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 […]
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 […]
Continue reading about Muslim women driving, and contrasts on niqab
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, […]
Continue reading about How the 2006 niqab affair popularised the BNP
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 […]
Continue reading about Shelina Zahra takes on anti-hijabists
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 […]
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 […]
Continue reading about A powerful man humiliates a young girl
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 […]
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 […]
Continue reading about What are the shibboleths of ignorance about Islam?
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.
Continue reading about Khadija Ravat and the niqab’s good name
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