Category Archives: Women

St. Paul police now allow employees to wear hijab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Kadra MohamedSt. Paul, Minn. — The St. Paul Police Department is now allowing employees to wear a police-issued hijab headscarf, according to an announcement Saturday.

St. Paul Police Chief Thomas Smith said he knows of only one other department in Washington, D.C., that allows the hijab in the United States, according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Cities in Canada and Great Britain allow Muslim officers to wear police-issued hijabs while in uniform, according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

The St. Paul announcement comes in tandem with the recent hiring of their first Somali woman, Kadra Mohamed. She serves as a Community Liaison Officer. Although the Twin Cities has the nation’s largest Somali-American population, Garaad Sahal was St. Paul’s first and remains the only sworn Somali-American police officer, joining in late 2012.

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FIFA lifts ban on head covers

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Football’s world governing body FIFA has authorised the wearing of head covers for religious purposes during matches.

That will allow female Muslim players who wear a hijab in everyday life to cover their heads during matches as well. FIFA added that male players will also be authorised to do so following a request from the Sikh community in Canada.

“It was decided that female players can cover their heads to play,” said FIFA Secretary-General Jerome Valcke at a meeting of the International Football Association Board (IFAB), the sport’s lawmakers, in Zurich.

“It was decided that male players can play with head cover too,” he said, although they will not be the same as those worn day to day. “It will be a basic head cover and the colour should be the same as the team jersey.”

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Conservative MP calls for public veil ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslim women should not be allowed to cover their faces in public as there is no formal requirement in their religion, a Conservative MP suggested today. Philip Hollobone was putting forward a Bill seeking to prohibit the wearing of face coverings, in particular the Muslim veil and balaclavas.

Presenting his Face Coverings (Prohibition) Bill, the Kettering MP expressed regret that his campaign had “come to this”. Speaking during the Bill’s Second Reading, he said: “But there’s growing concern amongst my constituents and across the country about the increasing number of people who are going about in public places covering their faces and this is causing alarm and distress to many people in our country.” Mr Hollobone told the Commons that he had received correspondence from alarmed Britons from across the country, “who are concerned that in this respect we are heading in the wrong direction as a nation”.

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Belgian Jewish organisation condemns ‘obsession with the Muslim headscarf’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

CEJI logoCEJI: “Obsession with headscarf works negatively on the integration of Muslim women”

Brussels, 26 February 2014.
CEJI – A Jewish Contribution to an Inclusive Europe is deeply troubled by escalating racism and racial tensions in Belgium, highlighted in reports issued this week by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) (1) and by the Center for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism submitted to the United Nations Committee on Racial Discrimination (CERD) (2).

CEJI is deeply concerned about the division within the Belgian anti-racism movement today on the Muslim headscarf. CEJI believes strongly in the fundamental right of religious freedom and sees more harm than good coming out of this obsession with the Muslim headscarf. Not only has this obsession had negative consequences on the integration of Muslim women in the education and employment system of Belgium, but it also has had a serious impact on the freedom of Jews, Sikhs, Hindus and even Christians to wear religio-cultural dress and symbols. Neutrality is defined only by what is considered an acceptable norm, and we are challenged to re-consider how to make our public space effectively inclusive. Social coercion to wear or not to wear the headscarf is counterproductive to the goal of women’s emancipation.

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French firm bans Muslim headscarves at work

Posted on by Bob Pitt

PaprecA privately-owned French company claims to have become the first in the country to ban the wearing of Muslim headscarves and other prominent religious symbols at work. But critics say the move, which had the backing of employees, is against the law.

From Tuesday onward the 4,000 workers at recycling company Paprec, based in the Parisian suburbs will no longer be allowed to demonstrate their religious faith by wearing items like the Yarmulke/Kippah (the Jewish skullcap), Christian crosses and Muslim head or face covers.

Paprec’s CEO Jean-Luc Petithuguenin said he set the new rules, which he claims are the first of their kind, after four months of negotiations with representatives of the company’s employees. The result was an eight-article agreement that follows closely the principles already laid in French secular laws.

“I am applying the same model that prevails in the public sphere, only I am applying it to a company,” Petithuguenin told AFP. “I am applying the founding principles of the French republic.”

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Huge turnout in Plovdiv for protest against Muslim court claims on property

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Plovdiv demonstration 7.2.14. (2)pngMore than 1000 people from all over Bulgaria, most of them from football clubs, took part in a protest in Plovdiv against claims lodged in court on municipal property by the office of the Chief Mufti, spiritual leader of Bulgaria’s Muslims.

