Posts Tagged ‘Muslim’
Monday, April 26th, 2010
Sally Neighbour; 26/4/10
France’s move to extend its ban on the Islamic headscarf and outlaw the full-face veil appears to be catching on. Belgian MPs will vote on whether to prohibit it and similar laws have been drafted in Italy. Europe’s rising Muslim population, which exceeds 20 per cent in some cities, has ensured a groundswell of support for these moves. The debate in Europe has stirred interest in Australia too. Some commentators have seized on calls to ban the burka, which they judge to be “un-Australian”. Others, including this writer, saw the French move as a xenophobic overreaction, more likely to inflame social tensions than ease them. However, this glib interpretation does not withstand an hour’s conversation with a key architect of the hijab ban, French scholar Gilles Kepel, who visited Australia recently.Kepel was a member of a commission established by the French government in 2003, which recommended forbidding the hijab, along with other religious symbols such as the Jewish yarmulke and large Christian crosses, from government-run schools. Kepel is no xenophobe. He’s the son of Czech migrants and has an Algerian wife. He is also one of the world’s most esteemed authorities on political Islam.
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Tags: Europe, Muslim, Womens Rights
Posted in Human Rights, Religion | No Comments »
Saturday, April 17th, 2010
Rowan Callick, 17/4/10
Alim Seytoff would be on China’s list of top 10 public enemies, if it published one. He has devoted his life to what seems mission impossible: to carve out the country’s vast Xinjiang region, twice the size of NSW, as a separate country.His cause was in the international spotlight last year when hundreds of Han Chinese settlers and local Uighurs died in protests in the region against Beijing’s rule. In Australia, the Uighurs’ plight seized public attention a few weeks later when China trenchantly opposed the screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival of a profile of Uighur leader-in-exile Rebiya Kadeer, and her visit to promote the film.
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Tags: China, Human Rights, Muslim
Posted in China, Human Rights, Religion | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 6th, 2010
David Charter; 6/4/10
Belgian politicians rarely agree on anything, but common ground has been reached on the veil. While French President Nicolas Sarkozy is encountering legal obstacles to outlawing the face-covering nikab, Belgium seems likely to beat France to bring in the first national ban in Europe. MPs on Belgium’s home affairs committee have unanimously approved a ban on garments concealing the whole face or making it unrecognisable, setting up a vote in parliament on April 22 that seems certain to pass. This would prohibit the full-body burka or face-covering nikab being worn in streets, public gardens, sports grounds and buildings “meant for public use or to provide services” to the public. Women who flout the ban will face up to seven days in jail or a fine of up to E25 ($36).
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Tags: Europe, Muslim, Womens Rights
Posted in Australia, Human Rights, Religion, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Saturday, April 3rd, 2010
3/4/10
Two people have been arrested and two guards injured in a clash between Muslim tourists and guards employed by the Catholic bishop at the famous Great Mosque of Cordoba. Trouble broke out when the visitors knelt to pray in the building, a former mosque turned into a Christian cathedral in the 13th century, where a bishop, Demetrio Fernandez, recently insisted that a ban on Muslim prayers must remain. Half a dozen members of a group of more than 100 Muslims from Austria had started praying among the marble columns and coloured arches of the vast building on Wednesday when security guards ordered them to stop. ”They provoked in a pre-planned fashion what was a deplorable episode of violence,” the bishop’s office said. Cathedral authorities said the guards had invited the visitors to continue viewing the inside of a 24,000-square-metre building that was once the world’s second-biggest mosque, but without praying.
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Tags: Christianty, Muslim, Spain
Posted in Christianity, Religion | No Comments »
Friday, March 26th, 2010
26/3/10; http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/france-to-outlaw-full-muslim-veil/story-e6frg6so-1225845496199:
France is to ban the full Muslim veil to protect the dignity of women, President Nicolas Sarkozy announced yesterday. His decision followed months of wavering by politicians of Left and Right and ended a long silence by Mr Sarkozy on what to do about the niqab, burka and other face-covering garments. “The full veil is contrary to the dignity of women,” Mr Sarkozy said. “The response is to ban it. The government will table a draft law prohibiting it.” He gave no details but his announcement means he has come down on the side of members of parliament in his own camp and the opposition who advocate a ban on the full veil on French territory. An all-party parliamentary committee recommended lesser measures last month that would require women to expose their faces on public transport and on state-owned premises such as post offices, universities and hospitals.
