probes lives of Muslim women

“I will be the Muslim,” she deadpans, aware that her hijab and long dark skirt make her stand out

She’s okay with that.

It’s the assumptions made about her because of the thin piece of material covering her head that are an issue, and something she hopes a symposium Thursday at 6 p.m. at the University of Toronto will help remedy.

“The first thing people see is my hijab,” says Osman, a third-year public health student at U of T.

“I have people coming up to me asking if my father makes me wear the hijab, or my brother does. Or they assume I don’t speak English.”

Osman, who grew up in Toronto, says tonight’s event is meant to dispel assumptions and help non-Muslims understand why some women choose to wear the hijab.

It’s an expression of faith, she says, adding no one forces her to wear it. It’s a choice she makes every morning as she prepares to leave the house.

The fact that it is not part of the wider Toronto culture to wear the hijab only makes it a much more personal decision, she says. When every woman wears the hijab, as is the case in many Muslim countries, Osman says there is little debate about whether to go along.

But in Western society, the hijab is not the norm, so wearing one has less to do with conformity and more to do with expressing one’s faith.

Tonight’s event is part of Islam Awareness Month at the university, organized by the Muslim Students’ Association. The symposium – Women Living Islam: a Glimpse into the Lives of Muslim Women – runs from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Leslie Dan Pharmacy building at 144 College St.

It will feature talks by three women with unique perspectives on wearing traditional Muslim attire in Canada.

Calla Evans will talk about a documentary she made by following the lives of five Muslim women.

Sandra Noe, a recent convert to Islam, will discuss how friends and co-workers reacted to the change.

And Heba al-Shareet will describe what it was like to grow up as part of Winnipeg’s small Muslim community.

In a feature dubbed Rent-a- Muslim, non-Muslims can be paired with a Muslim student who can answer their questions.

There will be a public question and answer period, Osman says, but Rent-a-Muslim recognizes that people might be shy about asking questions, for fear of appearing ignorant or rude. In that case, they can ask their questions in private, without fear of others hearing.

“The idea is that they will learn something, and take it back to their friends and family,” says Osman. “With knowledge comes understanding.”

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Kyrgyzstan: Islamic Schools in the Spotlight

Islamic Schools in the Spotlight

Islamic schools are coming under increased official scrutiny since the harsh response to a religious disturbance in southern Kyrgyzstan last autumn. The authorities say madrasas flout the law, while some Islamic educators charge that public schools are not meeting the growing demand for religious education.

On 28 November, the Osh regional court sent 32 people to jail for up to 20 years for crimes connected with a riot in Nookat, a town in Osh Province. On 1 October a crowd that authorities said numbered more than 1,000 attacked the state administration building after the local authorities turned down residents’ request to celebrate the Orozo-Ait Islamic holiday on the main square. Furious protestors broke windows and beat police officers.

Following the disturbance in Nookat, the authorities stepped up checks on madrasas and ordered the municipal education department to compile a list of children not attending public schools. Inspectors said they found bad conditions, poor teaching standards, and improper curricula in some madrasas.

Within a week after the rioters were sentenced, four madrasas in Osh Province said they were temporarily closing their doors. A month later, they remain closed.

A Fair Trial?

The 32 defendants were convicted of various offenses including infringement on the constitutional system, involving minors in the riots, and affiliation with Hizb ut-Tahrir, a religious-political movement banned in Kyrgyzstan. One of the defendants was a 16-year-old boy sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment. Appeals filed by the defendants are expected to be heard by mid-January.

Rights activists questioned the length of the sentences and the trial’s fairness.

“We do not agree with the verdicts,” said Sadykjan Makhmudov, a lawyer who heads the human-rights pressure group Luch Solomona. “We are going to appeal to the Kyrgyz president, because not all those convicted are really guilty and because the punishment was much too severe and unacceptable.”

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Burqa ban call row continues

IT wasn’t a Muslim woman with just her eyes showing through her burqa who last month robbed the small community bank two blocks from us.

