UstaadKhan Blogs

The niqab flickered briefly for Sheema Khan as the logical next step in her effort to rediscover Islam.

The Muslim face covering, which reveals only the eyes, appealed to the then Harvard grad student as a symbol of piety and fidelity to the religion increasingly asserting itself in her life.

But Khan’s experiment with the niqab lasted only a few hours and she settled instead on the hijab.

“I tried it and I hated it,” says the author of “Of Hockey and Hijab: Reflections of a Canadian Muslim Woman.”

“I couldn’t breathe.”

Yet her own unwillingness to don the niqab hasn’t stopped her from offering a biting critique of the Quebec government’s proposed law that would prevent women wearing the covering from receiving government services.

“It’s abominable,” Khan says. “I can’t believe this is Canada.” (more…)

Belgium is known as the home of surrealism and it is certainly living up to its reputation.

 The proposal to ban the wearing of any kind of “full veil” in public approved by the House of Representatives should now in theory go to the Senate. But Belgium does not have a government at the moment so the procedure will begin again after elections next month.

So why did the vote take place at all? Because enough politicians wanted to be seen to approve this largely symbolic measure because of the impact they hope it will have on public opinion, especially a few weeks before elections.

 The proposal was initiated by the Liberals (centre right) and received backing from every political party, because it gave the kind of signal that they believe Belgian people expect. The general population is becoming increasingly anxious – if not downright hostile – to an expanding Muslim community and the supposed growth of fundamentalism. These fears are fed by headlines predicting that Brussels will be a “Muslim city” by 2030 or alleging that state schools are being corrupted by Islamic fundamentalism.

 This surge in hostility is in turn driving Belgium’s Muslims towards introverted ways of asserting their identity, and to a religious revival that can be observed by the numbers of females wearing head scarves. The hijab is a common sight on Belgian streets, but burkas and niqabs are seldom observed, another sign of the pointlessness of the ban. Belgian politicians have been arguing among themselves for a long time about banning Islamic headscarves from schools and other public buildings.

 Progressive forces are themselves sharply divided among those who favour the French model (banning all public expressions of religion and safeguarding the neutrality of public offices and servants) and those who prefer the Anglo-Saxon model of religious tolerance and would like to see a reasonable accommodation, of the kind we see in Canada.

 A real debate about the kind of model that multicultural Belgium should promote has yet to take place. Unfortunately, populist moves such as this week’s vote do nothing to build the atmosphere of trust among our different communities in which such a debate could take place.

By  Caroline Sagesser:The writer is a social policy expert at the Université Libre de Bruxelles

Women caught wearing the full veil can choose to attend a 'citizenship course' instead of paying the fine

France will jail and impose huge fines on anyone who forces a Muslim woman to wear a full-face veil, according to a leaked version of a proposed law revealed on Friday.

While women will face only a 150 euro penalty if they choose to don a burqa or a niqab, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to slap one-year prison terms and USD 20,000 fines on those who make others wear them.

Law 94 is veiled identity politics

By Sana Saeed
Published: 6:00 am

Chrystelle Khedrouche is 36 and lives in a suburb just outside Paris. She has been wearing a burka in public for around 12 years. She is French-born, has five children, and is married to an Algerian. She is a convert to Islam.

These are her views about the proposed ban on wearing the burka and niqab in public places:

“I’m really very sad about this, but I’m not so surprised because it is part of the French mentality, but it makes me sad and it’s hard that this is the stage we have got to. It’s been several years that we live like this and we have been perfectly fine, but then I’m not so surprised because the French like the idea of everyone being of the same mould and that mould must be ideal. Everything that is not part of their ideal model doesn’t suit them.”

Polls suggest that a sizeable majority of French people support a ban.

“This is a political strategy. It is always easier to knock the Muslims because all French people are in agreement about it.” (more…)

Commentary by Celestine Bohlen

Jan. 20 (Bloomberg) — To listen to French politicians now making the round of TV talk shows, there is no issue more urgent than the burqa, the head-to-toe Muslim garment worn by very few women in France.

What’s spooky about the debate over the burqa, or the niqab as some call it, is that there is hardly any disagreement. Everybody is against a full-length veil that hides women’s faces because it offends the “values of the republic.”

That’s what makes the movement headed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s ruling center-right party to ban the burqa so off the mark and pointless. It has less to do with elastic notions of republican values, and more to do with reaching for political fodder before regional elections in March.

Republican values are to the French what the flag is to the Americans. They are invoked in all sorts of ways, by all sorts of people. No one is a more ferocious defender of “republican values” than the leaders of the far-right National Front party, champions of French xenophobia.

The idea behind the burqa ban is to remove from public sight an offending symbol of a deeper problem. That problem, depending on who is talking, is women’s rights, or the spread of a dangerous strand of Islamic fundamentalism, or both.

It’s hard to see how Muslim women or moderate followers of Islam will benefit from a law that obliges French police to chase down burqa-clad females and fine them $750 ($1,087). It’s very likely that veiled women will simply stay at home, more isolated than before.

Cloth Prison

The burqa-niqab is indeed offensive on any number of counts. It is scary-looking; it hides a person’s identity and it is appalling to think that some women are forced — either by their male partners, or their religious leaders, or both — to walk around in their own individual cloth prison.

If the goal is to stop the spread of medieval notions of the role of women, then challenge those who preach it. If they are breaking the law with their hate-filled rhetoric, then arrest them, or expel them. As for women’s rights, there are other ways to protect wives or daughters from the tyranny of their husbands and fathers.

There’s another little problem, and that is enforcement. How would French police go about fining Saudi princesses who come to Paris to shop?

Last year, France’s intelligence service said 367 women wore the burqa. Later in the year, the Ministry of the Interior put the figure at 1,900, out of France’s estimated 5 million Muslim population. (more…)