Arab-American youth

Inside the world of Arab-American youth

The number of hate crimes committed against Arab-Americans has decreased since their peak immediately following the September 11, 2001 attacks, according to a new study by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

At a young age, one of the book’s characters, Yasmin, was invoking notions of Martin Luther King Jr’s struggle for equality while she was being discriminated against at her high school for wearing hijab.

While the findings are seen as a step in the right direction, author Moustafa Bayoumi says other forms of discrimination continue to affect the lives of Arabs living in the US.

In his new book, “How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America,” Bayoumi reveals how “state oppression” has impacted the lives of second generation Arab-American youth. The book chronicles the lives of seven 20-something Arab-Americans living in Brooklyn, New York who have encountered diverse problems in a post-9/11 America, ranging from employment discrimination to government detention.

“I felt like there were stories to be told, but nobody was telling those stories,” Bayoumi told Daily News Egypt at an interview in a Brooklyn coffee shop.

“I really wanted to write a book about ordinary people, not about people who were already community leaders. What was ordinary life like, for one thing? There is so much ideology in the air that ordinary Arab-American life is mystified,” he said.

Bayoumi is of Egyptian heritage, but was born in Switzerland and raised in Canada. He has been living in New York City for over 15 years and works as an English professor at Brooklyn College. Bayoumi has written about Arab issues in North America for numerous years in outlets such as The Nation and The London Review of Books.

The author claims that he is more optimistic now than when he started working on the book about three years ago. Through relationships developed with his interviewees, Bayoumi has come to see strength in the human spirit despite adversity. His characters understand that their stories do not stand alone in American history and that other minority groups have suffered similar discrimination in the past.

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EU Court Back French Hijab Ban

STRASBOURG — Europe’s top human rights court on Thursday, December 4, held a French school ban on wearing hijab,saying the ban was not a violation of the European Rights of Human Rights. “The court observed that the purpose of the restriction on the applicants’ right to manifest their religious convictions was toadhere to the requirements of secularism in state schools,” the European Court of Human Rights said, reported Reuters. Two French Muslim girls, aged 11 and 12, had been expelled from school in 1999 after refusing to take off their hijab uring sport classes. The school claimed that hijab was incompatible with physical education classes The two students took their case to a French court, which backed the school’s decision. The pair took their complaint to the European court that their school had violated their freedom of religion and their right toan education. France banned hijab in state schools in 2004, sparking a heated debate over freedom and equality within the Europeancountry. Islam sees hijab as an obligatory code of dress, not a religious symbol displaying one’s affiliations. France is home to nearly seven million Muslims, the biggest Muslim minority in Europe. Secular Requirements The Strasbourg-based court said that the expulsion of the two Muslim girls was not “discriminatory”. It said the decision was based on secularism requirements and not on any objections to the girls’ religious beliefs. The European court said that the school has sought to balance the interests of the girls with respect for France’s secularmodel. “It was clear that the applicants’ religious convictions were fully taken into account in relation to the requirements ofprotecting the rights and freedoms of others and public order.” Hijab has taken central stage in the West since the French hijab ban in 2004. Last year, a Canadian girl was thrown out from a national Judo tournament for wearing hijab. In March 2007, an 11-year-old girl in Quebec was expelled from a soccer game for the same reason.

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Islamic extremism among students

Study challenges claims of Islamic extremism among students

British universities are not hotbeds of Islamic radicalism, despite fears about the rise of “campus extremism”, a new study arguess.The University of Cambridge research, based partly on in-depth interviews with 26 students at UK universities, found that most young British Muslims are opposed to political Islam and are more likely to join Amnesty International than al-Qaida.

This contradicts research published by the Centre for Social Cohesion earlier this year, which suggested Muslim students on British campuses believed killing in the name of religion could be justified.

And ministers have issued guidelines for university staff on how to combat the threat of violent extremists targeting campuses as potential breeding grounds for new recruits.

But the research has been criticised for being too “flimsy” to draw such strong conclusions.