Tags: France, Human Rights, Muslim, Religion
Posted in Human Rights, Religion, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010
Ida Lichter; 23/3/10
Sharia law for Australia is being mooted again. The Australian Muslim Mission and Islamic Friendship Association of Australia are advocating its introduction, especially in relation to family and inheritance, as these would be “an advantage” for women whose civil divorce is not recognised in Muslim countries. Arbitration courts for conferring an Islamic divorce or even settling disputes based in religion may appear innocuous and a useful option, but relevant experience outside Australia highlights some of the problems. The saga of sharia law in Ontario, Canada, is instructive. Proponents of sharia courts had argued that the Canadian government should not interfere in religious practice or education. Established under Ontario’s Arbitration Act of 1991, these courts dealt with a spectrum of family and business disputes and, although the procedure was voluntary, court decisions were binding.
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Tags: Australia, Muslim, Womens Rights
Posted in Australia, Human Rights, Religion, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Friday, January 29th, 2010
Randa Abdel-Fattah & Susan Carland; 29/1/10
Randa Abdel-Fattah is a lawyer and author, and Susan Carland is a lecturer in politics at Monash University.
Women don’t have to give up Islam for rights. Orientalists writing on Islam and Muslims have tended to represent Muslim women as infantilised and oppressed, victims in need of rescue by the enlightened West. This is a classic example of the tyranny of self-projection, where the ”rescuer” assumes a position of superiority so the belief systems, values and norms of Muslim women are judged against the Western experience. The work of Muslim human rights and social justice advocates is discredited and ignored. It is as if liberation and freedom are the monopoly of secular feminists. Muslim women are apparently too downtrodden to care to make a difference. If they do insist on fighting for equality and justice within an Islamic perspective, their efforts are dismissed, assuming freedom and Islam are mutually exclusive, or, worse, that Muslim women are brainwashed, suffering from a form of religious Stockholm syndrome.
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Tags: Australia, Muslim, Women
Posted in Australia, Human Rights, Religion, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010
5/1/10
A court in Egypt has ruled in favour of the government’s decision to ban students from wearing the face veil (niqab) while taking university examinations. But female students who had appealed the ban when it was originally imposed by the government last October have vowed to appeal the verdict. The students said the ban on niqab infringed on their religious rights. “We had never hoped to see such a verdict issued by our fair Egyptian judicial system. Our rights are being raped. What freedom would we have after this? Where is freedom in Egypt?,” one student told Al Jazeera after Sunday’s verdict.
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Tags: Egypt, Muslim, Womens Rights
Posted in Africa, Human Rights, Religion, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Saturday, January 2nd, 2010
Michael Sainsbury; 2/1/10
The bright winter sun bouncing off the green and gold decorated mosque in the remote northwestern Chinese city of Urumqi is deceptive. It’s minus 6C as thousands of the city’s male Uighur population slip off their shoes and lay down their prayer mats for Jumu’ah, the sacrosanct Friday service. Worshippers have been gathering for the past hour and at 2pm the Imam begins his sermon, preparing the faithful for their ritual. Men in a wide variety of hats spill beyond the front fence into the street. This is the biggest of Urumqi’s 265 or so mosques. The Uighurs are not the only Muslims in this fast-growing Chinese city – there are members of the Hui, Kahzak, Uzbek, Tajik, Kirgiz, Khalkhar and Sala ethnic groups here as well. But because of a long history of tension with the Chinese government, which erupted into deadly riots on July 5 when 197 people died, they are its best known.
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Tags: China, Human Rights, Muslim, Uighur
Posted in China, Human Rights, Religion | No Comments »
Friday, January 1st, 2010
1/1/10;
Eboo Patel is founder and executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core and author of Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation.
My Fri April grew up a. church girl. She attended Bible camp and Sunday school, sang Christian songs, and went on mission trips. When she was a senior at Carleton College in Minnesota, she was elected the leader of her campus Christian group. That year, a mosque in the Twin Cities suffered an arson attack, and the imam sent out an appeal to religious leaders across the state to stand with his community against religious discrimination. April, who had grown close to Muslims during mission trips to Russia, thought this was exactly the right thing to do. She presented her plan at the next meeting of the Christian group and was surprised when it was greeted with stony silence.
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Tags: Christianity, Muslim, USA
Posted in Christianity, Human Rights, Religion, USA | No Comments »
Thursday, December 24th, 2009
Michael Sainsbury; 24/12/09
China has begun sentencing 20 more ethnic Uighurs – some to death – for their part in riots which left 197 people dead in the remote western city of Urumqi on July 5, as the second batch of trials of more than 1200 people arrested as a result of the carnage began today, with at least one man sent for execution. In early December five people were sentenced to death and a further eight given prison terms, bringing to 17 sent to be executed in trials of the first two groups of people from the bloody unrest. Nine have been executed so far. The province of Xinjiang, of which Urumqi is the capital, remains locked down with internet, text messaging and international phone access cut off.
