Category Archives: Women

Ghent: Socialists and Greens overturn hijab ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Belgian city of Ghent has scrapped its ban on civil servants wearing headscarves after its Socialist and Green majority overturned a measure imposed in 2007 when center-right parties dominated the city council.

More than 10,000 adult citizens, or about five times the number required to call the vote, had signed a petition calling for the prohibition to be lifted.

After a four-hour debate lasting almost until midnight on Monday, 29 of the city council’s 51 members voted to rescind the ban on the wearing of religious or political symbols for city officials dealing with the public.

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Study finds Muslim women wearing headscarfs face job discrimination

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In a study, Assistant Professor Sonia Ghumman from the UH Mānoa Shidler College of Business found that Hijabis (Muslim women who wear headscarfs) encountered discrimination when seeking employment.

“We conducted a field experiment to investigate the extent to which individuals wearing religious attire encounter discrimination during the hiring process,” said Ghumman. “We asked students (ages 19-22) from several ethnic backgrounds to seek employment with and without the hijab (headscarf) at retail stores and restaurants in two shopping malls. The malls were located primarily in middle-income cities in the Midwest. The job seekers were paired with an observer and yielded a total of 112 trials.”

The study measured: 1) formal discrimination, marked by explicit negative behaviors such as outright refusal; 2) interpersonal discrimination, a more subtle expression of discrimination both in nonverbal and verbal behaviors; and 3) expectations to receive job offers.

According to Ghumman, the findings revealed that wearing a hijab had a negative impact in all aspects of the hiring process compared to Muslim women who did not wear a hijab. The field experiment tracked several areas of the hiring process, including the permission to complete job applications, job availability, job call backs, interaction time, and perceived negativity and lack of interest by the employer.

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa news report, 23 May 2013

PQ delays introduction of Charter of Secularism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Parti Quebecois government, already involved in a political battle to toughen the province’s language law, has placed another emotionally charged identity issue on the back burner.

The government has delayed its plan to set limits on religious accommodations until the fall and even begun referring to it in less contentious terms.

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Novelist sees nothing wrong with gender discrimination when the victim is a Muslim woman

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Zionist lobby suffered a humiliating setback recently when an Employment Tribunal case brought by pro-Israel activist Ronnie Fraser, who complained that he had been subjected to discrimination by the University and College Union, was comprehensively rejected by the tribunal.

In Friday’s Independent one of the witnesses to who gave evidence in support of Fraser, novelist Howard Jacobson, attacked the tribunal judge Anthony Snelson for dismissing the charge that the UCU was institutionally antisemitic because it opposed Israeli oppression of the Palestinians. Not content with implying that Snelson is biased against Jews, Jacobson also suggested that the judge is inclined to rule in favour of Muslims (in Jacobson’s mind there is evidently a clear link between the two).

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Gene Simmons calls Muslims ‘vile’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Gene SimmonsLegendary rock legend Gene Simmons sparked outrage in Australia earlier this month when he made anti-Muslim comments on a Melbourne radio station.

“This is a vile culture and if you think for a second that it’s willing to just live in the sands of God’s armpit, you’ve got another thing coming,” the Israeli-born musician said on Melbourne’s 3AW radio.

“They want to come and live right where you live and they think that you’re evil. Extremism believes that it’s okay to strap bombs onto your children and send them to paradise and whatever else and to behead people,” he continued.

The Kiss bassist, who was in Australia on tour, continued on his anti-Muslim rant for over a minute stating that dogs were treated better than Muslim women, and insinuating that the West was under threat.

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Barking and Dagenham: Two attacks on Muslim women wearing hijab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Two Muslim women were attacked by strangers in parks, with both incidents being reported within days of each other.

A woman wearing a hijab veil in Greatfields Park in Barking was repeatedly punched in the head by two white women who branded her a “Muslim terrorist”.

It was one of two racially-motivated incidents reported last week to anti-Muslim attack support service Tell Mama, which is run by the charity Faith Matters.

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Islamophobia on the rise in France

Posted on by Bob Pitt

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfRXDDltCDQ

According to the Observatory of Islamophobia in France, the total number of registered cases has gone up by 28 percent in just one year.

The figures also show that the Internet has become the new battlefield. According to the Observatory, a rising number of hate mails are being circulated through internet, which describe Muslims as terrorists, extremists and a danger to other cultures.

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Queensland: CCTV of man who abused Muslim woman over hijab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bundaberg CCTV image

A city supermarket at the centre of a racially motivated verbal attack on an ethnic woman by another shopper has released CCTV footage of the confrontation.

The NewsMail ran a story in Saturday’s paper after speaking to Wendy Fay, who witnessed the woman being abused by a drunken man for wearing a scarf inside the Bundaberg Plaza Supa IGA last Wednesday.

Miss Fay said the man had repeatedly yelled, “you’re in Australia now, you can’t wear that sh*t on your head”, while other shoppers watched on silently.

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Edinburgh: headscarves torn off two Muslim women

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hijab headscarves were torn off two Muslim women during one of a spate of racist attacks in Edinburgh by children as young as eight, police said yesterday.

The women, in their early 20s, are said to have been “traumatised” by the incident which happened last week, in which two children hurled racial abuse at them before ripping off the hijabs. The culprits are believed to be aged eight and 14.

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