Anthony Glees, professor of politics and director of Buckingham University’s centre for security and intelligence studies, accused Cambridge of trying to prove that British universities are not “hotbeds of Islamic radicalism” on the basis of “flimsy and uncompelling” research.

“That the Economic and Social Research Council should fund it is even more amazing,” he said.

Muslim students from Cambridge, the London School of Economics and the University of Bradford were interviewed for the study.

It found that while Muslim students in the west are often regarded as prime targets for extremists seeking young, impressionable and educated recruits, many have a stronger sense of civic responsibility and British identity than their elders.

The study acknowledged that extreme political views can be found among a minority of young western Muslims but found little evidence of any threat, suggesting such fears have been exaggerated.

It describes young Muslims as better integrated into British society than their parents, with a stronger sense of national identity.

“Contact with social democracy, multiculturalism and new generational experiences and opportunities have created a momentum for accommodation rather than a clash,” he report said.

The interviewees disliked the British government’s alignment with regimes such as Turkey, Egypt or, until recently, Pakistan, which oppose political Islam but are nevertheless regarded as oppressive.

The research found young Muslims view restrictions on the expression of their religious identity, such as wearing the hijab, as an abuse of human rights rather than as obstructing a wider, political Islamic cause.

“Attempts to ban the hijab were perceived as incompatible with western and in particular British commitment to freedom of speech and multicultural practices, and a European commitment to values of freedom, choice and individuality,” the report argues.

Dr June Edmunds, who carried out the research, said: “The findings show that the young Muslims best equipped to lead radical opposition to western society are also among the least inclined to do so.

“Although a minority have extreme political views, most are concerned about human rights and social democracy.

“The UK in particular now hosts a new generation of Muslims who are more confident of their national identity and more politically engaged than their parents.”

Glees said: “To be fair to Dr Edmunds she does concede that ‘a minority have extreme political views’.

“The current Whitehall view (which she should have sought) is that some universities fostered radicalisation and were a source of radical young Muslims, particularly from early 1990 to the early 2000s.

“Today, Whitehall says, there is still a problem in some universities and colleges but not most,” he added.

“Even if it could be shown that students are not overrepresented among Islamists, it still tells us something about our higher education that they should study and yet hate this country and its values,” he said.

More than half of the participants described themselves as British, and 91% either as British or “British-hyphenated” such as British-Pakistani.

Most were members of student Islamic organisations but these tended to be moderate groups without international links.

Their favourite websites were guardian.co.uk, BBC news and the Independent, rather than religious sites.

Whereas the lives of many first- and second-generation Muslims centre on the family and the local mosque, younger Muslims revealed themselves to be better disposed to contribute directly to British society and culture.

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Hijab ban protects women’s rights and Turkey’s secular constitution

Farzana Hassan, Freelance

Published: Monday, November 03

Secular Muslims are welcoming the decision of the Constitutional Court of Turkey to disallow the lifting of the ban on hijabs as a significant triumph for secularism over repressive Islamist practices. The court recently ruled that amendments to the constitution by the ruling AKP to permit hijabs in universities, would amount to rendering “nonfunctional the basic features of the republic.”

At the core of this decision is the realization that the hijab continues to be a tool of oppression for Muslim women, severely restricting their right to express their faith in their own unique and personal way.

Faith and its expression must be a matter of personal choice rather than a “categorical imperative” handed down through a system of belief that might be deemed by some as  repressive and outmoded in its various manifestation.

While the decision of the Constitutional Court of Turkey might restrict the rights of women claiming to have adopted the hijab of their own free will, one must question the authenticity of such claims through a process of unearthing some of the religious undercurrents of such decisions. In the same suspicion over the validity of such claims, European lawmakers have chosen to restrict the use of religious headgear in public institutions.

