Egypt cleric 'to ban full veils'
Egypt's highest Muslim authority has said he will issue a religious edict against the growing trend for full women's veils, known as the niqab.
Sheikh Mohamed Tantawi, dean of al-Azhar university, called full-face veiling a custom that has nothing to do with the Islamic faith.
Although most Muslim women in Egypt wear the Islamic headscarf, increasing numbers are adopting the niqab as well.
The practice is widely associated with more radical trends of Islam.
The niqab question reportedly arose when Sheikh Tantawi was visiting a girls' school in Cairo at the weekend and asked one of the students to remove her niqab.
The Egyptian newspaper al-Masri al-Yom quoted him expressing surprise at the girl's attire and telling her it was merely a tradition, with no connection to religion or the Koran.
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Hejab
Muslim group calls for burka ban in Canada
By Charles Lewis, National Post
October 8, 2009 1:02 PM
A woman listens as she attends a rally in Kabul in this Aug. 12, 2009 file photograph.
A Canadian Muslim group is calling on Ottawa to ban the wearing of the burka in public, saying the argument that the right to wear it is protected by the charter’s guarantee of freedom of religion is false.
Photograph by: Lucy Nicholson, Reuters
TORONTO — A Canadian Muslim group is calling on Ottawa to ban the wearing of the burka in public, saying the argument that the right to wear it is protected by the charter's guarantee of freedom of religion is false.
"The burka has absolutely no place in Canada," said Farzana Hassan, of the Muslim Canadian Congress. "In Canada we recognize the equality of men and women. We want to recognize gender equality as an absolute. The burka marginalizes women."
She said many women who cover their face in public are being forced to by their husbands and family. As a result, she argued, these women are denied opportunities and cannot live freely as other women in this society.
"The Koran exhorts Muslims toward modesty, which can be expressed in a number of different ways and it doesn't have to be that you have to cover your face or you have to wear a virtual tent wherever you go. This is not a requirement of Islam or the Koran. We are saying this practice has become a political issue promoted by extremists and to counter this trend we are asking for a ban on the burka."
The proposal calls for the banning of "masks, niqabs and burkas." A niqab covers the face but allows the eyes to be seen; a burka covers the entire body and the eyes are obscured by a mesh covering.
"For me that is a huge embarrassment," said Hassan. "It brings the kind of criticism Muslims (unfairly) face."
Hassan said her group is bringing this up now because of an edict released this week in Egypt, by a top Muslim authority, calling for a ban on the burka.
Hassan said she is not asking for the banning of the hijab, which just covers the hair, but she would also like to see that custom vanish.
Professor Amir Hussain, who teaches theology at Loyola Marymount College in Los Angeles, but grew up in Toronto, said the fact that the burka is not in the Koran does not mean that it is not part of authentic religious practice and that many religions absorb cultural practices that eventually become sacred.
He said he does not believe there are enough women wearing the burka in Canada to call it a serious issue. But for those women who are being forced to wear it by family members, the best way to deal with it is to reach out to those women on an individual level.
He said any legal ban will infringe on fundamental democratic rights.
"In Turkey, a secular society, it is illegal to wear it. In Iran you'll be punished if you don't wear it. Either way imposing a belief on women."
In the past few years, the debate over what kind of religious dress should be allowed has been loud and intense.
In June, French President Nicolas Sarkozy went so far as to call a parliamentary commission to look at whether to ban the wearing of burkas and niqabs in public. In France, religious headgear of any faith has already been banned in public schools.
Also in June, the Michigan Supreme Court amended its rules of evidence to give trial judges discretion over whether a woman can be fully veiled when testifying or when bringing accusations. The new rule did not mention Muslims but it will clearly affect Muslims.
Last year an Ontario judge said religious beliefs did not give a woman the right to wear a veil while testifying against her alleged rapist. The decision is now before the Ontario Court of Appeal.
In 2007, a Quebec election official created controversy when he said veiled Muslim women would have to take off their veil if they wanted to vote.
Wahida Valiante, chair of the Canadian Islamic Congress, said the right to wear a burka is absolutely covered by the charter and no one can dictate what constitutes proper religious practice.
But she said by constantly bringing up a "miniscule" issue, that, too, skews society's impression of Islam.
"If anyone ever finds this to be a huge problem I'd be the first one to participate in that discourse. There's freedom of choice. Women can take their bra off and we don't have any laws against that. So in that context a woman can choose to cover their face in this country."
© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service
http://www.canada.com/story_print.html? ... sponsor=hp
By Charles Lewis, National Post
October 8, 2009 1:02 PM
A woman listens as she attends a rally in Kabul in this Aug. 12, 2009 file photograph.
A Canadian Muslim group is calling on Ottawa to ban the wearing of the burka in public, saying the argument that the right to wear it is protected by the charter’s guarantee of freedom of religion is false.
Photograph by: Lucy Nicholson, Reuters
TORONTO — A Canadian Muslim group is calling on Ottawa to ban the wearing of the burka in public, saying the argument that the right to wear it is protected by the charter's guarantee of freedom of religion is false.
"The burka has absolutely no place in Canada," said Farzana Hassan, of the Muslim Canadian Congress. "In Canada we recognize the equality of men and women. We want to recognize gender equality as an absolute. The burka marginalizes women."
She said many women who cover their face in public are being forced to by their husbands and family. As a result, she argued, these women are denied opportunities and cannot live freely as other women in this society.
"The Koran exhorts Muslims toward modesty, which can be expressed in a number of different ways and it doesn't have to be that you have to cover your face or you have to wear a virtual tent wherever you go. This is not a requirement of Islam or the Koran. We are saying this practice has become a political issue promoted by extremists and to counter this trend we are asking for a ban on the burka."
The proposal calls for the banning of "masks, niqabs and burkas." A niqab covers the face but allows the eyes to be seen; a burka covers the entire body and the eyes are obscured by a mesh covering.
"For me that is a huge embarrassment," said Hassan. "It brings the kind of criticism Muslims (unfairly) face."
Hassan said her group is bringing this up now because of an edict released this week in Egypt, by a top Muslim authority, calling for a ban on the burka.
Hassan said she is not asking for the banning of the hijab, which just covers the hair, but she would also like to see that custom vanish.
Professor Amir Hussain, who teaches theology at Loyola Marymount College in Los Angeles, but grew up in Toronto, said the fact that the burka is not in the Koran does not mean that it is not part of authentic religious practice and that many religions absorb cultural practices that eventually become sacred.
He said he does not believe there are enough women wearing the burka in Canada to call it a serious issue. But for those women who are being forced to wear it by family members, the best way to deal with it is to reach out to those women on an individual level.
He said any legal ban will infringe on fundamental democratic rights.
"In Turkey, a secular society, it is illegal to wear it. In Iran you'll be punished if you don't wear it. Either way imposing a belief on women."
In the past few years, the debate over what kind of religious dress should be allowed has been loud and intense.
In June, French President Nicolas Sarkozy went so far as to call a parliamentary commission to look at whether to ban the wearing of burkas and niqabs in public. In France, religious headgear of any faith has already been banned in public schools.
Also in June, the Michigan Supreme Court amended its rules of evidence to give trial judges discretion over whether a woman can be fully veiled when testifying or when bringing accusations. The new rule did not mention Muslims but it will clearly affect Muslims.
Last year an Ontario judge said religious beliefs did not give a woman the right to wear a veil while testifying against her alleged rapist. The decision is now before the Ontario Court of Appeal.
In 2007, a Quebec election official created controversy when he said veiled Muslim women would have to take off their veil if they wanted to vote.
Wahida Valiante, chair of the Canadian Islamic Congress, said the right to wear a burka is absolutely covered by the charter and no one can dictate what constitutes proper religious practice.
But she said by constantly bringing up a "miniscule" issue, that, too, skews society's impression of Islam.
"If anyone ever finds this to be a huge problem I'd be the first one to participate in that discourse. There's freedom of choice. Women can take their bra off and we don't have any laws against that. So in that context a woman can choose to cover their face in this country."
© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service
http://www.canada.com/story_print.html? ... sponsor=hp
Niqab banned in female classes
Agence France-presse
October 9, 2009
Despite the increasing popularity of the niqab in Egypt, Al-Azhar university is banning its use in all-female classes and dorms.
Photograph by: Cris Bouroncle, AFP-Getty Images, Agence France-presse
Egypt's Al-Azhar University, the most prestigious centre of religious learning in the Sunni Muslim world, said on Thursday it will ban the face veil from female-only classrooms and residences.
"The Supreme Council of Al-Azhar has decided to ban students and teachers from wearing the niqab inside female-only classrooms, that are taught by women only," a statement said.
The ban extends to women's dormitories and to schools affiliated with the university, it said.
The face veil, or niqab, is worn by some devout Muslim women. Local press reported that Mohammed Tantawi, head of Al-Azhar, said last week that he intended to ban the practice in the university.
The supreme council's statement added that Al-Azhar does not oppose the niqab, which it said only a minority of Muslim scholars consider an obligation, but it opposes "imprinting it on the minds of girls."
The decision came after female students who wear the niqab were banned from the women's dormitory of the state-run Cairo University.
Most Muslim women in Egypt wear the hijab, which covers the hair, but the niqab is becoming more popular on the streets of Cairo.
The government has shown concern over the trend. The religious endowments ministry issued booklets against the practice, saying the niqab is not Islamic, and the health ministry wants to ban it among doctors and nurses.
In the Middle East, the niqab is associated with Salafism, an ultraconservative school of thought practised mostly in Saudi Arabia.
Most Salafis shun politics, but the creed has influenced Islamist militants such as al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
From the Palestinian territories, a small Salafigroup known as Jund Ansar Allah has called on Egyptians to strike out in reaction, according to a statement reported by the SITE Intelligence Group.
"We call upon our mujahedeen brothers to start crushing the fortifications of the government of the pharaoh of this age(President Hosni Mubarak) and to strike with an iron hand all the agents and traitors."
Al-Azhar has long enjoyed a reputation as Sunni Islam's eminent source of learning and edicts.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 5&sponsor=
Agence France-presse
October 9, 2009
Despite the increasing popularity of the niqab in Egypt, Al-Azhar university is banning its use in all-female classes and dorms.
Photograph by: Cris Bouroncle, AFP-Getty Images, Agence France-presse
Egypt's Al-Azhar University, the most prestigious centre of religious learning in the Sunni Muslim world, said on Thursday it will ban the face veil from female-only classrooms and residences.
"The Supreme Council of Al-Azhar has decided to ban students and teachers from wearing the niqab inside female-only classrooms, that are taught by women only," a statement said.
The ban extends to women's dormitories and to schools affiliated with the university, it said.
The face veil, or niqab, is worn by some devout Muslim women. Local press reported that Mohammed Tantawi, head of Al-Azhar, said last week that he intended to ban the practice in the university.
The supreme council's statement added that Al-Azhar does not oppose the niqab, which it said only a minority of Muslim scholars consider an obligation, but it opposes "imprinting it on the minds of girls."
The decision came after female students who wear the niqab were banned from the women's dormitory of the state-run Cairo University.
Most Muslim women in Egypt wear the hijab, which covers the hair, but the niqab is becoming more popular on the streets of Cairo.
The government has shown concern over the trend. The religious endowments ministry issued booklets against the practice, saying the niqab is not Islamic, and the health ministry wants to ban it among doctors and nurses.
In the Middle East, the niqab is associated with Salafism, an ultraconservative school of thought practised mostly in Saudi Arabia.
Most Salafis shun politics, but the creed has influenced Islamist militants such as al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
From the Palestinian territories, a small Salafigroup known as Jund Ansar Allah has called on Egyptians to strike out in reaction, according to a statement reported by the SITE Intelligence Group.
"We call upon our mujahedeen brothers to start crushing the fortifications of the government of the pharaoh of this age(President Hosni Mubarak) and to strike with an iron hand all the agents and traitors."
Al-Azhar has long enjoyed a reputation as Sunni Islam's eminent source of learning and edicts.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 5&sponsor=
Let's debate the theology of the burka
By Farzana Hassan, For The Calgary Herald
October 10, 2009
StoryPhotos ( 1 )
Cairo University students stand outside the university dormitory Oct. 7, unable to enter due to new rules in Egypt preventing admission to niqab wearers.
Photograph by: Cris Bouroncle, AFP-Getty Images, For The Calgary Herald
A phone debate on a Montreal-based radio station prompted me to investigate the theology of the burka. My opponent, a woman who admitted to wearing a burka, angrily instructed me to hold any judgment on whether the Qur'an mandates the burka until I found out more about Islam. She urged me to conduct a thorough and dispassionate research of the issue.
Her response was familiar. Traditional Muslims often accuse more liberal Muslims of ignorance; if such contemptible liberals understood Islam properly, they would be more conservative. They believe the opinions of liberal Muslims are woeful, have no merit or are perhaps inspired by a nefarious anti-Islam agenda.
In any case, I accepted her challenge and my research confirmed what I already knew--that neither the Qur'an nor Islam in general mandates covering the face. In fact, the Qur'an does not urge any woman even to cover her hair. I therefore regard the hijab as a biddah: something that is alien to Islam. The Qur'an contains no express injunction for women to cover their hair or their faces. What the Qur'an enjoins is modesty in dress and demeanour --nothing more, nothing less --and leaves this to mere mortals to interpret.
I am therefore aghast at the proliferation of the hijab and burka among women of all ages. The conservatives glibly call up dubious quotes from the Qur'an to dismiss the cogent arguments against veiling. Is it general social pressure within their communities that makes them do this, or fearmongering from hellfire preaching? They defend their position vehemently, as if to ensure they are not violating any religious tenets and therefore destined to broil in the afterlife.
While I am not overly concerned about the hijab, a garment that does not conceal a woman's identity or hinder her movements, the burka disturbs me. Not only is it arguably a security risk, but it also symbolizes the worst kind of oppression of women. Rooted in Wahhabi culture, it is a political tool to subjugate women, ensuring that they remain subservient to the demands and whims of the kind of men who stipulate such rules for them.
We can also employ Islamic jurisprudence to attack the practice of wearing the burka. The recognized schools of Islamic jurisprudence prescribe four methods of arriving at religious understanding. These comprise the Qur'an itself, the sunnah (the oral traditions of the prophet, called Hadith), ijma (the consensus of the Muslim community on religious issue) and qiyas (analogy). The most relevant to our current debate is the third principle of Islamic jurisprudence, called ijma or consensus. There are two types. The first involves the consensus of the Muslim community, which need not include scholars. The second pertains to consensus of religious scholars. Muslims are required to follow the precepts agreed by a majority of scholars. Yet nowhere in the Islamic world have the scholars achieved a consensus that Islam mandates covering the face. While there seems to be consensus among orthodoxy on modest attire, no orthodox scholar, with the exception of the Wahhabi sheiks, believe that the covering of the face is mandated by the Qur'an.
