Indigo Jo on August 27th, 2010

France’s ban on the Islamic veil has little to do with female emancipation | Law | guardian.co.uk Joan Wallach Scott, the author of The Politics of the Veil, on the real motivation behind the move to ban the niqaab in France: The national assembly’s action came on July 13, as the country prepared to celebrate […]

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Continue reading about France niqaab ban “not meant to help women”

Indigo Jo on July 20th, 2010

This didn’t quite come too late for yesterday’s entry on niqaab, but that was dragging on too long and I had an appointment this morning that I should have been preparing for while I was writing it. However, there was a story that the Syrian government had banned women from wearing niqaab while in universities […]

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Continue reading about Muslim country bans niqaab shock!

Indigo Jo on July 19th, 2010

This morning Vanessa Feltz, the host of the BBC London morning phone-in show, had among her topics the question of whether the so-called burqa should be banned (you can listen to it, if you’re in the UK, here until next Monday). She had a couple of other topics, but it seems the phone was buzzing […]

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Continue reading about Nessie allows bigoted ‘debate’ about niqaab

Indigo Jo on May 18th, 2010

I was directed by Islamophobia Watch to an article on Normblog taking apart Christopher Hitchen’s arguments on the Slate website in favour of banning the niqaab in France and elsewhere. The Belgian parliament has already approved a ban, the French parliament is debating it (although the prospect of Arab divestment and the likelihood of it […]

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Continue reading about Norman Geras demolishes Hitchens on niqab ban (partly)

Indigo Jo on April 30th, 2010

Jerusalem Post: Rejecting the burka As Muslims it’s been our recent experience that many of the voices raised loudest against Muslims in the west have connections to Israel, particularly in the United States but also in the UK; they include radical Zionists, secular Jews who like to police which types of Muslims the left, in […]

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Continue reading about JPost editorial tells Europe how to deal with Muslim women

Indigo Jo on March 15th, 2010

Today I found a post at the blog The Answer’s 42 alleging that the so-called burqa was to blame for the increased incidence of vitamin D deficiency in Asian women in the UK and resulting rickets in their children. The author linked a discussion between Nigel Farage and Salma Yaqoob on the Radio 4 Woman’s […]

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Continue reading about Niqaab and rickets in the UK

Indigo Jo on January 17th, 2010

I didn’t watch the Muslim Driving School programme, which was on BBC2 last Tuesday (at the right time to clash with Defamation, which I reviewed in my last entry), but I finally got round to seeing it just now, and I was pleasantly surprised. It was all shown in the north of England around Manchester, […]

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Continue reading about Muslim women driving, and contrasts on niqab

Indigo Jo on October 22nd, 2009

Gary Younge in today’s Guardian traces the upsurge in anti-Muslim bigotry to Jack Straw’s attack on the niqab in 2006: Three years ago this month Jack Straw argued his case for urging Muslim women who attend his MP’s surgery to remove their niqab. He said that he wanted to start a debate. In this, at […]

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Continue reading about How the 2006 niqab affair popularised the BNP

Indigo Jo on October 14th, 2009

Last Friday and last Sunday, Shelina Zahra Janmohamed appeared on BBC Radio debating the issue of hijab with two foreign anti-hijab agitators. One of them is part of London’s small but well-connected Iranian exile community, namely Diana Nammi; the other is Marnia Lazreg, who has just published a book entitled Questioning the Veil, through Princeton […]

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Continue reading about Shelina Zahra takes on anti-hijabists

Indigo Jo on October 7th, 2009

Much as I suspected that the snake Tantawi’s words would be thrown in the faces of Muslims in the West, this has now happened, as an MP from Silvio Berlusconi’s political machine “People of Freedom” has cited him as justification for banning the ‘burka’ in Italy: The Northern League’s proposal would amend a 1975 law, […]

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Continue reading about Tantawi: the Italian bigots’ imam

Indigo Jo on October 6th, 2009

Yesterday it was reported that Muhammad Tantawi, the dean of al-Azhar University in Egypt, announced that he was going to issue an “edict” banning the niqab or female facial veil. This happened after he visited a girls’ school, and found one student wearing niqab and demanded that she remove it: “Why are you wearing the […]

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Continue reading about A powerful man humiliates a young girl

Indigo Jo on August 2nd, 2009

The sister known as Digital Nomad has posted two interesting entries recently, the most recent on this nonsense of condemning mobile phones as a cause of fitna and fornication. This is not just within the Muslim community — Haredi Jews in some places have “kosher” mobile phones which won’t ring certain numbers and can’t sent […]

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Continue reading about Digital Niqabi on fitna and niqab

Indigo Jo on June 22nd, 2009

I’ve been getting a lot of tweets lately about talk of a ban on the so-called burqa in France, the latest chapter in the long saga of the French obsession with what Muslim women wear on their heads (Muslim responses: 1, 2. I’m sure I’m not the only Muslim who gets annoyed at the tiresome […]

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Continue reading about What are the shibboleths of ignorance about Islam?

Indigo Jo on April 14th, 2008
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Continue reading about Sister Ardo responds to “Blog Niqaab”

Indigo Jo on February 17th, 2008
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Continue reading about The fallacy of multiculturalism helping terrorism

Indigo Jo on January 28th, 2007
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Continue reading about Cameron on “British values”

Indigo Jo on December 28th, 2006
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Continue reading about Khadijah Atkinson’s alternative Christmas message

Indigo Jo on December 24th, 2006
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Continue reading about Nazir-Ali jumps in on veil

Indigo Jo on December 24th, 2006
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Continue reading about Reactions to the latest fake veil scandal

Indigo Jo on December 7th, 2006

The contrived controversy over the Channel 4 “Alternative Christmas Message” dragged on today, with the Daily Mirror featuring an interview with the lady in which she told the interviewer that she, being a patriotic British citizen, will be watching the Queen rather than her own message. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, however, comes out with the usual attack on the niqab, alleging that Channel 4 “has decided to glamorise and validate the veil, showing cool indifference to the meanings of one of the most violently contested symbols in the world today”. The article appeared in the Evening Standard, which does not generally publish its opinion pieces online.

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Continue reading about Khadija Ravat and the niqab’s good name