The claims were lodged on the basis of changes to the Religious Denominations Act. The amendments to the law extended rights to all recognised religious groups in Bulgaria to lodge such claims, a matter that has caused controversy in towns such as Karlovo where the Chief Mufti’s office lodged claims to a historic mosque building and adjoining real estate.

Emotion in Karlovo has been generated around the fact of the town’s place as the birthplace of Vassil Levski, a Bulgarian national hero for his struggle against Ottoman rule, which cost him his life. Local media said that during the protest, the court building in Bulgaria’s second city was “besieged” by the protesters while traffic in one of Plovdiv’s main boulevards was blocked and traffic police had to seal off two other roads in the city.

Protesters held posters reading, among other things, “Bulgarian land – we will not give away a single stone”, “If we lose control of Bulgaria, we lose everything”, “Stop the Islamicisation of Bulgaria” and “Down with the MRF”, the last being a reference to the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, a party led and supported mainly by Bulgarians of ethnic Turkish descent and the Muslim faith and also a party in the country’s current ruling axis.

Reporters in Plovdiv quoted protest organiser Elena Vatashka as saying that it was “unacceptable that a country like Bulgaria, a member state of the European Union, could allow the Chief Mufti to own land. The court should take account of public opinion but not of political parties, she said.

During the protest, a woman was seen wearing a headscarf was pursued by part of the crowd. She managed to find refuge by hiding in an art gallery, reports said.

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Staffing agency says no job for teenager ‘if she wears a headscarf’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

All-In adAn 18-year-old girl who applied for a job at Roosendaal staffing agency All-In was shocked to be told she could not work there if she wore a headscarf.

The girl, named by free newspaper Spits as Leila, had not worn a headscarf to the interview but had done so during a previous internship. All-In asked her about this and added “we are a Dutch company and are allowed to make demands.”

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Quebec’s politicians present spineless spectacle over ‘charter of values’ debate

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Liberal leader Philippe Couillard migrated from saying the Charter was unnecessary and would pass “over my dead body” all the way to stipulating what “must be included in the Charter” in order to “affirm [the] values of the host society.” (For some reason this includes a ban on public sector workers wearing niqabs and burkas because they cover the face, and chadors despite the fact they don’t.) Coalition Avenir Québec leader François Legault’s “moderate” compromise proposal would still ban teachers from wearing religious symbols. The hard-left Québec Solidaire is the acme of tolerance, drawing the line on such restrictions at judges and police officers — but it only has two MNAs and 8% support in the latest Léger Marketing poll, published Jan. 20. (After QS MNA Amir Khadir was recently photographed in discussion with Muslims wearing hijabs, the pro-labour, pro-sovereignty, pro-charter group SPQ Libre stridently accused him of cuddling up to fundamentalists.)

Chris Selley argues that even if the Parti Québécois gets its way and manages to impose the so-called secularism charter it may well face defiance over the actual implementation of the proposed bans. In the meantime, rival political parties of left and right have demonstrated a spineless failure to take a stand against the PQ on this issue.

National Post, 7 February 2014

New Jersey woman says bosses ordered her to remove hijab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An Elmwood Park woman claims she faced religious discrimination at her job at a Saddle Brook factory when her bosses ordered her to remove her hijab, or head scarf.

Naima Mnasri, who is Muslim, filed a complaint late in January with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Mnasri said she was ordered to remove her hijab at her second day of work on Jan. 17 while she was awaiting her day’s assignment at Paradigm Packaging, which makes plastic bottles for vitamins and medications.

In the complaint, she alleged that a supervisor and floor manager “singled her out” and told her she had to remove the head scarf to work there, both for safety reasons and because no religious symbols were permitted at the factory. Mnasri contested that the hijab, which covers her head, neck and chest, was part of her religious observance and that she had the right under the law to wear one. She left the job that day over the incident, she said.

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Florida girl attacked after wearing hijab to school

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Zahrah HabibullaA Florida girl said she has been verbally and physically assaulted because she wears a hijab, or head scarf, to school.

Zahrah Habibulla, 14, said she didn’t have problems at school with other children until she started wearing her hijab on Dec. 14. The Polk County teen said she wears the hijab for religious reasons. “I’ve been bullied in school,” she said. “I had verbal assaults, physical assaults.”

Each time the teen was attacked, she told her mother, who then called the principal of Ridge Community High School. Zahrah’s parents told WESH 2 News in an exclusive interview that they want something done before their daughter is hurt. “It breaks my heart. I don’t want to see that,” said Zameena Habibulla. “I’m hoping for a safer school for her. Every day she goes to school I’ve got fear.”

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