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.”

Khan has never been one to hide her opinions.

She was the vocal founder of the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations and served on the board of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

Khan, who holds a doctorate in chemical physics, has spent the past several years chronicling Canada’s sometimes complicated relationship with Islam for the Globe and Mail, culminating in her first book.

There is perhaps no place in the country where that relationship is more fraught than Quebec.

Muslim practises frequently get hashed out in the media as part of the province’s ongoing debate over reasonable accommodations for minorities.

The proposed niqab law provoked surprisingly little dissent within Quebec’s political class.

Khan, who grew up in Montreal after her family emigrated from India, has noticed a chill descend on Quebec society in recent years.

“I feel the environment is getting less and less comfortable for those who don’t ascribe to the majority view of Quebec,” she says.

“The previous generation had a very different view of Quebec as being a very inclusive society.

“It seems like especially now it has become a much more narrow vision, and that is very troubling.”

As a de facto spokesperson for Canada’s Muslim community, Khan acknowledges her role, and indeed one of the goals of her book, is to debunk some of the popularly held myths about the religion.

Chief among these myths, at least in Quebec, is the belief that those wearing the niqab invariably do so against their will.

Not so, says Khan, who knows several women who wear the covering against the wishes of their family.

“They’re making a conscious choice,” she says. “Stop treating them like people who need the guardianship of the state.”

This, however, is not to confuse Khan for an apologist for some of the more conservative elements of the Muslim community.

Her outlook is resolutely liberal, which has prompted clashes with imams in the past.

She relates how when scheduled to speak at a mosque several years ago, she was asked if she would allow a male to read her speech instead.

Khan held her ground, but says the incident typifies the challenges women can face within the religion.

“I could write a whole book of idiotic, stupid restrictions that are imposed on us,” she says.

But Khan refuses to let such tensions affect the foundations of her faith.

“If anything it makes my faith stronger,” she says. “My faith isn’t in the institutions, my faith isn’t in the men or the culture. It’s beyond that.

“If anything my faith impels me to try and change these things.”

By Sana Saeed
Published: 6:00 am

The prefabricated mosque arrived in Inuvik last month to serve a growing Muslim population in Canada’s far north, after traveling 4,000 kilometers (2,485 miles) over land and water.

The minaret — built locally and installed this week — has four levels and stands 30 feet (10 meters) off the ground.

“It’s really beautiful when we turn on the lights in the dark,” Amier Suliman, a mosque committee member, told AFP on Wednesday.

Only finishing touches — applying a second coat of paint inside, and hooking up bathroom plumbing — remain before the mosque’s grand opening next week.

“This is the first minaret to be erected in the Arctic,” Suliman said gleefully by telephone.

“Some will say it’s a new frontier for Islam,” he commented. “But for me what is significant is that Muslims here who once prayed on Fridays at a local Catholic church or in a trailer now have a proper place to worship, with a proper minaret.”

“Now we have a home to worship in our own hometown. That’s the most important for me.”

The number of Muslims in Inuvik, a town of 4,000 inhabitants in Canada’s Northwest Territories, has grown steadily in recent years to about 80 and they no longer fit in an old three-by-seven-meter (10-by-23-foot) caravan used until now for prayers.

The congregation could not afford to build a new mosque in the town, where prices for labor and materials are substantially higher than in southern parts of Canada, project coordinator Ahmad Alkhalaf said previously.

But they found a supplier of prefabricated buildings in Manitoba that said it could ship a structure to Inuvik for half the price of building a mosque from scratch on site.

A local Muslim charity — the Zubaidah Tallab Foundation of Thompson, Manitoba — also offered to pick up the costs for the 140-square meter (1,500-square foot) facility, Alkhalaf said.

And so, at the end of August the tiny yellow mosque’s voyage began on the back of truck, winding through the vast prairies and woods of Western Canada toward Hay River on the shores of Great Slave Lake, Northwest Territories.

From there it was transferred onto a barge and floated down the McKenzie River to Inuvik, about 200 kilometers (124 miles) north of the Arctic Circle.

The worshippers — largely Sunni Muslim immigrants from Sudan, Lebanon and Egypt who moved to Canada’s far north in search of jobs and economic opportunities — are to hold an open house on November 5.

The facility will also double as a Muslim community center.

It is estimated that six million people are in need of immediate assistance, including food, medicine, nutrition and clean drinking water, with a high epidemic risk.

Pregnant women, children and the elderly are most vulnerable.

Jan Brunschot, the Chatham branch’s community service co-ordinator for disaster management, said that some local donations have been coming in.

“We’re having trouble really pinpointing the extent of the damage, because we can’t get to some of the people,” she said on Friday.

On Monday, the Red Cross deployed a new field clinic. These clinics provide immediate curative, preventive and community health care.

Those wishing to donate may give online, call 1-800- 418-1111, or contact the local Canadian Red Cross office at 519-352-2510.

Cheques should be made payable to the Canadian Red Cross, earmarked “Pakistan Floods 2010″ and mailed to the Canadian Red Cross National Office, 170 Metcalfe Street, Suite 300, Ottawa, Ontario, K2P 2P2.

Donate $5 by texting REDCROSS to 30333. A onetime donation of $5 will be added to your mobile phone bill. All charges are billed by and payable to your mobile service provider.