Muslims across the world are urged to follow the consensus of the community, particularly of the scholars. If only a small number of extremist sheiks demand that women's faces be covered, why do some Muslims forsake a recognized aspect of Islamic jurisprudence by obeying them?
An assortment of Canadian Islamic organizations released a statement Friday condemning the ban on face veils, which has just been enacted in Egypt. Predictably, the reasoning they offer is designed to appeal to Western notions of freedom, saying that the state "has no business in the wardrobes of the nation." Yet all Canadians, and most certainly all Muslims, know that veiling is more than a matter of wardrobe; it concerns identity and status. The Muslim Canadian Congress has rightly asked for a ban. Face covering is rooted in patriarchy and has no religious basis whatsoever. In fact, it directly violates recognized ways of arriving at religious accord.
Farzana Hassan is an author and a director of the Muslim Canadian congress.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/life/debat ... story.html
By Farzana Hassan, For The Calgary Herald
October 10, 2009
StoryPhotos ( 1 )
Cairo University students stand outside the university dormitory Oct. 7, unable to enter due to new rules in Egypt preventing admission to niqab wearers.
Photograph by: Cris Bouroncle, AFP-Getty Images, For The Calgary Herald
A phone debate on a Montreal-based radio station prompted me to investigate the theology of the burka. My opponent, a woman who admitted to wearing a burka, angrily instructed me to hold any judgment on whether the Qur'an mandates the burka until I found out more about Islam. She urged me to conduct a thorough and dispassionate research of the issue.
Her response was familiar. Traditional Muslims often accuse more liberal Muslims of ignorance; if such contemptible liberals understood Islam properly, they would be more conservative. They believe the opinions of liberal Muslims are woeful, have no merit or are perhaps inspired by a nefarious anti-Islam agenda.
In any case, I accepted her challenge and my research confirmed what I already knew--that neither the Qur'an nor Islam in general mandates covering the face. In fact, the Qur'an does not urge any woman even to cover her hair. I therefore regard the hijab as a biddah: something that is alien to Islam. The Qur'an contains no express injunction for women to cover their hair or their faces. What the Qur'an enjoins is modesty in dress and demeanour --nothing more, nothing less --and leaves this to mere mortals to interpret.
I am therefore aghast at the proliferation of the hijab and burka among women of all ages. The conservatives glibly call up dubious quotes from the Qur'an to dismiss the cogent arguments against veiling. Is it general social pressure within their communities that makes them do this, or fearmongering from hellfire preaching? They defend their position vehemently, as if to ensure they are not violating any religious tenets and therefore destined to broil in the afterlife.
While I am not overly concerned about the hijab, a garment that does not conceal a woman's identity or hinder her movements, the burka disturbs me. Not only is it arguably a security risk, but it also symbolizes the worst kind of oppression of women. Rooted in Wahhabi culture, it is a political tool to subjugate women, ensuring that they remain subservient to the demands and whims of the kind of men who stipulate such rules for them.
We can also employ Islamic jurisprudence to attack the practice of wearing the burka. The recognized schools of Islamic jurisprudence prescribe four methods of arriving at religious understanding. These comprise the Qur'an itself, the sunnah (the oral traditions of the prophet, called Hadith), ijma (the consensus of the Muslim community on religious issue) and qiyas (analogy). The most relevant to our current debate is the third principle of Islamic jurisprudence, called ijma or consensus. There are two types. The first involves the consensus of the Muslim community, which need not include scholars. The second pertains to consensus of religious scholars. Muslims are required to follow the precepts agreed by a majority of scholars. Yet nowhere in the Islamic world have the scholars achieved a consensus that Islam mandates covering the face. While there seems to be consensus among orthodoxy on modest attire, no orthodox scholar, with the exception of the Wahhabi sheiks, believe that the covering of the face is mandated by the Qur'an.
Muslims across the world are urged to follow the consensus of the community, particularly of the scholars. If only a small number of extremist sheiks demand that women's faces be covered, why do some Muslims forsake a recognized aspect of Islamic jurisprudence by obeying them?
An assortment of Canadian Islamic organizations released a statement Friday condemning the ban on face veils, which has just been enacted in Egypt. Predictably, the reasoning they offer is designed to appeal to Western notions of freedom, saying that the state "has no business in the wardrobes of the nation." Yet all Canadians, and most certainly all Muslims, know that veiling is more than a matter of wardrobe; it concerns identity and status. The Muslim Canadian Congress has rightly asked for a ban. Face covering is rooted in patriarchy and has no religious basis whatsoever. In fact, it directly violates recognized ways of arriving at religious accord.
Farzana Hassan is an author and a director of the Muslim Canadian congress.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/life/debat ... story.html
France retreats from burkaban
No laws against full face veil after Muslim protests
By Tom Heneghan, ReutersNovember 14, 2009
France will issue recommendations against full face veils but not pass a law barring Muslim women from wearing them, a leading backer of a legal ban said on Friday.
Andre Gerin, chairman of a parliamentary inquiry into use of full face veils in France, reluctantly ruled out a ban one day after President Nicolas Sarkozy repeated his conviction that "France is a country that has no place for the burka."
France banned Muslim head scarves in state schools in 2004 following a similar inquiry and looked set to bring in an outright ban on veils covering the whole face, such as burkas or niqabs, when it launched the panel last June at the request of Gerin, a Communist deputy from Lyon.
But at its weekly hearings, legal experts, local officials, Muslim leaders and even some militant secularists have told the deputies on the panel that a ban could be anti-constitutional, counterproductive and impossible to enforce.
Gerin, who denounces the head-to-toe veils as "walking coffins," told Europe 1 radio: "We'll end up with recommendations . . . not a law in itself against the burka, maybe a symbolic law, a law of liberation (of women)."
Backing off from a complete ban, he said the panel might propose "radical measures" to ban full face veils in municipal hospitals and other public institutions, but gave no details.
France, whose five million Muslims make up Europe's largest Islamic minority, has been criticized in the Muslim world for considering a burka ban. French Islamic community leaders have warned against passing a law that would stigmatize Muslims.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
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No laws against full face veil after Muslim protests
By Tom Heneghan, ReutersNovember 14, 2009
France will issue recommendations against full face veils but not pass a law barring Muslim women from wearing them, a leading backer of a legal ban said on Friday.
Andre Gerin, chairman of a parliamentary inquiry into use of full face veils in France, reluctantly ruled out a ban one day after President Nicolas Sarkozy repeated his conviction that "France is a country that has no place for the burka."
France banned Muslim head scarves in state schools in 2004 following a similar inquiry and looked set to bring in an outright ban on veils covering the whole face, such as burkas or niqabs, when it launched the panel last June at the request of Gerin, a Communist deputy from Lyon.
But at its weekly hearings, legal experts, local officials, Muslim leaders and even some militant secularists have told the deputies on the panel that a ban could be anti-constitutional, counterproductive and impossible to enforce.
Gerin, who denounces the head-to-toe veils as "walking coffins," told Europe 1 radio: "We'll end up with recommendations . . . not a law in itself against the burka, maybe a symbolic law, a law of liberation (of women)."
Backing off from a complete ban, he said the panel might propose "radical measures" to ban full face veils in municipal hospitals and other public institutions, but gave no details.
France, whose five million Muslims make up Europe's largest Islamic minority, has been criticized in the Muslim world for considering a burka ban. French Islamic community leaders have warned against passing a law that would stigmatize Muslims.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 9&sponsor=
Wearing the Muslim veil in America: What it's like
Wearing the Muslim veil in America may cause awkward moments, but this hijabi finds more positive than negative in her choice.
Husna Haq, a Boston University graduate student and Monitor intern, chose to wear hijab in ninth grade. Born and raised in the United States, she says that she has many more positive encounters over the veil than discouraging ones.
Mary Knox Merrill/Staff
.Enlarge Photos (1 of 3)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Husna Haq Correspondent / December 12, 2009
Boston
I knew I was in trouble the moment I sat down. I’d just taken a seat next to an elderly Asian woman on the D-line train, on my way to a college class last year. She immediately stiffened. I began reading a book. She started twitching and looking around the train. We passed the first stop. She took out her pocket Bible, reading rapidly aloud as she rocked back and forth, clearly agitated. I felt awful, but I didn’t know how to calm her. Before we reached the next stop, she gathered her bags, hurried down the aisle, and quickly took a seat next to someone else.
I’d just scared a sweet, elderly woman with my petite, head-scarf-wrapped frame, and I felt like a monster. I was upset that my hijab – a strip of cloth, a head scarf – had become so loaded with negative connotations that it inspired such distrust.
For centuries, the West has appropriated the hijab as a symbol of oppression, subjugation, repression, and allegiance to fundamentalist beliefs. And while this may be a reality for some Muslim women around the world, it’s not true for me or those I know. Frustrated with the labels others have imposed upon them, Muslim women, including me, are reclaiming hijab and what it stands for. We are empowered and educated and choose to wear hijab because we are proud of our identity. And our experiences are generally positive.
America meets the hijab
There are an estimated 7 million Muslims in America, many of whom were born and raised here, like me. They bring attention to Islam through constructive contributions (Dalia Mogahed, this year, became the first veiled Muslim woman appointed to a presidential advisory panel), and through destructive violence (as in the case of Fort Hood, Texas, shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan).
For good or ill, “Islam is the most discussed religion in the media,” says Ms. Mogahed, who is executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and a member of President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
As a result, mainstream America is encountering Islam – and hijab – as never before. Although there are no definitive studies tracking the number of hijab-wearing Muslims in the United States, experts say veiling is a growing phenomenon.
“Certainly, you see more women wearing hijab in the last two decades,” says John Esposito, a leading expert on Muslim-Western relations at Georgetown University.
"It’s part of the American mosaic, this point at which you say to yourself, ‘How do I blend where I came from, where I am, and where I’m going?’ Muslim women simply believe ‘I can be who I am – young, bright, upwardly mobile – without having to completely let go of my identity.’ ”
'You're in America now, honey'
I began wearing hijab in ninth grade, not because anyone told me to, but because I believed that it is compulsory in Islam. I was the only hijabi (Muslim slang for a person who wears hijab) in my upstate New York school, and my head scarf occasionally made me squirm self-consciously, but it also spared me from the identity angst my non-Muslim friends were experiencing. I was comfortable in my hijab, and in my skin.
Then, 19 Muslim hijackers flew planes into the World Trade Center, and I knew my world had fundamentally changed. I was as angered by the senseless, indiscriminate violence as any American, but I realized my hijab placed me in a precarious position. My parents cautioned me to be careful, worried about the backlash. And although I did field a small share of abuse (“If you people don’t like America,” I heard more than once, “get the **** out!”), and read daily about mosque burnings and Muslim beatings, I also witnessed the generous spirit of fellow Americans. An interfaith group formed a human chain around our Syracuse, N.Y., mosque, expressing their solidarity. My sociology professor advised her students to reach out to Muslims on campus, who were probably scared. As a freshman in my second week of college, I was scared, and her words provided me enormous comfort.
I learned to live with the stares and suspicious looks and to compensate with warmth and smiles to set others at ease. I amassed a collection of hijabs in different colors and patterns to wear according to my mood. I never had bad hair days – and even if I had, nobody would have known.
Proudly, timidly, self-consciously, I wore hijab to class, to graduation, to job interviews, and to my first job in Washington, D.C. As a young single woman in a city of young singles, I occasionally got hit on.
But hijab is more than a piece of cloth. It is modesty in dress and behavior. As an observant Muslim, I didn’t date, didn’t go to bars or clubs, and tried not to invite advances. As a friend remarked, “No man will whistle at a hijabi covered head to toe.”
But hijab is not, as many believe, a suppression of sexuality – it distinguishes between public life and private life. Cognizant of the potentially intrusive, debasing power of the gaze, God instructs men and women to lower their eyes and dress modestly in public. (In Islam, men must also dress conservatively, wearing loose clothing that covers their bodies.)
Feminist Naomi Wolf wrote in her 2008 essay, “Behind the veil lives a thriving Muslim sexuality,” that Islam and its injunction of modesty channels sexuality into marriage and family life: “When sexuality is kept private and directed in ways seen as sacred – and when one’s husband isn’t seeing his wife (or other women) half-naked all day long – one can feel great power and intensity when the headscarf or the chador comes off in the home.”
Unlike other religious traditions, which portray sexuality as sinful, Islam sanctions, even celebrates, sexuality in the context of marriage.
In fact, the Koran and hadith, or traditions of Muhammad, give women the right to sexual satisfaction in marriage, as well as the right to vote, to education, to work if they wish, to keep any money they earn for their own use, and the right to own property – truly revolutionary when the Koran was revealed in the 7th century. Of course, not every Muslim – or Muslim country – respects these rights. That’s a plain abuse of Islam.
A year and a half ago I married a man who loves me in hijab. He supports my choice to wear it – I wore it for our wedding – and he says that in hijab I am beautiful and empowered.
Not everyone thinks so. A few years ago a hairdresser shepherded me into a backroom for a private cut, away from public view.
“You’re in America now, honey,” she confided, trying to help me. “You don’t have to wear that thing on your head.”
My hairdresser was trying to liberate me from hijab. But for me, hijab is liberation. It is the freedom to assert my identity and live according to my values.
Another train ride
I live in a country where I can do just that. And where, for every discouraging encounter I experience, I have 10 positive ones.
Like another time on the D-line train in Boston on my way home after a long day of classes. It was Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, and I was hungry and tired and had no place to sit.
“You’re fasting, right?” asked a man, standing and offering me his place.
I smiled and gratefully took his seat.
I learned to live with the stares and suspicious looks and to compensate with warmth and smiles to set others at ease. I amassed a collection of hijabs in different colors and patterns to wear according to my mood. I never had bad hair days – and even if I had, nobody would have known.
Proudly, timidly, self-consciously, I wore hijab to class, to graduation, to job interviews, and to my first job in Washington, D.C. As a young single woman in a city of young singles, I occasionally got hit on.
But hijab is more than a piece of cloth. It is modesty in dress and behavior. As an observant Muslim, I didn’t date, didn’t go to bars or clubs, and tried not to invite advances. As a friend remarked, “No man will whistle at a hijabi covered head to toe.”
But hijab is not, as many believe, a suppression of sexuality – it distinguishes between public life and private life. Cognizant of the potentially intrusive, debasing power of the gaze, God instructs men and women to lower their eyes and dress modestly in public. (In Islam, men must also dress conservatively, wearing loose clothing that covers their bodies.)
Feminist Naomi Wolf wrote in her 2008 essay, “Behind the veil lives a thriving Muslim sexuality,” that Islam and its injunction of modesty channels sexuality into marriage and family life: “When sexuality is kept private and directed in ways seen as sacred – and when one’s husband isn’t seeing his wife (or other women) half-naked all day long – one can feel great power and intensity when the headscarf or the chador comes off in the home.”