In fact, I haven’t yet heard of a single bank anywhere in this country that’s yet been stuck up by a Muslim woman who walked in hiding a pistol beneath her veil.

Have you?

But somehow a Queensland retail lobby group has developed such a fear of pistol-packin’ Muslim mommas that it’s now demanding a ban on full-face burqas, as well as hoodies, in banks and shops.

And even more surprising was that almost 9000 of the 10,000 responses to the Herald Sun’s online and telephone poll backed the burqa ban.

Has there been an epidemic of hold-ups by women in burqas that everyone but me has noticed?

Or are people just seizing on any excuse to ban a kind of clothing they don’t like for other reasons entirely?

OK, the full-blown burqa can be confronting for many people for all sorts of reasons.

I certainly don’t like them and am glad I’ve only seen a few on the streets of Melbourne.

Most Muslim women here wear the simple hijab, a head scarf and loose clothing but with their face in full view.

I hardly even notice a woman in a hijab head scarf any more, but the sight of a woman covering her whole body and face in a burqa still makes me shudder.

Yes, I know it’s supposed to be the women’s choice and it’s seen as an act of worship and all that.

But I just can’t see it as anything other than oppressive.

Can people seriously think women’s bodies are so powerful that they have to be shielded from weak-minded men?

And that not even their eyes can be seen?

The sight of a burqa also conjures up everything else I dislike about the more archaic aspects of the Muslim religion, like honour killings, genital mutilation and girls’ schools being closed, as they have been again this month in Pakistan.

The sight of a woman in a burqa takes me straight back inside the pages of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s wonderful autobiography Infidel, where women were the lowest form of life with no rights at all.

 

Still, I want to live in a society where people can be free to wear what they want and where people’s different religious beliefs are respected.

And if that means I have to put up with the sight of the occasional burqa, then that’s a small price to pay.

It’s a hard thing to stomach but I actually agree for once with acquitted terror suspect Jack Thomas, who said forcing Muslim women to remove at least the veil of their burqas in shops would be discriminatory and unfair.

Although I do understand why retailers want to see their customers walk in with faces uncovered

Even now, the tellers of our local bank sure are jumpy.

As you walk in, all the staff, including the boss sitting way at the back, looks up sharply to check whether they’ve got business or trouble.

Of course, once they see it’s just me they relax.

But if I were draped head to foot in metres of black cotton, with just my eyes on show, I’d forgive them for nervously wondering what I might be hiding.

It’s such a shame what some stuff-you thug with a gun has done to the trust we like to show each other.

And even more shameful is that such thugs are now making us distrustful of even the guiltless.

But can’t we wait until armed robbers start dressing in burqas before we decide to ban them?

Until then, we’re all freaking out about a danger that exists purely in our imagination.

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Au News

Call for hijab ban sparks community outrage

The Islamic Council of Queensland says calls to ban hijabs in shops and banks are biggoted and ignorant.

The debate was triggered when a Brisbane commercial radio presenter said on-air that birkas and bike helmets should be banned in banks and post offices.

The executive director of the Queensland-based Retailers Association backed the call, saying the ban would improve security and reduce shoplifting.

But Suliman Sabdia from the Islamic Council of Queensland says the cultural dress does not cause security problems and the comments are uneducated.

“[They are] not helpful at all; very, very sad,” he said.

“I think there’s a strong case for bigotry here, ignorance too, yes, certainly ignorance.”

Queensland’s Acting Premier Paul Lucas says the radio station should have considered how the comments would be received.

“That is something that we always need to be careful about – what we can say can be hurtful to people,” he said.

Richard Evans from the Australian Retailers Association, a national organisation, says anyone who supports the comments should apologise.

“To suggest that their cultural costumes are not appropriate in retail outlets in Australia is subliminal xenophobia,” he said.

“I’m calling on anyone who thinks this is a respectable debate to rethink their position.

“And for those that are making comments that we should be banning these cultural and custom outfits, they should be apologising to not only those people that wear them but all of Australians.”

Australia’s broadcasting regulator, the ACMA, says it has not received a complaint about the radio presenter’s comment.

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