Police departments reported 1,036 hate crimes in 2008, 35 percent more than in 2007, with 55 percent motivated by race, 26 percent by religion and 16 percent by sexual orientation, a report released Monday by Statistics Canada showed. While all three categories of hate crime increased in 2008, the biggest jump was in crimes motivated by sexual orientation, which doubled from 2007 to 2008. The category also had the most violent hate crimes, with 75 percent motivated by sexual orientation.

Police-reported hate crimes refer to criminal incidents that, upon investigation by police, are determined to have been motivated by hate toward an identifiable group. The incident may target race, color, national or ethnic origin, religion, sexual orientation, language, sex, age, mental or physical disability, or other factors such as profession or political beliefs, the report said.

About two-thirds of religiously-motivated hate crimes were committed against Jews. There were 165 hate crimes targeting the Jewish faith in 2008, up 42 percent.

Police reported 30 hate crimes against Catholics, double the total in 2007. The 26 incidents against the Muslim faith represented a slight drop from 2007.

Among the hate crimes motivated by race or ethnicity, almost 40 percent were committed against blacks. Police reported 205 hate crimes against blacks in 2008, up 30 percent over 2007, but still lower than the 2006 total of 238.

Muslims around the world, like these people in Senegal, will celebrate Eid al-Adha this November, a tradition that includes sacrificing lambs.

Some Muslims in Canada’s capital region are worried that they may be fined for sacrificing lambs during November’s Eid al-Adha celebrations.

Since 2005 it has been illegal in Ontario for anyone but the owner of a licensed abattoir to buy livestock and slaughter it independently. Last fall, a Muslim man was fined $2,000 for slaughtering and distributing lamb, and another man is scheduled to appear in court next week for killing a pig.

Abed Abufarha used to celebrate Eid by going to farms to slaughter lambs himself. But this year he will head to an abattoir in Pakenham, Ont., to get his lamb meat. He said the regulations have changed a tradition he used to bring his family to.

“It’s getting really serious. They’re just so sharp about it. They want to stop it right away,” said Abufarha. “There’s big fines for slaughtering meat outside of a slaughterhouse.”

Many Muslims in the Ottawa area have begun booking lambs to sacrifice for their Eid feast on Nov. 16, and say they’ll risk killing the animals themselves. Akram Elmuradi has already paid for 10 live lambs he plans to sacrifice with friends.

“I myself take joy in the kill itself,” Elmuradi said. “It’s a tradition. … Nobody’s going to stop you from doing something you believe in.”

The Ministry of Food and Agriculture says it only investigates if a complaint is filed. Still, the penalties can be severe. The maximum fine under the Food Safety and Quality act is $25,000.

Lessard residents petitioning against a Muslim community centre and school proposed for a west Edmonton strip mall say they’re worried about parking and traffic problems — not religion.

“The issue was never, ever, about faith or about certain beliefs. Not at all. The issue is purely civic and neighbourly,” said Safwat Girgis, the author of the petition.

The community centre and school is proposed to go into the Lessard Mall. The small shopping centre is rundown and mostly vacant, with only three small businesses in the two-storey structure.

The Muslim Association of Canada bought the building in February. They are currently using the space as a community centre but want to apply for a zoning change so they can open a school.

“Our school is open to anybody who wants to come and register their children there,” said association spokesman, Ali Assaf.

But Girgis says residents are concerned about what will happen when parking at the community centre is added to the parking at a busy Ukrainian Orthodox church across the street.

“When we look at the projected number of users of that facility and we just see how many parking spaces and the kind of traffic that will be generated because of that, it’s just phenomenal,” Girgis said. He adds the community spoke out when the church tried to build a new building on its site.

But Assaf said parking shouldn’t be a problem and rejected suggestions that people would be coming from all over the city to drop their children off at the school.

“I believe the current infrastructure we have is more than capable of housing what we’re looking to do,” he said. “The city will determine whether the increases in traffic are going to cause any issues or not, and that’s why you go through the city to get permits and zoning.”

The association plans to submit a zoning application to the city soon, Assaf said.

“Niqab for Muslim women banned in Canadian province,” from IANS, March 25 (thanks to Block Ness):

TORONTO: After France, Muslim women have been banned from wearing niqab in Canada’s French-speaking Quebec province.A bill tabled Wednesday will not allow government services to women wearing the niqab.

The bill comes after protests triggered by an Egyptian immigrant’s refusal to remove her niqab in her French languages classes in Montreal, forcing the school and the provincial government to throw her out.

The college says the Muslim woman was given the front seat in the class so that all male students sat behind her. She was even allowed to make presentations from the rear of the classroom with her back to the class which had three male and 17 female students.

However, students and the college authorities were shocked when one day the woman asked male students to move away from her and refused to sit with them around a U-table to converse and learn French pronunciation.…

The government last week ordered that every niqab-clad woman must uncover her face to confirm her identity when applying for her medicare card. Wednesday’s bill will be the first such step in North America to curtail any religious dress.

According to the bill, women seeking medical and auto insurance services will have to remove their veil, adding that face coverings will not be tolerated in people’s dealings with government officials.

Speaking to the media, Quebec premier (equal to chief minister in India) Jean Charest said the step was needed for maintaining gender equality and secular character of public institutions.

“This (bill) is a symbol of affirmation and respect – first of all, for ourselves, and also for those to whom we open our arms. This is not about making our home less welcoming, but about stressing the values that unite us.

“An accommodation cannot be granted unless it respects the principle of equality between men and women, and the religious neutrality of the state,” the premier said….

 Posted by Robert on March 25, 2010 11:04 AM