Unlike other religious traditions, which portray sexuality as sinful, Islam sanctions, even celebrates, sexuality in the context of marriage.
In fact, the Koran and hadith, or traditions of Muhammad, give women the right to sexual satisfaction in marriage, as well as the right to vote, to education, to work if they wish, to keep any money they earn for their own use, and the right to own property – truly revolutionary when the Koran was revealed in the 7th century. Of course, not every Muslim – or Muslim country – respects these rights. That’s a plain abuse of Islam.
A year and a half ago I married a man who loves me in hijab. He supports my choice to wear it – I wore it for our wedding – and he says that in hijab I am beautiful and empowered.
Not everyone thinks so. A few years ago a hairdresser shepherded me into a backroom for a private cut, away from public view.
“You’re in America now, honey,” she confided, trying to help me. “You don’t have to wear that thing on your head.”
My hairdresser was trying to liberate me from hijab. But for me, hijab is liberation. It is the freedom to assert my identity and live according to my values.
Another train ride
I live in a country where I can do just that. And where, for every discouraging encounter I experience, I have 10 positive ones.
Like another time on the D-line train in Boston on my way home after a long day of classes. It was Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, and I was hungry and tired and had no place to sit.
“You’re fasting, right?” asked a man, standing and offering me his place.
I smiled and gratefully took his seat.
http://www.ismaili.net/html/modules.php ... ply&t=1275
Wearing the Muslim veil in America may cause awkward moments, but this hijabi finds more positive than negative in her choice.
Husna Haq, a Boston University graduate student and Monitor intern, chose to wear hijab in ninth grade. Born and raised in the United States, she says that she has many more positive encounters over the veil than discouraging ones.
Mary Knox Merrill/Staff
.Enlarge Photos (1 of 3)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Husna Haq Correspondent / December 12, 2009
Boston
I knew I was in trouble the moment I sat down. I’d just taken a seat next to an elderly Asian woman on the D-line train, on my way to a college class last year. She immediately stiffened. I began reading a book. She started twitching and looking around the train. We passed the first stop. She took out her pocket Bible, reading rapidly aloud as she rocked back and forth, clearly agitated. I felt awful, but I didn’t know how to calm her. Before we reached the next stop, she gathered her bags, hurried down the aisle, and quickly took a seat next to someone else.
I’d just scared a sweet, elderly woman with my petite, head-scarf-wrapped frame, and I felt like a monster. I was upset that my hijab – a strip of cloth, a head scarf – had become so loaded with negative connotations that it inspired such distrust.
For centuries, the West has appropriated the hijab as a symbol of oppression, subjugation, repression, and allegiance to fundamentalist beliefs. And while this may be a reality for some Muslim women around the world, it’s not true for me or those I know. Frustrated with the labels others have imposed upon them, Muslim women, including me, are reclaiming hijab and what it stands for. We are empowered and educated and choose to wear hijab because we are proud of our identity. And our experiences are generally positive.
America meets the hijab
There are an estimated 7 million Muslims in America, many of whom were born and raised here, like me. They bring attention to Islam through constructive contributions (Dalia Mogahed, this year, became the first veiled Muslim woman appointed to a presidential advisory panel), and through destructive violence (as in the case of Fort Hood, Texas, shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan).
For good or ill, “Islam is the most discussed religion in the media,” says Ms. Mogahed, who is executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and a member of President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
As a result, mainstream America is encountering Islam – and hijab – as never before. Although there are no definitive studies tracking the number of hijab-wearing Muslims in the United States, experts say veiling is a growing phenomenon.
“Certainly, you see more women wearing hijab in the last two decades,” says John Esposito, a leading expert on Muslim-Western relations at Georgetown University.
"It’s part of the American mosaic, this point at which you say to yourself, ‘How do I blend where I came from, where I am, and where I’m going?’ Muslim women simply believe ‘I can be who I am – young, bright, upwardly mobile – without having to completely let go of my identity.’ ”
'You're in America now, honey'
I began wearing hijab in ninth grade, not because anyone told me to, but because I believed that it is compulsory in Islam. I was the only hijabi (Muslim slang for a person who wears hijab) in my upstate New York school, and my head scarf occasionally made me squirm self-consciously, but it also spared me from the identity angst my non-Muslim friends were experiencing. I was comfortable in my hijab, and in my skin.
Then, 19 Muslim hijackers flew planes into the World Trade Center, and I knew my world had fundamentally changed. I was as angered by the senseless, indiscriminate violence as any American, but I realized my hijab placed me in a precarious position. My parents cautioned me to be careful, worried about the backlash. And although I did field a small share of abuse (“If you people don’t like America,” I heard more than once, “get the **** out!”), and read daily about mosque burnings and Muslim beatings, I also witnessed the generous spirit of fellow Americans. An interfaith group formed a human chain around our Syracuse, N.Y., mosque, expressing their solidarity. My sociology professor advised her students to reach out to Muslims on campus, who were probably scared. As a freshman in my second week of college, I was scared, and her words provided me enormous comfort.
I learned to live with the stares and suspicious looks and to compensate with warmth and smiles to set others at ease. I amassed a collection of hijabs in different colors and patterns to wear according to my mood. I never had bad hair days – and even if I had, nobody would have known.
Proudly, timidly, self-consciously, I wore hijab to class, to graduation, to job interviews, and to my first job in Washington, D.C. As a young single woman in a city of young singles, I occasionally got hit on.
But hijab is more than a piece of cloth. It is modesty in dress and behavior. As an observant Muslim, I didn’t date, didn’t go to bars or clubs, and tried not to invite advances. As a friend remarked, “No man will whistle at a hijabi covered head to toe.”
But hijab is not, as many believe, a suppression of sexuality – it distinguishes between public life and private life. Cognizant of the potentially intrusive, debasing power of the gaze, God instructs men and women to lower their eyes and dress modestly in public. (In Islam, men must also dress conservatively, wearing loose clothing that covers their bodies.)
Feminist Naomi Wolf wrote in her 2008 essay, “Behind the veil lives a thriving Muslim sexuality,” that Islam and its injunction of modesty channels sexuality into marriage and family life: “When sexuality is kept private and directed in ways seen as sacred – and when one’s husband isn’t seeing his wife (or other women) half-naked all day long – one can feel great power and intensity when the headscarf or the chador comes off in the home.”
Unlike other religious traditions, which portray sexuality as sinful, Islam sanctions, even celebrates, sexuality in the context of marriage.
In fact, the Koran and hadith, or traditions of Muhammad, give women the right to sexual satisfaction in marriage, as well as the right to vote, to education, to work if they wish, to keep any money they earn for their own use, and the right to own property – truly revolutionary when the Koran was revealed in the 7th century. Of course, not every Muslim – or Muslim country – respects these rights. That’s a plain abuse of Islam.
A year and a half ago I married a man who loves me in hijab. He supports my choice to wear it – I wore it for our wedding – and he says that in hijab I am beautiful and empowered.
Not everyone thinks so. A few years ago a hairdresser shepherded me into a backroom for a private cut, away from public view.
“You’re in America now, honey,” she confided, trying to help me. “You don’t have to wear that thing on your head.”
My hairdresser was trying to liberate me from hijab. But for me, hijab is liberation. It is the freedom to assert my identity and live according to my values.
Another train ride
I live in a country where I can do just that. And where, for every discouraging encounter I experience, I have 10 positive ones.
Like another time on the D-line train in Boston on my way home after a long day of classes. It was Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, and I was hungry and tired and had no place to sit.
“You’re fasting, right?” asked a man, standing and offering me his place.
I smiled and gratefully took his seat.
I learned to live with the stares and suspicious looks and to compensate with warmth and smiles to set others at ease. I amassed a collection of hijabs in different colors and patterns to wear according to my mood. I never had bad hair days – and even if I had, nobody would have known.
Proudly, timidly, self-consciously, I wore hijab to class, to graduation, to job interviews, and to my first job in Washington, D.C. As a young single woman in a city of young singles, I occasionally got hit on.
But hijab is more than a piece of cloth. It is modesty in dress and behavior. As an observant Muslim, I didn’t date, didn’t go to bars or clubs, and tried not to invite advances. As a friend remarked, “No man will whistle at a hijabi covered head to toe.”
But hijab is not, as many believe, a suppression of sexuality – it distinguishes between public life and private life. Cognizant of the potentially intrusive, debasing power of the gaze, God instructs men and women to lower their eyes and dress modestly in public. (In Islam, men must also dress conservatively, wearing loose clothing that covers their bodies.)
Feminist Naomi Wolf wrote in her 2008 essay, “Behind the veil lives a thriving Muslim sexuality,” that Islam and its injunction of modesty channels sexuality into marriage and family life: “When sexuality is kept private and directed in ways seen as sacred – and when one’s husband isn’t seeing his wife (or other women) half-naked all day long – one can feel great power and intensity when the headscarf or the chador comes off in the home.”
Unlike other religious traditions, which portray sexuality as sinful, Islam sanctions, even celebrates, sexuality in the context of marriage.
In fact, the Koran and hadith, or traditions of Muhammad, give women the right to sexual satisfaction in marriage, as well as the right to vote, to education, to work if they wish, to keep any money they earn for their own use, and the right to own property – truly revolutionary when the Koran was revealed in the 7th century. Of course, not every Muslim – or Muslim country – respects these rights. That’s a plain abuse of Islam.
A year and a half ago I married a man who loves me in hijab. He supports my choice to wear it – I wore it for our wedding – and he says that in hijab I am beautiful and empowered.
Not everyone thinks so. A few years ago a hairdresser shepherded me into a backroom for a private cut, away from public view.
“You’re in America now, honey,” she confided, trying to help me. “You don’t have to wear that thing on your head.”
My hairdresser was trying to liberate me from hijab. But for me, hijab is liberation. It is the freedom to assert my identity and live according to my values.
Another train ride
I live in a country where I can do just that. And where, for every discouraging encounter I experience, I have 10 positive ones.
Like another time on the D-line train in Boston on my way home after a long day of classes. It was Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, and I was hungry and tired and had no place to sit.
“You’re fasting, right?” asked a man, standing and offering me his place.
I smiled and gratefully took his seat.
http://www.ismaili.net/html/modules.php ... ply&t=1275
There is a related video at:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/01 ... l?hpt=Sbin
France moves toward partial burqa ban
Paris, France (CNN) -- French lawmakers Tuesday recommended a partial ban on any veils that cover the face -- including the burqa, the full-body covering worn by some Muslim women.
The ban on the "voile integrale" -- which literally means "total veil" -- would apply in public places like hospitals and schools, and on public transport, a French parliamentary commission announced.
It would also apply to anyone who attempts to receive public services, but it would not apply to people wearing the burqa on the street, the commission said.
The commission stopped short of recommending a full ban because not all of the 32 commission members could agree on it.
They will now recommend that Parliament pass a resolution on the partial ban. Such a resolution, if passed, would not make the wearing of a full veil or burqa illegal, but it would give public officials support when asking people to remove it.
Commission members began their work six months ago after French President Nicolas Sarkozy controversially told lawmakers that the full veil was "not welcome" in France.
Sarkozy said the issue is one of a woman's freedom and dignity, and did not have to do with religion.
The French National Assembly assembled a cross-party panel of 32 lawmakers to study whether women in France should be allowed to wear the burqa -- or any other full veil, including the niqab, which shows only the eyes. The commission also studied whether such full veils pose a threat to France's constitutionally mandated secularism.
Commission members heard from 200 people from all areas of French society, including Muslims, though they only heard from one woman who wears a veil.
By recommending a ban on full veils in public places such as hospitals and schools and by anyone receiving public services, the commission members said they wanted to assist those working with members of the public when asking that full veils be removed. That would include school teachers who meet children's parents or ticket agents at train stations.
A date for the vote in Parliament has not been set, though it is unlikely to happen before regional elections which are scheduled for March 14 and 21. Parliamentary majority leader Jean-Francois Cope said this week he believed the resolution will pass.
Any law directed at full veils is likely to be challenged in the courts both in France and at the European level.
More than half of French people support a full ban, according to a recent opinion poll. The Ipsos poll for Le Point magazine found 57 percent of French people said it should be illegal to appear in public wearing clothes that cover the face.
That's despite government estimates that less than 2,000 women in the country actually wear the full Islamic veil.
France has about 3.5 million Muslims, representing about six percent of the population, according to research by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. The country does not collect its own statistics on religion in accordance with laws enshrining France's status as a secular state.
French lawmakers believe the burqa is a growing phenomenon beneath which lies a not-so-subtle message of fundamentalism.
Those who advocate the ban say women are often forced to wear full veils by the men around them -- husbands, fathers or brothers -- and that it is a sign of subjugation.
However, women who actually wear the veils deny that.
"You are going to isolate these women and then you can't say that it is Islam that has denied them freedom, but that the law has," said Mabrouka Boujnah, a language teacher of Tunisian origin.
Boujnah, who at 28 is about to have her first child, says she came to wearing a full veil gradually, after wearing headscarves as an teenager. She said she believes a law against full veils would take away fundamental rights of Muslim women.
She and her friend Oumkheyr, who would not give her last name, say they prefer to cover their faces out of piety. The women, both French citizens, say they are only following their religious beliefs and France should respect that.
But even some Muslims in France think the full veil goes too far.
There is nothing in the Quran that directs women to cover their faces, said Imam Hassen Chalghoumi, who runs the Islamic center in Drancy, a Paris suburb. He said it is ridiculous to do so in France.
France already has a law against Muslim girls wearing headscarves in state schools. It sparked widespread Muslim protests when the French Parliament passed the law in 2004, even though the law also bans other conspicuous religious symbols including Sikh turbans, large Christian crucifixes and Jewish skull caps.
In 2008, France's top court denied a Moroccan woman's naturalization request on the grounds that she wore a burqa.
France is not the only European Union country to consider banning the burqa. Dutch lawmakers voted in favor of a ban in 2005, although the government at the time left office before legislation could be passed.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/01 ... l?hpt=Sbin
France moves toward partial burqa ban
Paris, France (CNN) -- French lawmakers Tuesday recommended a partial ban on any veils that cover the face -- including the burqa, the full-body covering worn by some Muslim women.
The ban on the "voile integrale" -- which literally means "total veil" -- would apply in public places like hospitals and schools, and on public transport, a French parliamentary commission announced.
It would also apply to anyone who attempts to receive public services, but it would not apply to people wearing the burqa on the street, the commission said.
The commission stopped short of recommending a full ban because not all of the 32 commission members could agree on it.
They will now recommend that Parliament pass a resolution on the partial ban. Such a resolution, if passed, would not make the wearing of a full veil or burqa illegal, but it would give public officials support when asking people to remove it.
