be banned. That figure rose to 80 percent among people aged over 55.

The YouGov poll was carried out between Wednesday and Friday, after France’s lower house of parliament voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to ban full Islamic veils in public spaces.

A Harris poll for the Financial Times in March revealed Britons were among the most tolerant in Europe towards the Islamic veil, with just 57 percent backing a ban, compared to 70 percent in France and 65 percent in Spain.

AFP, 16 July 2010