Niqaab and rickets in the UK
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...
Category: Niqab (face-covering)
Muslim women driving, and contrasts on niqab
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...
How the 2006 niqab affair popularised the BNP
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...
Shelina Zahra takes on anti-hijabists
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...
Tantawi: the Italian bigots’ imam
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...
A powerful man humiliates a young girl
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...
Digital Niqabi on fitna and niqab
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...
What are the shibboleths of ignorance about Islam?
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...
Sister Ardo responds to “Blog Niqaab”
Sister Ardo from Ottawa (whom you may remember contributed to my coverage of the Jack Straw niqaab affair of 2006) has responded to sister Aaminah’s article on observing niqaab while interacting with others over...
The fallacy of multiculturalism helping terrorism
Last week the Royal United Services Institute, “the leading forum in the UK for national and international Defence and Security” founded by the Duke of Wellington, published a report from a panel which included,...
Cameron on “British values”
The Conservative Party leader David Cameron wrote in today’s Observer about the “British values” issues which were under much discussion this past week. Of merit is his debunking of stupid suggestions like having a...
Khadijah Atkinson’s alternative Christmas message
YouTube - Channel 4’s alternative Christmas message This is the Alternative Christmas Message that Channel 4 broadcast after the earlier candidate, Khadija Ravat, pulled out after discovering that the community was opposed and that...
Nazir-Ali jumps in on veil
Sunday Telegraph: Ban veils in public, says Asian bishop The Anglican Bishop of Rochester Michael Nazir-Ali (son of a convert to Catholicism from Islam) jumps in on the latest bogus veil controversy by calling...
Reactions to the latest fake veil scandal
Comment is free: Lifting the veil Rajnaara Akhtar (chair of Protect Hijab) on the recent fake scandal involving the Somali who was involved in murdering the policewomen Sharon Beshenivsky and supposedly might have escaped...
Khadija Ravat and the niqab’s good name
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.
Khadija’s Christmas message
Via Deenport and Pickled Politics, we hear that Channel 4 is planning to have a woman in niqab to read their “alternative Christmas message” this year: A veiled Muslim woman will deliver this year’s...
Naima Bouteldja: Muslims and European authoritarianism
Naima Bouteldja, in today’s Guardian, discusses the impending Dutch niqab ban and the pattern of governments stoking anti-Muslim hostility for political ends: Naima Azough, a Dutch Green MP, points out that the ban would...
Abu Iman Squires refutes MCC on niqab
Mere Islam: The Face Veil…Let’s Be Honest Abu Iman Squires (of Mere Islam and Muslim Answers) delivers a refutation of the recent article published by the so-called Muslim Canadian Congress (the “Islamic organisation” which...
Niqab row “has increased veil’s popularity”
BBC NEWS: How veil remarks reinforced its support How Jack Straw’s comments on his dislike of the niqab (and the idiotic tabloid press campaign which followed it) increased the popularity of the veil among...
Searchlight features Nazi bombs and niqab
The latest edition of the British anti-fascist magazine [Searchlight](http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/index.php] has a front-page feature on last month’s incident where chemical precursors to explosives were found at a house belonging to a member of the British...