Commission members began their work six months ago after French President Nicolas Sarkozy controversially told lawmakers that the full veil was "not welcome" in France.
Sarkozy said the issue is one of a woman's freedom and dignity, and did not have to do with religion.
The French National Assembly assembled a cross-party panel of 32 lawmakers to study whether women in France should be allowed to wear the burqa -- or any other full veil, including the niqab, which shows only the eyes. The commission also studied whether such full veils pose a threat to France's constitutionally mandated secularism.
Commission members heard from 200 people from all areas of French society, including Muslims, though they only heard from one woman who wears a veil.
By recommending a ban on full veils in public places such as hospitals and schools and by anyone receiving public services, the commission members said they wanted to assist those working with members of the public when asking that full veils be removed. That would include school teachers who meet children's parents or ticket agents at train stations.
A date for the vote in Parliament has not been set, though it is unlikely to happen before regional elections which are scheduled for March 14 and 21. Parliamentary majority leader Jean-Francois Cope said this week he believed the resolution will pass.
Any law directed at full veils is likely to be challenged in the courts both in France and at the European level.
More than half of French people support a full ban, according to a recent opinion poll. The Ipsos poll for Le Point magazine found 57 percent of French people said it should be illegal to appear in public wearing clothes that cover the face.
That's despite government estimates that less than 2,000 women in the country actually wear the full Islamic veil.
France has about 3.5 million Muslims, representing about six percent of the population, according to research by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. The country does not collect its own statistics on religion in accordance with laws enshrining France's status as a secular state.
French lawmakers believe the burqa is a growing phenomenon beneath which lies a not-so-subtle message of fundamentalism.
Those who advocate the ban say women are often forced to wear full veils by the men around them -- husbands, fathers or brothers -- and that it is a sign of subjugation.
However, women who actually wear the veils deny that.
"You are going to isolate these women and then you can't say that it is Islam that has denied them freedom, but that the law has," said Mabrouka Boujnah, a language teacher of Tunisian origin.
Boujnah, who at 28 is about to have her first child, says she came to wearing a full veil gradually, after wearing headscarves as an teenager. She said she believes a law against full veils would take away fundamental rights of Muslim women.
She and her friend Oumkheyr, who would not give her last name, say they prefer to cover their faces out of piety. The women, both French citizens, say they are only following their religious beliefs and France should respect that.
But even some Muslims in France think the full veil goes too far.
There is nothing in the Quran that directs women to cover their faces, said Imam Hassen Chalghoumi, who runs the Islamic center in Drancy, a Paris suburb. He said it is ridiculous to do so in France.
France already has a law against Muslim girls wearing headscarves in state schools. It sparked widespread Muslim protests when the French Parliament passed the law in 2004, even though the law also bans other conspicuous religious symbols including Sikh turbans, large Christian crucifixes and Jewish skull caps.
In 2008, France's top court denied a Moroccan woman's naturalization request on the grounds that she wore a burqa.
France is not the only European Union country to consider banning the burqa. Dutch lawmakers voted in favor of a ban in 2005, although the government at the time left office before legislation could be passed.
-
From_Alamut
- Posts: 666
- Joined: Tue Jan 22, 2008 8:22 am
Re: Hejab
Anger at Belgian face veil ban
Muslims, academics and human rights groups have hit out at a looming public ban in Belgium on the full face veil, following a decision in the country's parliament to make the wearing of the article of clothing illegal.
The vote on Thursday was almost unanimous with 134 MPs in support of the law and just two abstentions.
"I think they're trying to wind us up," Souad Barlabi, a young woman wearing a simple veil, said outside the Grand Mosque in Brussels, the Belgian capital, around the time of Friday prayers.
"We feel under attack," she said, a day after the politicians voted for the ban on clothes or veils that do not allow the wearer to be fully identified.
'Dangerous precedent'
Amnesty International, a human rights group, said the measures must be reviewed by the upper house of parliament as they raise concerns about whether Belgium is in breach of international rights laws.
"A complete ban on the covering of the face would violate the rights to freedom of expression and religion of those women who wear the burqa or the niqab," said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty's expert on discrimination in Europe.
"The Belgian move to ban full face veils, the first in Europe, sets a dangerous precedent."
The law, which still needs to be passed by Belgium's senate, will be imposed in streets, public gardens and sports grounds or buildings "meant for public use or to provide services" to the public.
"We're the first country to spring the locks that have made a good number of women slaves, and we hope to be followed by France, Switzerland, Italy, and the Netherlands; countries that think," said Denis Ducarme, a liberal deputy.
People who ignore the ban could face a fine of $20 to $34 and, or, a jail sentence of up to seven days.
'Disturbing' law
"It's just a pretext," said Samuel Bulte, a convert to Islam handing out flyers and religious objects in front of the mosque.
"How many robberies are committed wearing a burqa?
"I'm afraid that soon they're going to want to start putting crescents on the backs of Muslims," he said, in a reference to the yellow stars the Nazis forced Jews to wear.
Another man outside the mosque said: "The Virgin Mary also wore a veil. No one says anything about this."
Nearby, 25-year-old Said said he was stunned "that a secular country would get mixed up in religion."
Bruno Tuybens, a Flemish Socialist, was one of the two deputies who abstained from Thursday's vote.
"This law disturbs me," he said. "I believe in freedom of expression and I don't think it should be restricted unless it's in very exceptional circumstances.
"There is no link at all between crime and wearing the burqa or niqab."
Sarkozy support
In Le Soir, a French newspaper, Michael Privot, an Islamic scholar, said Belgium "now joins Iran and Saudi Arabia in that exclusive but unenviable rare club of countries to impose a dress code in the public domain".
He said the three cite "the protection of dignity, or even the freedom, of women to justify the unjustifiable: the restriction of individual freedoms of some of our citizens".
Nicolas Sarkozy, France's president, has declared that the face veil is not welcome in his country, calling it an affront to French values that denigrates women.
France's National Assembly will begin debate in early July on a bill banning the full face veil.
A final draft of the legislation outlawing the article of clothing from all public spaces as well as state institutions is set to be approved by the cabinet on May 19.
Staunchly secular France passed a law in 2004 banning the wearing of headscarves or any other "conspicuous" religious symbols in state schools.
Reference
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europ ... 42628.html
Muslims, academics and human rights groups have hit out at a looming public ban in Belgium on the full face veil, following a decision in the country's parliament to make the wearing of the article of clothing illegal.
The vote on Thursday was almost unanimous with 134 MPs in support of the law and just two abstentions.
"I think they're trying to wind us up," Souad Barlabi, a young woman wearing a simple veil, said outside the Grand Mosque in Brussels, the Belgian capital, around the time of Friday prayers.
"We feel under attack," she said, a day after the politicians voted for the ban on clothes or veils that do not allow the wearer to be fully identified.
'Dangerous precedent'
Amnesty International, a human rights group, said the measures must be reviewed by the upper house of parliament as they raise concerns about whether Belgium is in breach of international rights laws.
"A complete ban on the covering of the face would violate the rights to freedom of expression and religion of those women who wear the burqa or the niqab," said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty's expert on discrimination in Europe.
"The Belgian move to ban full face veils, the first in Europe, sets a dangerous precedent."
The law, which still needs to be passed by Belgium's senate, will be imposed in streets, public gardens and sports grounds or buildings "meant for public use or to provide services" to the public.
"We're the first country to spring the locks that have made a good number of women slaves, and we hope to be followed by France, Switzerland, Italy, and the Netherlands; countries that think," said Denis Ducarme, a liberal deputy.
People who ignore the ban could face a fine of $20 to $34 and, or, a jail sentence of up to seven days.
'Disturbing' law
"It's just a pretext," said Samuel Bulte, a convert to Islam handing out flyers and religious objects in front of the mosque.
"How many robberies are committed wearing a burqa?
"I'm afraid that soon they're going to want to start putting crescents on the backs of Muslims," he said, in a reference to the yellow stars the Nazis forced Jews to wear.
Another man outside the mosque said: "The Virgin Mary also wore a veil. No one says anything about this."
Nearby, 25-year-old Said said he was stunned "that a secular country would get mixed up in religion."
Bruno Tuybens, a Flemish Socialist, was one of the two deputies who abstained from Thursday's vote.
"This law disturbs me," he said. "I believe in freedom of expression and I don't think it should be restricted unless it's in very exceptional circumstances.
"There is no link at all between crime and wearing the burqa or niqab."
Sarkozy support
In Le Soir, a French newspaper, Michael Privot, an Islamic scholar, said Belgium "now joins Iran and Saudi Arabia in that exclusive but unenviable rare club of countries to impose a dress code in the public domain".
He said the three cite "the protection of dignity, or even the freedom, of women to justify the unjustifiable: the restriction of individual freedoms of some of our citizens".
Nicolas Sarkozy, France's president, has declared that the face veil is not welcome in his country, calling it an affront to French values that denigrates women.
France's National Assembly will begin debate in early July on a bill banning the full face veil.
A final draft of the legislation outlawing the article of clothing from all public spaces as well as state institutions is set to be approved by the cabinet on May 19.
Staunchly secular France passed a law in 2004 banning the wearing of headscarves or any other "conspicuous" religious symbols in state schools.
Reference
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europ ... 42628.html
Syria and the niqab
Take it off
A secular-minded government rejects excessively religious dress in school
Jul 15th 2010 | Damascus
Avoiding temptation.
AS MEMBERS of France’s parliament voted to outlaw the public wearing of the niqab, the Muslim facial veil that exposes just the eyes, Syria is quietly imposing its own curbs. A number of teachers who wear the niqab in schoolhave been transferred to other jobs. The government’s action, so far ordered only orally, has been shrouded in secrecy. But it has been confirmed by civil-society groups that have been approached by some of the 1,200-odd teachers said to have been affected. Ali Saad, the education minister, is reported to have told teachers that the niqab undermines the “objective, secular methodology” of Syria’s schools.
Religious radicals have long been the biggest threat to Syria’s Baathist government and its secular socialism. The crushing of the Muslim Brotherhood in the town of Hama in 1982, when more than 10,000 of its followers were killed, has not been forgotten. More recently, however, the government has sought to curry favour at home by rallying to the cry of Islam. Indeed, in an effort to emulate neighbouring Turkey, President Bashar Assad’s government has posed as a regional champion of moderate Islam. Enthusiasm for shows of religiosity has grown. In the past few years more women have been wearing the veil. Religious books are selling better. More religious schools are being set up.
Yet the government is still very wary of Muslim fundamentalism, especially in education. Last year it reviewed its regulations for Islamic schools. One committee was set up to monitor their funding; another looked at the curriculum. Many of the foreigners who fetch up in Syrian jails are radicals who have been involved in religious schools. Seeking ways to curb the niqab in places of education illustrates the government’s twitchiness.
The reaction of Syrians has been mixed. “The niqab is a Wahhabi way of influencing Syria and is a form of violence against women,” says Bassam al-Kadi, the outspoken head of the Syrian Women’s Observatory, a lobby that strongly supports the curb. But some say it is an attack on personal freedom.
http://www.economist.com/node/16595099? ... N=84572590
*****
Syria bans face veils at universities
ALBERT AJI, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
July 19, 2010 11:45 a.m.
DAMASCUS, Syria - Syria has banned the face-covering Islamic veil from
the country's universities, as similar moves in Europe spark cries of
discrimination against Muslims.
The Education Ministry issued the ban Sunday, according to a government
official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not
authorized to speak publicly. The ban affects public and private
universities and aims to protect Syria's secular identity, he said.
Sunday's ban does not affect the headscarf, which many Syrian women
wear.
The niqab is not widespread in Syria, although it has become more common
recently - a move that has not gone unnoticed in a country governed by a
secular, authoritarian regime.
"We have given directives to all universities to ban niqab-wearing women
from registering," the government official told The Associated Press on
Monday.
The niqab "contradicts university ethics," he added.
He also confirmed that hundreds of primary school teachers who were
wearing the niqab at government-run schools were transferred last month
to administrative jobs.
Syria is the latest country to weigh in on the niqab, perhaps the most
visible hallmark of strict, conservative Islam. European countries
including France, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands are considering
similar bans on the grounds that the veils are degrading to women.
Opponents say such bans violate freedom of religion and will stigmatize
all Muslims.
France's lower house of parliament overwhelmingly approved a ban on
wearing burqa-style Islamic veils on July 13 in an effort to define and
protect French values, a move that angered many in the country's large
Muslim community.
Take it off
A secular-minded government rejects excessively religious dress in school
Jul 15th 2010 | Damascus
Avoiding temptation.
AS MEMBERS of France’s parliament voted to outlaw the public wearing of the niqab, the Muslim facial veil that exposes just the eyes, Syria is quietly imposing its own curbs. A number of teachers who wear the niqab in schoolhave been transferred to other jobs. The government’s action, so far ordered only orally, has been shrouded in secrecy. But it has been confirmed by civil-society groups that have been approached by some of the 1,200-odd teachers said to have been affected. Ali Saad, the education minister, is reported to have told teachers that the niqab undermines the “objective, secular methodology” of Syria’s schools.
Religious radicals have long been the biggest threat to Syria’s Baathist government and its secular socialism. The crushing of the Muslim Brotherhood in the town of Hama in 1982, when more than 10,000 of its followers were killed, has not been forgotten. More recently, however, the government has sought to curry favour at home by rallying to the cry of Islam. Indeed, in an effort to emulate neighbouring Turkey, President Bashar Assad’s government has posed as a regional champion of moderate Islam. Enthusiasm for shows of religiosity has grown. In the past few years more women have been wearing the veil. Religious books are selling better. More religious schools are being set up.
Yet the government is still very wary of Muslim fundamentalism, especially in education. Last year it reviewed its regulations for Islamic schools. One committee was set up to monitor their funding; another looked at the curriculum. Many of the foreigners who fetch up in Syrian jails are radicals who have been involved in religious schools. Seeking ways to curb the niqab in places of education illustrates the government’s twitchiness.
The reaction of Syrians has been mixed. “The niqab is a Wahhabi way of influencing Syria and is a form of violence against women,” says Bassam al-Kadi, the outspoken head of the Syrian Women’s Observatory, a lobby that strongly supports the curb. But some say it is an attack on personal freedom.
http://www.economist.com/node/16595099? ... N=84572590
*****
Syria bans face veils at universities
ALBERT AJI, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
July 19, 2010 11:45 a.m.
DAMASCUS, Syria - Syria has banned the face-covering Islamic veil from
the country's universities, as similar moves in Europe spark cries of
discrimination against Muslims.
The Education Ministry issued the ban Sunday, according to a government
official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not
authorized to speak publicly. The ban affects public and private
universities and aims to protect Syria's secular identity, he said.
Sunday's ban does not affect the headscarf, which many Syrian women
wear.
The niqab is not widespread in Syria, although it has become more common
recently - a move that has not gone unnoticed in a country governed by a
secular, authoritarian regime.