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Tags: Capital Punishment, China, Muslim
Posted in China, Human Rights, Religion, Terrorism | No Comments »
Saturday, December 5th, 2009
5/12/09;
It will soon be one of the most recognisable buildings in the world. Towering over the Grand Mosque in Mecca – Islam’s holiest site, and the destination of millions of Hajj pilgrims every year (last month’s 2.5 million was a record) – the Abraj Al-Bait complex is due to be finished next year and will top out at 595m.The scale of the projectis mind-boggling: the largest floor area of any building on Earth (1.5 million sqm); the world’s highest and largest clocks (at 8om across, nearly five times bigger than Big Ben); and a centrepiece tower that will be the second-tallest building on the planet after the Burj Dubai.
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Tags: Asia, Muslim, Religion
Posted in Religion | No Comments »
Friday, December 4th, 2009
Mark LeVine; 4/12/09
The images were clearly intended to get out the vote, and judging by the 57 per cent “yes” vote to ban the construction of minarets in Switzerland on Sunday, they worked all too well. They included the depiction of minarets piercing through the Swiss flag; minarets on top of the flag, with a menacing, niqab-wearing Muslim woman in the foreground. One could be forgiven for imagining that the Muslims were at the gates of Vienna, or even Lucerne, threatening to overrun Christian Europe. And of course, for the proponents of the ban, that is precisely the situation Europe faces today. For centuries, the peoples of Europe have defined their continental identity against the threat of Islam. So much so that it is hard to imagine a European identity that does not have Islam as its foil. There are, of course, good historical reasons for this.
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Tags: Europe, Muslim
Posted in Human Rights, Religion | No Comments »
Monday, November 30th, 2009
Eugene Cho; 30/11/09
Eugene Cho, a second-generation Korean-American, is the founder and lead pastor of Quest Church in Seattle and the executive director of Q Cafe, an innovative non-profit neighbourhood café and music venue. You can stalk him at his blog or follow him on Twitter. He and his wife are also launching a grassroots movement, One Day’s Wages, to fight extreme global poverty – which was recently featured in The New York Times . Be warned of the graphic photos below. They are only a handful from the full photo article.
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Tags: Human Rights, Muslim, Women
Posted in Asia, Human Rights, USA, Womens Rights | No Comments »
Saturday, November 28th, 2009
Omar Chatriwal; 28/11/09
In the latter part of Hajj, Muslim pilgrims spend time at Mina’s encampment, where they pelt a a wall representing the devil with pebbles daily. But there are always dangers when dealing with the devil. Today is the last day of Hajj. Today, the mentally, spiritually, and physically trying journey comes to an end for about 2.5 million Muslims. After Eid day, the pilgrims spend the final two or three days of Hajj at Mina – eating, sleeping and praying at its sprawling encampment site. The camp comprises hundreds of thousands of semi-permanent fireproof tents built by Saudi authorities. You get a real sense of the scale of the camp when looking at it from above. Despite the relative luxury of the Saudi-built facilities, which includes electricity and running water, many people still pitch their own tents while in Mina. As Reuters’ FaithWorld blog points out, this is often because they cannot afford to pay the rates of the Hajj trip groups that are allocated the space.
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Tags: Muslim, Religion, Saudi Arabia
Posted in Religion | No Comments »
Monday, November 23rd, 2009
Matthew Campbell; 23/11/09
A journalist who became a global celebrity when she was prosecuted for wearing trousers has defied a ban on leaving Sudan to rally support in Europe for the emancipation of Muslim women. Visiting France last week, Lubna Hussein said she had received death threats since beginning a campaign to stop the flogging and imprisonment of women who wear trousers. She risked punishment for leaving Sudan illegally, but this would not stop her from exposing the “absurdity” of laws that humiliated women. “Where does it state in the Koran that women can’t wear trousers?” said Hussein, a former UN official who has become a symbol for women’s rights across Africa and the Arab world. Hussein, a widow in her late 30s, has written a book about her revolt and is expected to receive a hero’s welcome in London this week from opponents of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who seized power in Sudan two decades ago.
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Tags: Egypt, Muslim, Womens Rights
Posted in Africa, Human Rights, Religion, Womens Rights | No Comments »
