NHS hymen repairs
The other day, Vanessa Feltz brought up the issue of the NHS offering hymen repairs to women of certain ethnic origins who need to appear to be virgins on their wedding night. Apparently, according...
Category: Women
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...
Alice Walker and her views on Muslim women
Guardian Unlimited: No retreat Sara Wajid interviews the novelist Alice Walker, best known for writing The Color Purple and – uh, not much else. They discuss the recent elections, 9/11 and the reaction to...
Feltz pinches story from the Star
This morning, Vanessa Feltz took her BBC London radio show to a new low by recycling a story from the Black Hole, otherwise known as the Daily Star, about non-Muslims supposedly being banned from...
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...
Mormons, Muslims and abusive polygamy
The Guardian yesterday carried a major feature on the fundamentalist Mormon polygamists who dominate two small towns in the Utah/Arizona border area: Husband and Wives gives the whole historical background, the details of the...
British gynaecologists back euthanasia
I always find myself surprised when I agree with anything Melanie Phillips says, but when she’s not talking about global warming (or the lack thereof) or anything to do with Islam, Israel, or the so-called “War on Terror” and its offshoots, which is nowadays what she’s best known for, I often do. In this case, it’s the declaration of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in favour of the “active euthanasia” of severely disabled babies. In the Netherlands, infant euthanasia is allowed “for a range of incurable conditions, including severe spina bifida and the painful skin condition called epidermolysis bullosa”.
UK Asian girls and forced marriages
EducationGuardian.co.uk: Do not contact the parents This story appeared yesterday in the Guardian's education supplement and concerns young Asian girls (often Muslims) taken out of school to go "back home" to get married, often...
It’s not about her virginity
The author of this article at Comment is Free drew this outrageous conclusion to her story about growing up in a Pakistani family which wasn’t that religious but was very strongly “traditional” with regard...
Muslim women, hijab and employment
Guardian Unlimited: Why are so many of Britain's Muslim women unemployed? A report from yesterday's Guardian on how women from ethnic minorities generally, but particularly those of Bangladeshi and Pakistani origin have low economic...
The hypocrisy of Fadela Amara
The Guardian today has an interview with French-Algerian "feminist" Fadela Amara. Here is described the second of two incidents which were influential in this woman's career, which took place in October 2002: French women...
Busybodies on niqab (2)
It's still open season on niqabis, as the Independent prints four letters in response to Deborah Borr's attack on them in Saturday's edition. The letters can be read here in the left-hand column (not...
Another busybody article about hijab
A woman called Deborah Orr (or should that be Deborah Borr) wrote an article for today's (Saturday's) Independent attacking Muslim women who cover their faces ([1], [2]), alleging that face coverings are "are physical...
The Bengali rambling women
BBC NEWS | England | London | Rambling in headscarves The BBC on a group of Bangladeshi ladies in London who go on rambles in London with the Ramblers' Association – normally associated with...
Salma Yaqoob: the women voted for me
From Comment is Free, Salma Yaqoob's rebuttal to Nick Cohen's assessment of why she was elected as Birmingham's only Muslim woman councillor (here, with my rebuttal here). She accuses the local Labour and Lib...
Documentary on women in Iraq tonight
There is a documentary on Channel 4 tonight (Dispatches, 8pm) on women in Iraq and how they have fared since the "liberation" of their country (not very well, is the message). You can read...
Not a good career for a Muslima
The BBC is reporting on a Muslim woman who wears hijab and whose aunt is an actress in Iran and wants to make it on the stage or screen here. I don’t see how...
On Phyllis Chesler and Jack ‘n’ Condi
This Tuesday I found [an interview](http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1746131,00.html) in the Guardian with the American “feminist” Phyllis Chesler, whose recent output – much of it on [Front Page Magazine](http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/authors.asp?ID=1947) – seems to consist of attacks on Muslims...
So, Shabina has lost
Today the House of Lords, effectively the UK’s supreme court, allowed an appeal by a school which had excluded a Muslim female pupil, Shabina Begum, because she insisted on wearing an Arabic-style jilbab, which...