"We have given directives to all universities to ban niqab-wearing women
from registering," the government official told The Associated Press on
Monday.
The niqab "contradicts university ethics," he added.
He also confirmed that hundreds of primary school teachers who were
wearing the niqab at government-run schools were transferred last month
to administrative jobs.
Syria is the latest country to weigh in on the niqab, perhaps the most
visible hallmark of strict, conservative Islam. European countries
including France, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands are considering
similar bans on the grounds that the veils are degrading to women.
Opponents say such bans violate freedom of religion and will stigmatize
all Muslims.
France's lower house of parliament overwhelmingly approved a ban on
wearing burqa-style Islamic veils on July 13 in an effort to define and
protect French values, a move that angered many in the country's large
Muslim community.
Last edited by kmaherali on Mon Jul 19, 2010 12:16 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Burka ban ruled out in Britain
survey shows 67% want veils made illegal
The Telegraph
July 18, 2010
Britain will not follow France by introducing a law banning women from wearing the burka, the immigration minister ruled on Saturday night.
Damian Green said such a move would be "rather un-British" and run contrary to conventions of a "tolerant and mutually respectful society."
He said it would be "undesirable" for parliament to vote on a burka ban in Britain and that there was no prospect of the Coalition proposing it.
His comments will dismay a growing number of supporters of a ban. A YouGov survey last week found that 67 per cent of voters wanted the wearing of full-face veils to be made illegal.
"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," he said. "We're a tolerant and mutually respectful society.
"The French political culture is very different. They are an aggressively secular state. They can ban the burka, they ban crucifixes in schools and things like that."
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 0&sponsor=
survey shows 67% want veils made illegal
The Telegraph
July 18, 2010
Britain will not follow France by introducing a law banning women from wearing the burka, the immigration minister ruled on Saturday night.
Damian Green said such a move would be "rather un-British" and run contrary to conventions of a "tolerant and mutually respectful society."
He said it would be "undesirable" for parliament to vote on a burka ban in Britain and that there was no prospect of the Coalition proposing it.
His comments will dismay a growing number of supporters of a ban. A YouGov survey last week found that 67 per cent of voters wanted the wearing of full-face veils to be made illegal.
"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," he said. "We're a tolerant and mutually respectful society.
"The French political culture is very different. They are an aggressively secular state. They can ban the burka, they ban crucifixes in schools and things like that."
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 0&sponsor=
VIDEO
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvid ... otest.html
French women cause a stir in niqab and hot pants in anti-burka ban protest
By Henry Samuel in Paris
Published: 3:10PM BST 01 Oct 2010
Two French female students have made a film of the pair of them strolling through the streets of Paris in a niqab, bare legs and mini-shorts as a critique of France's recently passed law.
Calling themselves the "Niqabitches," the veiled ladies can be seen strutting past prime ministerial offices and various government ministries with a black veil leaving only their eyes visible, but with their long legs naked bar black high heels.
Bemused passers-by can be seen gawping at the pair or asking to take photographs in the clip.
At one stage in the film, the two women approach the entrance to the ministry of immigration and national identity, only to be told by a policeman to go elsewhere. However, a policewoman also present is delighted by their clothes. “I love your outfit, is it to do with the new law?” she asks. “Yes, we want to de-dramatise the situation,” one girl replies. “It’s brilliant. Can I take a photo?” asks the policewoman, who will soon be required to fine public niqab wearers.
In an opinion piece published on the news website, rue89, the anonymous duo – political science and communication students in their twenties – said the film was a tongue-in-cheek way of criticising France's niqab ban, which the Senate passed last month and is due to go into force early next year.
"To put a simple burka on would have been too simple. So we asked ourselves: 'how would the authorities react when faced with women wearing a burka and mini-shorts?," asked the students, one of whom is a Muslim.
"We were not looking to attack or degrade the image of Muslim fundamentalists – each to their own – but rather to question politicians who voted for this law that we consider clearly unconstitutional," they said.
"To dictate what we wear appears to have become the role of the State (as if they didn't have other fish to fry ...)."
The film had been viewed 71,000 times on rue89 and a few hundred times on YouTube yesterday, but French websites predicted it would become an internet sensation.
France's law banning the burka makes no mention of Islam, but President Nicolas Sarkozy's government promoted the law as a means to protect women from being forced to wear Muslim full-face veils such as the burka or the niqab.
France's five-million-strong Muslim minority is Western Europe's largest, but fewer than 2,000 women are believed actually to wear a full face veil.
Once the law is in force, a woman who chooses to defy the ban will receive a fine of 150 euros (£125) or a course of citizenship lessons. A man who forces a woman to go veiled will be fined 30,000 euros (£25,000) and serve a jail term.
It could yet be overturned by France's constitutional court.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvid ... otest.html
French women cause a stir in niqab and hot pants in anti-burka ban protest
By Henry Samuel in Paris
Published: 3:10PM BST 01 Oct 2010
Two French female students have made a film of the pair of them strolling through the streets of Paris in a niqab, bare legs and mini-shorts as a critique of France's recently passed law.
Calling themselves the "Niqabitches," the veiled ladies can be seen strutting past prime ministerial offices and various government ministries with a black veil leaving only their eyes visible, but with their long legs naked bar black high heels.
Bemused passers-by can be seen gawping at the pair or asking to take photographs in the clip.
At one stage in the film, the two women approach the entrance to the ministry of immigration and national identity, only to be told by a policeman to go elsewhere. However, a policewoman also present is delighted by their clothes. “I love your outfit, is it to do with the new law?” she asks. “Yes, we want to de-dramatise the situation,” one girl replies. “It’s brilliant. Can I take a photo?” asks the policewoman, who will soon be required to fine public niqab wearers.
In an opinion piece published on the news website, rue89, the anonymous duo – political science and communication students in their twenties – said the film was a tongue-in-cheek way of criticising France's niqab ban, which the Senate passed last month and is due to go into force early next year.
"To put a simple burka on would have been too simple. So we asked ourselves: 'how would the authorities react when faced with women wearing a burka and mini-shorts?," asked the students, one of whom is a Muslim.
"We were not looking to attack or degrade the image of Muslim fundamentalists – each to their own – but rather to question politicians who voted for this law that we consider clearly unconstitutional," they said.
"To dictate what we wear appears to have become the role of the State (as if they didn't have other fish to fry ...)."
The film had been viewed 71,000 times on rue89 and a few hundred times on YouTube yesterday, but French websites predicted it would become an internet sensation.
France's law banning the burka makes no mention of Islam, but President Nicolas Sarkozy's government promoted the law as a means to protect women from being forced to wear Muslim full-face veils such as the burka or the niqab.
France's five-million-strong Muslim minority is Western Europe's largest, but fewer than 2,000 women are believed actually to wear a full face veil.
Once the law is in force, a woman who chooses to defy the ban will receive a fine of 150 euros (£125) or a course of citizenship lessons. A man who forces a woman to go veiled will be fined 30,000 euros (£25,000) and serve a jail term.
It could yet be overturned by France's constitutional court.
-
ohifwinterends
- Posts: 8
- Joined: Sun Jan 30, 2011 5:03 pm
Personally, I love wearing the hijab. It is important to the Muslim woman's identity. It represents a woman's faith, modesty, femininity, and maturity. I am not Ismaili though, I am just Muslim...I think hijab is a great thing for all though, regardless of religion.
Last edited by ohifwinterends on Mon May 07, 2012 12:06 am, edited 2 times in total.
More evidence why the West should ban the burka
By Licia Corbella, Calgary HeraldApril 20, 2011curriebarracks
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... iebarracks
A woman is seen wearing a burka after France imposed a ban on face veils on April 11. In Canada, we identify one another by our faces, says Licia Corbella. We are not forced to carry government-issued identification, like in all Islamo-fascist states.
Photograph by: GONZALO FUENTES, REUTERS
"Women who do not wear head scarves are being threatened with violence and even death by Islamic extremists . . .," states the opening sentence of an April 18 story in the Daily Mail in Britain.
Sadly, nothing unusual there, except that these threats are being made to non-Muslim women. Again, this is not unusual, since that happens throughout much of the Islamic world that imposes rules about dress on all women, regardless of their religion.
What makes the above news so disturbing is the women who are being threatened with violence and even death by Islamic extremists for not wearing a hijab (the Muslim head covering) and a veil (the niqab) are non-Muslim women living in . . . wait for it . . . Great Britain. Yes, you read that correctly. Non-Muslim women in a free and democratic country are being threatened with violence or death in a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood of London, no less.
The story states: "An Asian woman who works in a pharmacy in east London was told to dress more modestly and wear a veil or the shop would be boycotted.
"When she went to the media to talk about the abuse she suffered, a man later entered the pharmacy and told her: 'If you keep doing these things, we are going to kill you.' "
The 31-year-old pharmacy clerk has been told to take a "holiday" by the pharmacy owners and she now fears she may lose her job.
The "Talibanesque thugs" are also targeting homosexuals in the neighbourhood of Tower Hamlets, with stickers being plastered on walls saying: "Gay free zone. Verily Allah is severe in punishment."
This story, and others like it, should put to rest the nonsensical arguments of people who say that the niqab (which leaves just a slit for the eyes) and the burka (which even covers the eyes with a mesh) are just another choice of clothing that women can make. History simply does not back that up. Wherever the niqab becomes common, it eventually becomes mandatory and women are never given a choice of what to wear again. Of the dozens of women I spoke with in Afghanistan in 2003, not one of them said they chose to wear a burka -they were forced to by the Taliban and they hated it.
That's the problem and that's, in part, what France is attempting to stop with its ban on face coverings in public, which came into effect on April 11.
In January in England, a London court heard that Mohamed Al-Hakim phoned his cousin, Alya AlSafar, 21, at her west London home issuing a deadline to start re-wearing the hijab or face death.
Last June, right here in Canada, Aqsa Parvez's father and her brother were sentenced to life in prison for what the judge called the "twisted and repugnant" murder of the 16-year-old for refusing to cover her hair and dress the way they wanted her to.
Parvez was strangled to death in the family's Mississauga, Ont., home in December 2007. Her father, Muhammad Parvez, and brother Waqas Parvez, 26, pleaded guilty to seconddegree murder.
There are literally dozens of similar stories in western democracies that could be cited.
Tarek Fatah, renowned author and founder of the secular group Muslim Canadian Congress, says he hopes Stephen Harper wins a majority and follows the lead of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and bans the burka and niqab.
"The burka and the niqab is the political uniform of the regiments of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is a fascist, supremacist organization," explained Fatah, who was reached in his Toronto hospital room, where he is recovering from life-saving surgery to remove a cancerous tumour from his spine.
"You can't wear a swastika today and not be a Nazi, and the niqab is the swastika of the Muslim Brotherhood," added Fatah on Tuesday.
"Every woman who wears a burka by choice in the West is a supporter of Islamic fascism, believes in jihad and desires the implementation of sharia law and the destruction of western civilization. There is not one of these women who will say that they are against sharia and they're against jihad," he said. "So, we're dealing with a dress code of a fascist organization that has in its gunsights, the West."
Nevertheless, our Supreme Court has ruled that it's unconstitutional, for instance, to ban the Hells Angels criminal organization members from wearing their colours. The big difference, however, is the Hells Angels don't want every other person on the streets to also wear their uniform. If Islamo-fascists have their way or become the majority, even in a small neighbourhood like Tower Hamlets, they will impose their oppressive dress code on all women, regardless of their individual beliefs. Therein lies the difference.
In Canada, we identify one another by our faces. We are not forced to carry government-issued identification, like in all Islamo-fascist states. Therein lies the biggest difference of all.
Licia Corbella is a columnist and editorial page editor.
[email protected]
By Licia Corbella, Calgary HeraldApril 20, 2011curriebarracks
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... iebarracks
A woman is seen wearing a burka after France imposed a ban on face veils on April 11. In Canada, we identify one another by our faces, says Licia Corbella. We are not forced to carry government-issued identification, like in all Islamo-fascist states.
Photograph by: GONZALO FUENTES, REUTERS
"Women who do not wear head scarves are being threatened with violence and even death by Islamic extremists . . .," states the opening sentence of an April 18 story in the Daily Mail in Britain.
Sadly, nothing unusual there, except that these threats are being made to non-Muslim women. Again, this is not unusual, since that happens throughout much of the Islamic world that imposes rules about dress on all women, regardless of their religion.
What makes the above news so disturbing is the women who are being threatened with violence and even death by Islamic extremists for not wearing a hijab (the Muslim head covering) and a veil (the niqab) are non-Muslim women living in . . . wait for it . . . Great Britain. Yes, you read that correctly. Non-Muslim women in a free and democratic country are being threatened with violence or death in a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood of London, no less.
The story states: "An Asian woman who works in a pharmacy in east London was told to dress more modestly and wear a veil or the shop would be boycotted.
"When she went to the media to talk about the abuse she suffered, a man later entered the pharmacy and told her: 'If you keep doing these things, we are going to kill you.' "
The 31-year-old pharmacy clerk has been told to take a "holiday" by the pharmacy owners and she now fears she may lose her job.
The "Talibanesque thugs" are also targeting homosexuals in the neighbourhood of Tower Hamlets, with stickers being plastered on walls saying: "Gay free zone. Verily Allah is severe in punishment."
This story, and others like it, should put to rest the nonsensical arguments of people who say that the niqab (which leaves just a slit for the eyes) and the burka (which even covers the eyes with a mesh) are just another choice of clothing that women can make. History simply does not back that up. Wherever the niqab becomes common, it eventually becomes mandatory and women are never given a choice of what to wear again. Of the dozens of women I spoke with in Afghanistan in 2003, not one of them said they chose to wear a burka -they were forced to by the Taliban and they hated it.
That's the problem and that's, in part, what France is attempting to stop with its ban on face coverings in public, which came into effect on April 11.
In January in England, a London court heard that Mohamed Al-Hakim phoned his cousin, Alya AlSafar, 21, at her west London home issuing a deadline to start re-wearing the hijab or face death.
Last June, right here in Canada, Aqsa Parvez's father and her brother were sentenced to life in prison for what the judge called the "twisted and repugnant" murder of the 16-year-old for refusing to cover her hair and dress the way they wanted her to.
Parvez was strangled to death in the family's Mississauga, Ont., home in December 2007. Her father, Muhammad Parvez, and brother Waqas Parvez, 26, pleaded guilty to seconddegree murder.
There are literally dozens of similar stories in western democracies that could be cited.
Tarek Fatah, renowned author and founder of the secular group Muslim Canadian Congress, says he hopes Stephen Harper wins a majority and follows the lead of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and bans the burka and niqab.
"The burka and the niqab is the political uniform of the regiments of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is a fascist, supremacist organization," explained Fatah, who was reached in his Toronto hospital room, where he is recovering from life-saving surgery to remove a cancerous tumour from his spine.
