The borders of this section are problematic. Presently, we’ll regroup in it contributions dealing with the indepth issue of the place of veils in political, cultural and religious history, beyond the ongoing debates on “the” veil. New textes will be posted and others, already published on our website, will be moved here.
Religious identity isn’t something you can take off in public. The European court of justice has turned the headscarf into a symbol of resistance.
This week’s decision by the European court of justice to allow the hijab to be banned in the workplace is yet another sign of the continent’s (...)
Dear Organizers of the Women’s March.
Dear Human Rights Watch!
I am a female Arab academic who considers Islam to be her religion. I have extensively researched the conditions of women in the Arab Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in addition to the United Kingdom and South Africa; (...)
When I was 12 years old, soon after the Islamists took power in Iran, their thugs came to my school to keep boys and girls separate in the playground.
Even at 12, we girls were seen to be the source of chaos and fitnah in society.
This Islamist obsession with sexualising the girl child and (...)
Hijab is an individual choice. The woman who wears it feels the headscarf empowers her as a symbol of her distinct identity. Arguments like these address our core liberal beliefs, such as the right to individual choice and the duty to empower the disempowered. We encounter these arguments every (...)
Mayoral candidate says Muslim women should consider whether to remain veiled when interacting with public service providers.
Sadiq Khan, the Labour candidate for London mayor, has said there is “a question to be asked” about why some Muslim women in the capital wear hijabs and niqabs.
Khan, who (...)
Articles by Lalia Ducos and Zazi Sadou, Algerian feminists. Introduction by Marieme Helie Lucas.
Introduction
On Wednesday, April 20 2016 , some students at the prestigious Paris Institute of Political Sciences which prides itself with educating France’s elite, organized a ‘Hijab Day’, a (...)
Open letter to WUNRN lists moderators, after they circulated, on 10 April 2013 7:46:24 PM AEST, on the WUNRN lists an article entitled : ‘France - Government Considers More Rules on Wearing Headscarf’
Dear friends in WUNRN,
ì am sorry this article was circulated among women, as it is full of (...)
Contribution presented at the Historical Materialism conference, London, November 2012.
Introduction
Islamophobia is in many ways similar to racism. Just as racism justifies the oppression of and discrimination against certain peoples on the grounds that they are inferior to the oppressors, (...)
French citizens of migrant Muslim descent, especially women, know what it means to live under the extreme right who use repressive interpretations of religion to rule. They are increasingly labelled as “Muslim” even if they are non-believers. This reactionary trend of ethnicising and (...)
We all know that burqa does not have its roots in religion. Religion only asks women to dress modestly. Where did the burqa or veil come from then? Why do so many women in the world cover their faces?
Burqa is a mobile jail invented by men to hide the women they love. If love was involved, I (...)
Before reading this argument on recent Burqa-ban by France, you need to know who I am. Raised in an orthodox Muslim Deobandi family, I’ve been educated in Pakistan’s Punjab where urban middle class used to be too sensitive about purdah in 1980s and 90s – the decades when I went to school and then (...)
I must start by stating that I’m not pro-burqa but my argument is simple. No one has a right to tell a person how to dress- not their family nor the State. I oppose the law banning the burqa for the same reasons I would oppose being told to wearing one.
By making it a State law against (...)
How do we know when a state oversteps its bounds? When do we, as the citizens of any state, determine how far a government can intervene in our personal lives? When France decides to ban the burqa, that’s when I, personally, feel a state is exceeding its scope of power. Having established that, (...)
Three universities, besides Al-Azhar, in Egypt stopped their female students to turn up to exams dressed in niqab. Since July 18th, the same law applies in Syria and 1200 teachers have been fired
From Sabirnazar: Viewpoint’s cartoonist’s viewpoint
The recent commotion about the veil in France (...)
Bans ---on dress, art, music, literature even political parties---can never be seen as progressive legislation as these seek to impose the prejudiced will of a government on peoples and individuals
A ban on wearing the burka is as bad as a diktat to wear one. Both are born out of intolerance (...)
On 13 Jul, 2010 the parliament of France, on the eve of Bastille Day, voted 335 to one in favor of preventing Muslim women wearing a full face-covering veil in public. According to French daily, Le Monde, the new law was strongly supported by the right, while Socialist Party, Communist Party (...)
Advocates of veil say it earns women respect. But women have been punished, killed, flogged and insulted even under burka. Last year, the ’Swat video’ shamelessly aired by Pakistani TV channels, showed a girl pinned to ground and flogged by Taliban. She was wearing burka!
A week ago on my way (...)
In a world where there are such chronic class and gendered inequalities, it is disappointing that socialist and feminist debates have been reduced to repeat discussions on a few yards of cloth - that is, the veil. Some publications choose to embellish the description by adding ’Islamic’ to the (...)
Since I began calling myself an ex-Muslim, there have been quite a number of people questioning me on whether I was ever a ‘real Muslim’ to begin with. The BBC Asian Network host (can’t quite remember his name) even wanted to know whether I had prayed 5 times a day; attended a mosque; wore the (...)
Those who watched Barkha Dutt’s We the People on the veil must have noticed that the invited audience was largely pro-hijab women who applauded every statement supporting this practice. The assumption was that the burqa tradition has to be sorted out by Muslims themselves and non-Muslims should (...)
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