"You can't wear a swastika today and not be a Nazi, and the niqab is the swastika of the Muslim Brotherhood," added Fatah on Tuesday.
"Every woman who wears a burka by choice in the West is a supporter of Islamic fascism, believes in jihad and desires the implementation of sharia law and the destruction of western civilization. There is not one of these women who will say that they are against sharia and they're against jihad," he said. "So, we're dealing with a dress code of a fascist organization that has in its gunsights, the West."
Nevertheless, our Supreme Court has ruled that it's unconstitutional, for instance, to ban the Hells Angels criminal organization members from wearing their colours. The big difference, however, is the Hells Angels don't want every other person on the streets to also wear their uniform. If Islamo-fascists have their way or become the majority, even in a small neighbourhood like Tower Hamlets, they will impose their oppressive dress code on all women, regardless of their individual beliefs. Therein lies the difference.
In Canada, we identify one another by our faces. We are not forced to carry government-issued identification, like in all Islamo-fascist states. Therein lies the biggest difference of all.
Licia Corbella is a columnist and editorial page editor.
[email protected]
-
shiraz.virani
- Posts: 1256
- Joined: Thu May 28, 2009 2:52 pm
Foolish story !!! .....Not even once in any part of the western world had woman been forced by the muslims to wear the hijab...Its a conspiracy of the western world to spark violence in parts like afghanistan,pakistan and other sensitive areas !!The story states: "An Asian woman who works in a pharmacy in east London was told to dress more modestly and wear a veil or the shop would be boycotted.
"When she went to the media to talk about the abuse she suffered, a man later entered the pharmacy and told her: 'If you keep doing these things, we are going to kill you.' "
DIVIDE AND RULE !!! ...as simple as that !
Remember the incident of burning the quran in florida ?? Not even one person from saudi or other middle eastern country objected with that....it was only these ultra sensitive countries who are roped into this foolish issues....Spread the hatred, mint money !!!
Hijab is the symbol of modesty and self respect....ITS A CHOICE !
Reinventing the veil
By Leila Ahmed
Published: May 20 2011 23:02 | Last updated: May 20 2011 23:02
Leila AhmedI grew up in Cairo, Egypt. Through the decades of my childhood and youth – the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s – the veil was a rarity not only at home but in many Arab and Muslim-majority cities. In fact, when Albert Hourani, the Oxford historian, surveyed the Arab world in the mid-1950s, he predicted that the veil would soon be a thing of the past.
Hourani’s prophecy, made in an article called The Vanishing Veil: A Challenge to the Old Order, would prove spectacularly wrong, but his piece is nevertheless a gem because it so perfectly captures the ethos of that era. Already the veil was becoming less and less common in my own country, and, as Hourani explains, it was fast disappearing in other “advanced Arab countries”, such as Syria, Iraq and Jordan as well. An unveiling movement had begun to sweep across the Arab world, gaining momentum with the spread of education.
In those days, we shared all of Hourani’s views and assumptions, including the connections he made between unveiling, “advancement” and education (and between veiling and “backwardness”). We believed the veil was merely a cultural habit, of no relevance to Islam or to religious piety. Even deeply devout women did not wear a hijab. Being unveiled simply seemed the modern “advanced” way of being Muslim.
Consequently the veil’s steady “return” from the mid-1980s, and its growing adoption, disturbed us. It was very troubling for people like me who had been working for years as feminists on women and Islam. Why would educated women, particularly those living in free western societies where they could dress as they wished, be willing (apparently) to take on this symbol of patriarchy and women’s oppression?
The appearance of the hijab in my own neighbourhood of Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the late 1990s was the trigger that launched my own studies into the phenomenon. I well remember the very evening that generated that spark. While I was walking past the common with a friend, a well-known feminist who was visiting from the Arab world, we saw a large crowd with all the women in hijab. At the time, this was still an unusual sight and, frankly, it left us both with distinct misgivings.
While troubling on feminist grounds, the veil’s return also disturbed me in other ways. Having settled in the US, I had watched from afar through the 1980s and 1990s as cities back home that I had known as places where scarcely anyone wore hijab were steadily transformed into streets where the vast majority of women now wore it.
This visually dramatic revolution in women’s dress changed, to my eyes, the very look and atmosphere of those cities. It had come about as a result of the spread of Islamism in the 1970s, a very political form of Islam that was worlds away from the deeply inward, apolitical form that had been common in Egypt in my day. Fuelled by the Muslim Brotherhood, the spread of Islamism always brought its signature emblem: the hijab.
Those same decades were marked in Egypt by rising levels of violence and intellectual repression. In 1992, Farag Foda, a well-known journalist and critic of Islamism, was gunned down. Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, a professor at Cairo University, was brought to trial on grounds of apostasy and had to flee the country. Soon after, Naguib Mahfouz, the Egyptian novelist and Nobel Laureate, was stabbed by an Islamist who considered his books blasphemous. Such events seemed a shocking measure of the country’s descent into intolerance.
The sight of the hijab on the streets of America brought all this to mind. Was its growing presence a sign that Islamic militancy was on the rise here too? Where were these young women (it was young women in particular who wore it) getting their ideas? And why were they accepting whatever it was they were being told, in this country where it was entirely normal to challenge patriarchal ideas? Could the Muslim Brotherhood have somehow succeeded in gaining a foothold here?
My instinctive readings of the Cambridge scene proved correct in some ways. The Brotherhood, as well as other Islamist groups, had indeed established a base in America. While most immigrants were not Islamists, those who were quickly set about founding mosques and other organisations. Many immigrants who grew up as I did, without veils, sent their children to Islamic Sunday schools where they imbibed the Islamist outlook – including the hijab.
The veiled are always the most visible, but today Islamist-influenced people make up no more than 30 to 40 per cent of American Muslims. This is also roughly the percentage of women who veil as opposed to those who do not. This means of course that the majority of Muslim American women do not wear the veil, whether because they are secular or because they see it as an emblem of Islamism rather than Islam.
My research may have confirmed some initial fears, but it also challenged my assumptions. As I studied the process by which women had been persuaded to veil in Egypt in the first place, I came to see how essential women themselves had been in its promotion and the cause of Islamism. Among the most important was Zainab al-Ghazali, the “unsung mother” of the Muslim Brotherhood and a forceful activist who had helped keep the organisation going after the death of its founder.
For these women, adopting hijab could be advantageous. Joining Islamist groups and changing dress sometimes empowered them in relation to their parents; it also expanded job and marriage possibilities. Also, since the veil advertised women’s commitment to conservative sexual mores, wearing it paradoxically increased their ability to move freely in public space – allowing them to take jobs in offices shared with men.
My assumptions about the veil’s patriarchal meanings began to unravel in the first interviews I conducted. One woman explained that she wore it as a way of raising consciousness about the sexist messages of our society. (This reminded me of the bra-burning days in America when some women refused to shave their legs in a similar protest.) Another wore the hijab for the same reason that one of her Jewish friends wore a yarmulke: this was religiously required dress that made visible the presence of a minority who were entitled, like all citizens, to justice and equality. For many others, wearing hijab was a way of affirming pride and rejecting negative stereotypes (like the Afros that flourished in the 1960s among African-Americans).
Both Islamist and American ideals – including American ideals of gender justice – seamlessly interweave in the lives of many of this younger generation. This has been a truly remarkable decade as regards Muslim women’s activism. Perhaps the post-9/11 atmosphere in the west, which led to intense criticism of Islam and its views of women, spurred Muslim Americans into corrective action. Women are reinterpreting key religious texts, including the Koran, and they have now taken on positions of leadership in Muslim American institutions: Ingrid Mattson, for example, was twice elected president of the Islamic Society of North America. Such female leadership is unprecedented in the home countries: even al-Ghazali, vital as she was to the Brotherhood, never formally presided over an organisation which included men.
Many of these women – although not all – wear hijab. Clearly here in the west, where women are free to wear what they want, the veil can have multiple meanings. These are typically a far cry from the old notions which I grew up with, and profoundly different from the veil’s ancient patriarchal meanings, which are still in full force in some countries. Here in the west – embedded in the context of democracy, pluralism and a commitment to gender justice – women’s hijabs can have meanings that they could not possibly have in countries which do not even subscribe to the idea of equality.
But things are changing here as well. Interestingly, the issue of hijab and whether it is religiously required or not is now coming under scrutiny among women who grew up wearing it. Some are re-reading old texts and concluding that the veil is irrelevant to Islamic piety. They cast it off even as they remain committed Muslims.
It is too soon to tell whether this development, emerging most particularly among intellectual women who once wore hijab, will gather force and become a new unveiling movement for the 21st century: one that repeats, on other continents and in completely new ways, the unveiling movement of the early 20th century. Still, in a time when a number of countries have tried banning the hijab and when typically such rules have backfired, it is worth noting that here in America, where there are no such bans, a new movement may be quietly getting under way, a movement led this time by committed Muslim women who once wore hijab and who, often after much thought and study, have taken the decision to set it aside.
Occasionally now, although less so than in the past, I find myself nostalgic for the Islam of my childhood and youth, an Islam without veils and far removed from politics. An Islam which people seemed to follow not in the prescribed, regimented ways of today but rather according to their own inner sense, and their own particular temperaments, inclinations and the shifting vicissitudes of their lives.
I think my occasional yearning for that now bygone world has abated (not that it is entirely gone) for a number of reasons. As I followed, a little like a detective, the extraordinary twists and turns of history that brought about this entirely unpredicted and unlikely “return” of the veil, I found the story itself so absorbing that I seemed to forget my nostalgia. I also lost the vague sense of annoyance, almost of affront, that I’d had over the years at how history had, seemingly so casually, set aside the entirely reasonable hopes and possibilities of that brighter and now vanished era.
In the process I came to see clearly what I had long known abstractly: that living religions are by definition dynamic. Witness the fact that today we have women priests and rabbis – something unheard of just decades ago. As I followed the shifting history of the veil – a history which had reversed directions twice in one century – I realised that I had lived through one of the great sea changes now overtaking Islam. My own assumptions and the very ground they stood on had been fundamentally challenged. It now seems absurd that we once labelled people who veiled “backward” and those who did not “advanced”, and that we thought that it was perfectly fine and reasonable to do so. Seeing one’s own life from a new perspective can be unsettling, of course – but it is also quite bracing, and even rather exciting.
Leila Ahmed is the Victor S. Thomas professor of divinity at the Harvard Divinity School. Her new book, ‘A Quiet Revolution: The Veil’s Resurgence, from the Middle East to America’ (Yale University Press), will be published on May 26.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/efc25b9c-81ba ... z1N8EkgRcb
By Leila Ahmed
Published: May 20 2011 23:02 | Last updated: May 20 2011 23:02
Leila AhmedI grew up in Cairo, Egypt. Through the decades of my childhood and youth – the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s – the veil was a rarity not only at home but in many Arab and Muslim-majority cities. In fact, when Albert Hourani, the Oxford historian, surveyed the Arab world in the mid-1950s, he predicted that the veil would soon be a thing of the past.
Hourani’s prophecy, made in an article called The Vanishing Veil: A Challenge to the Old Order, would prove spectacularly wrong, but his piece is nevertheless a gem because it so perfectly captures the ethos of that era. Already the veil was becoming less and less common in my own country, and, as Hourani explains, it was fast disappearing in other “advanced Arab countries”, such as Syria, Iraq and Jordan as well. An unveiling movement had begun to sweep across the Arab world, gaining momentum with the spread of education.
In those days, we shared all of Hourani’s views and assumptions, including the connections he made between unveiling, “advancement” and education (and between veiling and “backwardness”). We believed the veil was merely a cultural habit, of no relevance to Islam or to religious piety. Even deeply devout women did not wear a hijab. Being unveiled simply seemed the modern “advanced” way of being Muslim.
Consequently the veil’s steady “return” from the mid-1980s, and its growing adoption, disturbed us. It was very troubling for people like me who had been working for years as feminists on women and Islam. Why would educated women, particularly those living in free western societies where they could dress as they wished, be willing (apparently) to take on this symbol of patriarchy and women’s oppression?
The appearance of the hijab in my own neighbourhood of Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the late 1990s was the trigger that launched my own studies into the phenomenon. I well remember the very evening that generated that spark. While I was walking past the common with a friend, a well-known feminist who was visiting from the Arab world, we saw a large crowd with all the women in hijab. At the time, this was still an unusual sight and, frankly, it left us both with distinct misgivings.
While troubling on feminist grounds, the veil’s return also disturbed me in other ways. Having settled in the US, I had watched from afar through the 1980s and 1990s as cities back home that I had known as places where scarcely anyone wore hijab were steadily transformed into streets where the vast majority of women now wore it.
This visually dramatic revolution in women’s dress changed, to my eyes, the very look and atmosphere of those cities. It had come about as a result of the spread of Islamism in the 1970s, a very political form of Islam that was worlds away from the deeply inward, apolitical form that had been common in Egypt in my day. Fuelled by the Muslim Brotherhood, the spread of Islamism always brought its signature emblem: the hijab.
Those same decades were marked in Egypt by rising levels of violence and intellectual repression. In 1992, Farag Foda, a well-known journalist and critic of Islamism, was gunned down. Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, a professor at Cairo University, was brought to trial on grounds of apostasy and had to flee the country. Soon after, Naguib Mahfouz, the Egyptian novelist and Nobel Laureate, was stabbed by an Islamist who considered his books blasphemous. Such events seemed a shocking measure of the country’s descent into intolerance.
The sight of the hijab on the streets of America brought all this to mind. Was its growing presence a sign that Islamic militancy was on the rise here too? Where were these young women (it was young women in particular who wore it) getting their ideas? And why were they accepting whatever it was they were being told, in this country where it was entirely normal to challenge patriarchal ideas? Could the Muslim Brotherhood have somehow succeeded in gaining a foothold here?
My instinctive readings of the Cambridge scene proved correct in some ways. The Brotherhood, as well as other Islamist groups, had indeed established a base in America. While most immigrants were not Islamists, those who were quickly set about founding mosques and other organisations. Many immigrants who grew up as I did, without veils, sent their children to Islamic Sunday schools where they imbibed the Islamist outlook – including the hijab.
The veiled are always the most visible, but today Islamist-influenced people make up no more than 30 to 40 per cent of American Muslims. This is also roughly the percentage of women who veil as opposed to those who do not. This means of course that the majority of Muslim American women do not wear the veil, whether because they are secular or because they see it as an emblem of Islamism rather than Islam.
My research may have confirmed some initial fears, but it also challenged my assumptions. As I studied the process by which women had been persuaded to veil in Egypt in the first place, I came to see how essential women themselves had been in its promotion and the cause of Islamism. Among the most important was Zainab al-Ghazali, the “unsung mother” of the Muslim Brotherhood and a forceful activist who had helped keep the organisation going after the death of its founder.
For these women, adopting hijab could be advantageous. Joining Islamist groups and changing dress sometimes empowered them in relation to their parents; it also expanded job and marriage possibilities. Also, since the veil advertised women’s commitment to conservative sexual mores, wearing it paradoxically increased their ability to move freely in public space – allowing them to take jobs in offices shared with men.
My assumptions about the veil’s patriarchal meanings began to unravel in the first interviews I conducted. One woman explained that she wore it as a way of raising consciousness about the sexist messages of our society. (This reminded me of the bra-burning days in America when some women refused to shave their legs in a similar protest.) Another wore the hijab for the same reason that one of her Jewish friends wore a yarmulke: this was religiously required dress that made visible the presence of a minority who were entitled, like all citizens, to justice and equality. For many others, wearing hijab was a way of affirming pride and rejecting negative stereotypes (like the Afros that flourished in the 1960s among African-Americans).
Both Islamist and American ideals – including American ideals of gender justice – seamlessly interweave in the lives of many of this younger generation. This has been a truly remarkable decade as regards Muslim women’s activism. Perhaps the post-9/11 atmosphere in the west, which led to intense criticism of Islam and its views of women, spurred Muslim Americans into corrective action. Women are reinterpreting key religious texts, including the Koran, and they have now taken on positions of leadership in Muslim American institutions: Ingrid Mattson, for example, was twice elected president of the Islamic Society of North America. Such female leadership is unprecedented in the home countries: even al-Ghazali, vital as she was to the Brotherhood, never formally presided over an organisation which included men.
Many of these women – although not all – wear hijab. Clearly here in the west, where women are free to wear what they want, the veil can have multiple meanings. These are typically a far cry from the old notions which I grew up with, and profoundly different from the veil’s ancient patriarchal meanings, which are still in full force in some countries. Here in the west – embedded in the context of democracy, pluralism and a commitment to gender justice – women’s hijabs can have meanings that they could not possibly have in countries which do not even subscribe to the idea of equality.
But things are changing here as well. Interestingly, the issue of hijab and whether it is religiously required or not is now coming under scrutiny among women who grew up wearing it. Some are re-reading old texts and concluding that the veil is irrelevant to Islamic piety. They cast it off even as they remain committed Muslims.
It is too soon to tell whether this development, emerging most particularly among intellectual women who once wore hijab, will gather force and become a new unveiling movement for the 21st century: one that repeats, on other continents and in completely new ways, the unveiling movement of the early 20th century. Still, in a time when a number of countries have tried banning the hijab and when typically such rules have backfired, it is worth noting that here in America, where there are no such bans, a new movement may be quietly getting under way, a movement led this time by committed Muslim women who once wore hijab and who, often after much thought and study, have taken the decision to set it aside.
Occasionally now, although less so than in the past, I find myself nostalgic for the Islam of my childhood and youth, an Islam without veils and far removed from politics. An Islam which people seemed to follow not in the prescribed, regimented ways of today but rather according to their own inner sense, and their own particular temperaments, inclinations and the shifting vicissitudes of their lives.
I think my occasional yearning for that now bygone world has abated (not that it is entirely gone) for a number of reasons. As I followed, a little like a detective, the extraordinary twists and turns of history that brought about this entirely unpredicted and unlikely “return” of the veil, I found the story itself so absorbing that I seemed to forget my nostalgia. I also lost the vague sense of annoyance, almost of affront, that I’d had over the years at how history had, seemingly so casually, set aside the entirely reasonable hopes and possibilities of that brighter and now vanished era.
In the process I came to see clearly what I had long known abstractly: that living religions are by definition dynamic. Witness the fact that today we have women priests and rabbis – something unheard of just decades ago. As I followed the shifting history of the veil – a history which had reversed directions twice in one century – I realised that I had lived through one of the great sea changes now overtaking Islam. My own assumptions and the very ground they stood on had been fundamentally challenged. It now seems absurd that we once labelled people who veiled “backward” and those who did not “advanced”, and that we thought that it was perfectly fine and reasonable to do so. Seeing one’s own life from a new perspective can be unsettling, of course – but it is also quite bracing, and even rather exciting.
Leila Ahmed is the Victor S. Thomas professor of divinity at the Harvard Divinity School. Her new book, ‘A Quiet Revolution: The Veil’s Resurgence, from the Middle East to America’ (Yale University Press), will be published on May 26.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/efc25b9c-81ba ... z1N8EkgRcb
December 12, 2011
No veils allowed during citizenship oaths, Kenney says
By LES PERREAUX
Globe and Mail
Ban stems from concern that some Muslim women wearing face-covering
garments may not actually be reciting the oath
New Canadians will be required to remove veils before swearing the oath
of citizenship, Jason Kenney, the minister of citizenship and
immigration announced on Monday.
Mr. Kenney said he had heard concern from citizenship judges that some
Muslim women wearing face-covering garments may not actually be reciting the oath when taking part in the ceremony.
"They told me last month that it's a fairly common problem. Every week,
in every region of the country, we're dealing with situations where
applicants arrive with a veil on," Mr. Kenney said. "Frankly, I found it
bizarre that the rules allowed people to take the oath with a veil on."
In recent years, the face-covering garments worn by some Muslim women
have come under increasing scrutiny, as governments and courts have
wrangled over when women should be allowed to cover their faces.
Just last week, the Supreme Court of Canada heard an Ontario case over a woman who insisted on wearing the all-covering niqab while testifying at
a sexual assault trial. Quebec has banned face coverings for people
receiving some government services, and those providing them. Two
Conservative attempts to ban veiled voting have stalled before becoming
law in recent years.
Mr. Kenney, who made the announcement in Montreal, dismissed questions of religious freedom.
"When Muslim women do the Haj (pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia) they're
required not to wear a veil. They're required to show their face," he
said. "The idea this is a religious requirement I do not accept."
Additionally, Canadian law takes precedence over religious edict, Mr.
Kenney said. He also announced measures to boost language testing for
new immigrants.
No veils allowed during citizenship oaths, Kenney says
By LES PERREAUX
Globe and Mail
Ban stems from concern that some Muslim women wearing face-covering
garments may not actually be reciting the oath
New Canadians will be required to remove veils before swearing the oath
of citizenship, Jason Kenney, the minister of citizenship and
immigration announced on Monday.
Mr. Kenney said he had heard concern from citizenship judges that some
Muslim women wearing face-covering garments may not actually be reciting the oath when taking part in the ceremony.
"They told me last month that it's a fairly common problem. Every week,
in every region of the country, we're dealing with situations where
applicants arrive with a veil on," Mr. Kenney said. "Frankly, I found it
bizarre that the rules allowed people to take the oath with a veil on."
In recent years, the face-covering garments worn by some Muslim women
have come under increasing scrutiny, as governments and courts have
wrangled over when women should be allowed to cover their faces.
Just last week, the Supreme Court of Canada heard an Ontario case over a woman who insisted on wearing the all-covering niqab while testifying at
a sexual assault trial. Quebec has banned face coverings for people
receiving some government services, and those providing them. Two
Conservative attempts to ban veiled voting have stalled before becoming
law in recent years.
Mr. Kenney, who made the announcement in Montreal, dismissed questions of religious freedom.
"When Muslim women do the Haj (pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia) they're
required not to wear a veil. They're required to show their face," he
said. "The idea this is a religious requirement I do not accept."
Additionally, Canadian law takes precedence over religious edict, Mr.
Kenney said. He also announced measures to boost language testing for
new immigrants.
Widespread support for burka ban, Jason Kenney says; Muslims salute minister for ‘courageous’ move
Stewart Bell Jan 23, 2012 – 9:44 AM ET
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/23 ... eous-move/
*******
Afsun Qureshi: Six secular reasons to ban the burka
National Post Dec 16, 2011 – 8:30 AM ET | Last Updated: Dec 15, 2011 5:55 PM ET
By Afsun Qureshi
The issue of Muslim headgear never stays out of the headlines for long. The latest brouhaha began when Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney declared that new Canadians would have to show their faces when taking their oath of citizenship. Most (including this newspaper’s editorial board) applauded. Others cried foul.
From where I sit, in England’s so-called London-stan, I have a different view on the matter. Let me suggest that we un-complicate the issue by stripping it of its most controversial element, religion. Instead, let us examine the top five non-religious reasons women should avoid opaque head coverings and the robes that go with them.
1. Bad driving. I nearly got clipped by a niqab-wearing London driver recently. When I got out of the car to protest, she said: “Sorry didn’t see you.” Of course she didn’t. That thing creates 270-degree blind spots.
2. Migraines. One of my hijab-wearing friends always sported a permanent scowl and pinched face. When she took it off, I complimented her on her youthful and beautiful looks: “Nah, I’m the same — just pain free. No matter how tightly or how loosely I tied it, it always gave me a headache.”
“Don’t worry though,” she added. “I am still a Muslim.” (I wasn’t worried.)
3. Health and hygiene. Lice is London’s worst kept secret. We have the problem among people of all faiths — from students in dodgy state schools to posh upper class ones, with letters frequently coming home pleading to check children’s hair. Yuck. Yes, Muslims are required to wash five times a day — but that doesn’t include shampooing the head or cleaning the headgear. As a Muslim-born woman, myself: Just sayin’.
4. Health. A burqa-wearing friend bemoaned her 30-pound weight gain in the year since she put on the thing. Why? She barely has to look at her own body, and never has to get into fitted clothes. Burqas are forgiving things: You can have as many butter chickens and gulabjamuns you want. There’s no fitted waistband to send out a warning. The result is that her cholesterol and diabetes levels have soared. The most commonly observed symptom of health risk — girth — has become invisible.
5. Communication. Our local Irish butcher and green grocer have taken to keeping a pen and paper in their aprons for their burqa-clad clients: “It’s not the language,” says my butcher Keith: “I can tell from their notes they write and probably speak English very well — certainly, better than me. I just can’t hear them under those things.”
6. Age. It is impossible for a vendor to determine how old customers are when they try to buy liquor. Believe this: Many ostensibly observant Muslims , burqa or not, drink alcohol — some in copious amounts.
Last week in London, four Somalian Muslim girls were given suspended sentences from a judge after beating a white woman to a pulp in what could have easily been prosecuted as a hate crime. (The Muslim girls yelled: “Get the white slag” before putting her in hospital.) Why was the judge so lenient? He cited the fact that the women, being Muslim and all, were not used to booze. Right.
When Hibo Maxamed, one of the assailants, asked if she wanted to apologize, she said: “What, to the public? I really don’t care.” And there it is. To me, her attitude succinctly sums what far too many freshly minted newcomers, oblivious to their newfound good fortune and the customs of their new country, really think. Good on Jason Kenney for doing something about that.
National Post
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/201 ... the-burka/
Stewart Bell Jan 23, 2012 – 9:44 AM ET
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/23 ... eous-move/
*******
Afsun Qureshi: Six secular reasons to ban the burka
National Post Dec 16, 2011 – 8:30 AM ET | Last Updated: Dec 15, 2011 5:55 PM ET
By Afsun Qureshi
The issue of Muslim headgear never stays out of the headlines for long. The latest brouhaha began when Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney declared that new Canadians would have to show their faces when taking their oath of citizenship. Most (including this newspaper’s editorial board) applauded. Others cried foul.
From where I sit, in England’s so-called London-stan, I have a different view on the matter. Let me suggest that we un-complicate the issue by stripping it of its most controversial element, religion. Instead, let us examine the top five non-religious reasons women should avoid opaque head coverings and the robes that go with them.
1. Bad driving. I nearly got clipped by a niqab-wearing London driver recently. When I got out of the car to protest, she said: “Sorry didn’t see you.” Of course she didn’t. That thing creates 270-degree blind spots.
2. Migraines. One of my hijab-wearing friends always sported a permanent scowl and pinched face. When she took it off, I complimented her on her youthful and beautiful looks: “Nah, I’m the same — just pain free. No matter how tightly or how loosely I tied it, it always gave me a headache.”
“Don’t worry though,” she added. “I am still a Muslim.” (I wasn’t worried.)
3. Health and hygiene. Lice is London’s worst kept secret. We have the problem among people of all faiths — from students in dodgy state schools to posh upper class ones, with letters frequently coming home pleading to check children’s hair. Yuck. Yes, Muslims are required to wash five times a day — but that doesn’t include shampooing the head or cleaning the headgear. As a Muslim-born woman, myself: Just sayin’.
4. Health. A burqa-wearing friend bemoaned her 30-pound weight gain in the year since she put on the thing. Why? She barely has to look at her own body, and never has to get into fitted clothes. Burqas are forgiving things: You can have as many butter chickens and gulabjamuns you want. There’s no fitted waistband to send out a warning. The result is that her cholesterol and diabetes levels have soared. The most commonly observed symptom of health risk — girth — has become invisible.
5. Communication. Our local Irish butcher and green grocer have taken to keeping a pen and paper in their aprons for their burqa-clad clients: “It’s not the language,” says my butcher Keith: “I can tell from their notes they write and probably speak English very well — certainly, better than me. I just can’t hear them under those things.”
6. Age. It is impossible for a vendor to determine how old customers are when they try to buy liquor. Believe this: Many ostensibly observant Muslims , burqa or not, drink alcohol — some in copious amounts.
Last week in London, four Somalian Muslim girls were given suspended sentences from a judge after beating a white woman to a pulp in what could have easily been prosecuted as a hate crime. (The Muslim girls yelled: “Get the white slag” before putting her in hospital.) Why was the judge so lenient? He cited the fact that the women, being Muslim and all, were not used to booze. Right.
When Hibo Maxamed, one of the assailants, asked if she wanted to apologize, she said: “What, to the public? I really don’t care.” And there it is. To me, her attitude succinctly sums what far too many freshly minted newcomers, oblivious to their newfound good fortune and the customs of their new country, really think. Good on Jason Kenney for doing something about that.
National Post
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/201 ... the-burka/
-
Amirali.Nanji
- Posts: 1
- Joined: Sun Dec 16, 2012 6:18 am
Allah's can not be disputed fullstop
Allah's Holly Quran whoever goes against them has undress himself/herself imaan, another mentioned topic true we are Shias but Quran encompasses all muslims wheather sunnis or shias, there is no differences. The Prophet said "women dresses as women and men dresses as men' and hijab is a must whether you like it or not, Muslim women are pearls to be covered not stones to be seen and found every where. Its up to you choose follow the Holly Quran and the Prophet (PBUH) or follow your whimps.
We are children of our time, ibn'ul Waqht as per the command of the Holy Prophet (PBUH).
We do not live in the past. Our faith is not a faith of the past. Islam is the faith of today and the faith of tomorrow. We stopped using camels a long tie ago, nowadays we use aeroplanes and boats and cars and trains... the world does not wait... and wherever we turn, God is everywhere so even when we travel to other planets, we will not be handicapped in our prayers to the Almighty.
It is not the burqah or the veil that makes a women humble and respected, it is the softness and kindness of her soul.
the need to be respected is not the monopole of only Muslim women, it is there for all women regardless of their faith. That is part of "humanity".
But of course all this does not justify generalisation and mockery which are made about Muslims in cheap British tabloids...
We do not live in the past. Our faith is not a faith of the past. Islam is the faith of today and the faith of tomorrow. We stopped using camels a long tie ago, nowadays we use aeroplanes and boats and cars and trains... the world does not wait... and wherever we turn, God is everywhere so even when we travel to other planets, we will not be handicapped in our prayers to the Almighty.
It is not the burqah or the veil that makes a women humble and respected, it is the softness and kindness of her soul.
the need to be respected is not the monopole of only Muslim women, it is there for all women regardless of their faith. That is part of "humanity".
But of course all this does not justify generalisation and mockery which are made about Muslims in cheap British tabloids...
The German Islam Scholar Lamya Kaddor
Why I as a Muslim Woman Don't Wear a Headscarf
Does the Koran really demand that women wear headscarves? Or is it mainly older men who claim they can decide how women should dress – with no theological foundation whatsoever? For the Islam scholar Lamya Kaddor, there is no question about it: the headscarf is obsolete.
More....
http://en.qantara.de/Why-I-as-a-Muslim- ... index.html
Why I as a Muslim Woman Don't Wear a Headscarf
Does the Koran really demand that women wear headscarves? Or is it mainly older men who claim they can decide how women should dress – with no theological foundation whatsoever? For the Islam scholar Lamya Kaddor, there is no question about it: the headscarf is obsolete.
More....
http://en.qantara.de/Why-I-as-a-Muslim- ... index.html
Re: Allah's can not be disputed fullstop
Put your money where your mouth is - and show us the references from the Qu'ran and the authenticated hadiths of the Prophet that refer to wearing the Hejab and Burqah.Amirali.Nanji wrote:Allah's Holly Quran whoever goes against them has undress himself/herself imaan, another mentioned topic true we are Shias but Quran encompasses all muslims wheather sunnis or shias, there is no differences. The Prophet said "women dresses as women and men dresses as men' and hijab is a must whether you like it or not, Muslim women are pearls to be covered not stones to be seen and found every where. Its up to you choose follow the Holly Quran and the Prophet (PBUH) or follow your whimps.
Or have you forgotten the picture of Himself with Mata Salamat that Imam Sultan Mohammed Shah sent to the Jamats of East Africa as to how His Spiritual daughters should dress? "Adopt Western Dress?"...
Or should we expect a post from you next telling us we need to bury new born daughters in the sand as that is what the Arabs of the Prophet's time used to do?...or own slaves?...
We have a "living" Imam that interprets our Faith and Tariqah for us.
Shams
Re: Allah's can not be disputed fullstop
i think we have to define what is "Hijab"ShamsB wrote:Put your money where your mouth is - and show us the references from the Qu'ran and the authenticated hadiths of the Prophet that refer to wearing the Hejab and Burqah.Amirali.Nanji wrote:Allah's Holly Quran whoever goes against them has undress himself/herself imaan, another mentioned topic true we are Shias but Quran encompasses all muslims wheather sunnis or shias, there is no differences. The Prophet said "women dresses as women and men dresses as men' and hijab is a must whether you like it or not, Muslim women are pearls to be covered not stones to be seen and found every where. Its up to you choose follow the Holly Quran and the Prophet (PBUH) or follow your whimps.
Or have you forgotten the picture of Himself with Mata Salamat that Imam Sultan Mohammed Shah sent to the Jamats of East Africa as to how His Spiritual daughters should dress? "Adopt Western Dress?"...
Or should we expect a post from you next telling us we need to bury new born daughters in the sand as that is what the Arabs of the Prophet's time used to do?...or own slaves?...
We have a "living" Imam that interprets our Faith and Tariqah for us.
Shams
Personally i think minimum "hijab" for women regarding clothes is that they should cover their chests and lengthen their garments or dresses and they should be modest and not revealing.
The additional Hijab like covering head, hair, eyes, ears etc is good but not must.
This I based on the following verses:
Chapter 24 : Light (Al-Noor)
24:31 And say to the believing women that they cast down their looks and guard their private parts and do not display their ornaments except what appears thereof, and let them wear their head-coverings over their bosoms, and not display their ornaments except to their husbands or their fathers, or the fathers of their husbands, or their sons, or the sons of their husbands, or their brothers, or their brothers' sons, or their sisters' sons, or their women, or those whom their right hands possess, or the male servants not having need (of women), or the children who have not attained knowledge of what is hidden of women; and let them not strike their feet so that what they hide of their ornaments may be known; and turn to Allah all of you, O believers! so that you may be successful.
Chapter 33 : The Parties (Al-Ahzãb)
33:59 O Prophet! say to your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers that they let down upon them their over-garments; this will be more proper, that they may be known, and thus they will not be given trouble; and Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.
-
shiraz.virani
- Posts: 1256
- Joined: Thu May 28, 2009 2:52 pm
Individual Expressions
“My own sense is that if an individual wishes to associate publicly with a faith, that’s the right of that individual to do that, whether he’s a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim. That is, to me, something which is important.” — Aga Khan
Compulsion
“To go from there to an imposed process by forces in society, to me is unacceptable. It’s got to be the choice of the individual who wishes to associate with his faith or her faith. I have great respect for any individual who wants in the right way to be associated with his own faith. I accept that totally and I would never challenge it.” — Aga Khan
“My own sense is that if an individual wishes to associate publicly with a faith, that’s the right of that individual to do that, whether he’s a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim. That is, to me, something which is important.” — Aga Khan
Compulsion
“To go from there to an imposed process by forces in society, to me is unacceptable. It’s got to be the choice of the individual who wishes to associate with his faith or her faith. I have great respect for any individual who wants in the right way to be associated with his own faith. I accept that totally and I would never challenge it.” — Aga Khan
-
tereishqnachaya
- Posts: 16
- Joined: Sat Feb 08, 2014 6:18 pm
Should junk food be banned as well since it causes obesity and other health concerns? How about tight jeans since they cause yeast infections?kmaherali wrote:Widespread support for burka ban, Jason Kenney says; Muslims salute minister for ‘courageous’ move
Stewart Bell Jan 23, 2012 – 9:44 AM ET
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/23 ... eous-move/
*******
Afsun Qureshi: Six secular reasons to ban the burka
National Post Dec 16, 2011 – 8:30 AM ET | Last Updated: Dec 15, 2011 5:55 PM ET
By Afsun Qureshi
The issue of Muslim headgear never stays out of the headlines for long. The latest brouhaha began when Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney declared that new Canadians would have to show their faces when taking their oath of citizenship. Most (including this newspaper’s editorial board) applauded. Others cried foul.
From where I sit, in England’s so-called London-stan, I have a different view on the matter. Let me suggest that we un-complicate the issue by stripping it of its most controversial element, religion. Instead, let us examine the top five non-religious reasons women should avoid opaque head coverings and the robes that go with them.
1. Bad driving. I nearly got clipped by a niqab-wearing London driver recently. When I got out of the car to protest, she said: “Sorry didn’t see you.” Of course she didn’t. That thing creates 270-degree blind spots.
2. Migraines. One of my hijab-wearing friends always sported a permanent scowl and pinched face. When she took it off, I complimented her on her youthful and beautiful looks: “Nah, I’m the same — just pain free. No matter how tightly or how loosely I tied it, it always gave me a headache.”
“Don’t worry though,” she added. “I am still a Muslim.” (I wasn’t worried.)
3. Health and hygiene. Lice is London’s worst kept secret. We have the problem among people of all faiths — from students in dodgy state schools to posh upper class ones, with letters frequently coming home pleading to check children’s hair. Yuck. Yes, Muslims are required to wash five times a day — but that doesn’t include shampooing the head or cleaning the headgear. As a Muslim-born woman, myself: Just sayin’.
4. Health. A burqa-wearing friend bemoaned her 30-pound weight gain in the year since she put on the thing. Why? She barely has to look at her own body, and never has to get into fitted clothes. Burqas are forgiving things: You can have as many butter chickens and gulabjamuns yo
All these things are easily avoidable. I wear the hijab. I became wearing it at age 15 and it has been over five years since then. It was my personal decision and not something from family practice. I have none such problems and I have never heard other hijabis, and I have been close to quite a few, complain of these kinds of issues related to wearing the head scarf. I enjoy wearing hijab. I feel comfortable in the hijab and I would feel uncomfortable with someone asking me to remove it if it was truly not necessary. I wear the hijab partially to be an ambassador for my religion. People will come up to me whether I am at school or in the grocery store and ask me questions about Islam.
Maybe Ismailis have a prejudice against hijabis because they are openly "shariati", but please do not let it be so.
Meet the hijabistas
By
Zohra Aly
Muslim women are no longer invisible beings behind their veils, with a new wave expressing their fashion flair.
The image of the modern Muslim woman is changing fast, fuelled by the rise and rise of the hijabista phenomenon. No longer resigned to wearing plain and shapeless coverings in sombre shades, Muslim women who choose to "assume hijab" – to dress modestly according to their religion – are now expressing themselves in fashions that are creative without compromising modesty.
The word hijabista hasn't made it into the dictionary yet, but it exists in the lingo of Muslim fashion blogging. The fusion of the words "hijab" and "fashionista" took root when young women – inspired by catwalks, the high street and fashion magazines – tweaked the fashions of the day into hijab-friendly clothing.
In May last year, US-based trend-forecasting firm Trendera listed hijab fashion bloggers in their weekly round-up of six trends to watch. However, Mariam Sobh, a Chicago-based journalist, spotted the fashion niche long before that. In 2007, Sobh launched her website, Hijab Trendz, to blend catwalk looks with Islamic dress codes. Currently, her Facebook page has more than 800,000 followers.
Read more at
ww.smh.com.au/lifestyle/meet-the-hijabistas-20140422-3722p.html#ixzz305mMOxYX
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islamicity.com/m/news_frame.asp?Frame=1&referenceID=7727
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By
Zohra Aly
Muslim women are no longer invisible beings behind their veils, with a new wave expressing their fashion flair.
The image of the modern Muslim woman is changing fast, fuelled by the rise and rise of the hijabista phenomenon. No longer resigned to wearing plain and shapeless coverings in sombre shades, Muslim women who choose to "assume hijab" – to dress modestly according to their religion – are now expressing themselves in fashions that are creative without compromising modesty.
The word hijabista hasn't made it into the dictionary yet, but it exists in the lingo of Muslim fashion blogging. The fusion of the words "hijab" and "fashionista" took root when young women – inspired by catwalks, the high street and fashion magazines – tweaked the fashions of the day into hijab-friendly clothing.
In May last year, US-based trend-forecasting firm Trendera listed hijab fashion bloggers in their weekly round-up of six trends to watch. However, Mariam Sobh, a Chicago-based journalist, spotted the fashion niche long before that. In 2007, Sobh launched her website, Hijab Trendz, to blend catwalk looks with Islamic dress codes. Currently, her Facebook page has more than 800,000 followers.
Read more at
ww.smh.com.au/lifestyle/meet-the-hijabistas-20140422-3722p.html#ixzz305mMOxYX
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islamicity.com/m/news_frame.asp?Frame=1&referenceID=7727
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Hijab:Fird (Obligation) or fiction?
By Shaikh Suhaib Webb
://www.suhaibwebb.com/islam-studies/quran/ ... r-fiction/
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By Shaikh Suhaib Webb
://www.suhaibwebb.com/islam-studies/quran/ ... r-fiction/
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I told you many times that hejab is not necessary in this morden times where Muslims womens are changing them selves from wearing hejab to wearing Bikini mow a days! Seems that you just tired to wearing Burkas and all off sudden you have an interest in wearing Bikini instead of Burkha ND swim in a pool, no needs to tell you with whom!?
Well, you knows this very well whom I talking ab... out? and I promiss that I will pay for your dozons of bikinis in advance
so that you do not have to buy it again for a while 
Well, you knows this very well whom I talking ab... out? and I promiss that I will pay for your dozons of bikinis in advance
so that you do not have to buy it again for a while French Muslims Say Veil Bans Give Cover to Bias
More than 10 years after France passed its first anti-veil law restricting young girls from wearing veils in public schools, the head coverings of observant Muslim women, from colorful silk scarves to black chadors, have become one of the most potent flash points in the nation’s tense relations with its vibrant and growing Muslim population.
Mainstream politicians continue to push for new measures to deny veiled women access to jobs, educational institutions and community life. They often say they are doing so for the benefit of public order or in the name of laïcité, the French term for the separation of church and state.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/27/world ... 05309&_r=0
More than 10 years after France passed its first anti-veil law restricting young girls from wearing veils in public schools, the head coverings of observant Muslim women, from colorful silk scarves to black chadors, have become one of the most potent flash points in the nation’s tense relations with its vibrant and growing Muslim population.
Mainstream politicians continue to push for new measures to deny veiled women access to jobs, educational institutions and community life. They often say they are doing so for the benefit of public order or in the name of laïcité, the French term for the separation of church and state.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/27/world ... 05309&_r=0
I am trying to find Hadith of Prophet's above saying.Admin wrote:We are children of our time, ibn'ul Waqht as per the command of the Holy Prophet (PBUH).
It is not prophet who said this but Mowlana Sultan Muhammad Shah (I.e., Aga Khan III, the 48 th Imam) used to say ...... He is Ibn-Al-Waqt ( son of the times) like The Prophet was Ibn-Al-Waqt , so present the Imam's word is final"-----
Reference:
Chapter: Living tradition of Ismaili Ginans
*ttps://books.google.com/books?id=iYOiAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA155&lpg=PA155&dq=Ibn-Al-Waqt,+Aga+Khan&source=bl&ots=E8O90Wc7ej&sig=0sP8OXbR4ejZ_WgF7ukHNMuI-gg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=SRRnVf_5FZKlyASDpIGQBQ&ved=0CA8Q6AEwAQ%23v=onepage&q=Ibn-Al-Waqt,%20Aga%20Khan&f=false/#v=snippet&q=Ibn-Al-Waqt%2C%20Aga%20Khan&f=false
From :islamicencyclopedia
*ttp://islamicencyclopedia.org/public/index/topicDetail/id/380
'Ibn-Al-Waqt'
“The son of the moment,” a title that is often given to the Sufis because they seek to live in the present, in the eternal now.
In Urdu,
it refers to an opportunist who attempts to take advantage of the hour or situation in which he finds himself, unmindful of morals and principles.
Note: add 'h' instead of '*' in front of links and paste in your browser
One must be careful in putting words in Prophet's mouth.
Salaam