One would need assurances for example, that women who reject the hijab would not be subjected to coercion in the matter, simply because the orthodoxy considers it a religious requirement. The lifting of the ban in Turkey would have empowered the fundamentalist Islamic forces, resulting in the almost certain marginalization and oppression of women, reducing their role in society to one of subservience and subjugation. This would be tantamount to providing leverage to the religious right in their ceaseless attempts to enforce compliance for the practice where it is not voluntary.

Traditional Muslims often bristle at such criticism by downplaying the social pressures faced by women who reject the hijab. This, however, is a gross  misrepresentation of reality. Even women who supposedly choose it, do so because they are rarely if ever exposed to an alternative analysis on the issue, which does not consider the hijab a religious requirement.

Women’s “choice” in the matter can be considered authentic only if they are exposed to alternative narratives on modesty, which do not prescribe the covering of the hair or face.

Turkey as a modern state and last bastion of secular Islam, must continue to uphold its tradition of the separation of religion and state. The headgear or hijab is a political tool and a threat to Turkey’s long secular tradition. Currently, there is tremendous pressure on secular women to cover up according to orthodox requirements, even in large cities. The present government has also attempted to eliminate the secular dress code in government offices. It has taken a slower, steadier path, careful not to jolt the establishment too quickly while at the same time floating an occasional trial balloon for social reforms to advance the Islamist agenda.

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Asia Sentiel

Muslim Tears Depress

Muslim Tears Depress – Stop Non Compatible Immigration

By Dick Field

“It is unfair to depict us Muslims as potential terrorists.” “I am so upset that people avoid me in public or stare at me just because I wear a hijab.” “Why is it we Muslims can’t just be treated like anyone else?” “The border authorities are obviously stopping me because they are racially profiling me.” “It is pure racism; all Americans and Canadians are racists, just because we are different; you people think it is OK to insult our religion; but you wouldn’t allow anyone to insult your religion?” “We are not all Jhihadists, you know.”

More and more we become depressed with Muslim complaints about how they are wrongly depicted in North America.  Many of these complaints about our open societies come from Muslim leadership, rational or radical, but we also have to bear them from countless ordinary Muslim men and women.  The latter complainants are almost always levied by those who insist on deliberately flaunting their religious dress in all public places at all times and insist on challenging our laws to accommodate their peculiarities.

Tears appear as they cry that we are unfairly “Islaphobic,” (a new buzz word supposedly meaning an irrational and prejudicial view towards the believers of Islam).  We are said to be racist, discourteous, unwilling to accept differences and labeled with a hundred other unpleasant names.  “We are after all, Canadians just like everyone else,” they insist.

We are told that Muslims don’t like our dress, our laws, our religion, our form of dating, and our form of marriage relationships.  They cannot stand the idea of a family member marrying outside their religion.

None of their home countries, where Islam is in the majority, are free and democratic yet they still push everywhere to institute their religious law in one form or other in the West.  Frankly, we have yet to see a western non-Muslim suicide bomber?  Or a western wife executed by the State for being found in a car with a strange man.  Or a western daughter killed by her father for disobeying her father by dating a non-Muslim schoolmate.

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I wear a hijab because I believe in non-conformity

Women who wear hijab in Egypt just have a bad reputation.”

We were diving in and out of Cairo weekend traffic, heading towards a hotel by the pyramids for dinner, when the driver mindlessly blurted out this comment. I was the only one in the car wearing a hijab.

What made this remark different from previous one-liners about my hijab is that it came from an upper-class, educated Arab. He was old-money, educated in the West and a self-proclaimed liberal. The type who wears authentic GAP clothing, swings Gucci totes and has inherited an exclusive country club membership from grandparents.

I started wearing the hijab 10 years ago, when I was 18, in my hometown, Ottawa, Canada. It was a scary yet exhilarating decision to make. I knew I would be making a proclamation to the rest of society that I was different. At a time when other kids were piercing and tattooing their body parts, I was choosing to become more religious in a faith that was misunderstood – even before September 11.

I would be the second to wear a hijab in my family; my mother took the plunge in her late thirties. Even though I was born in Kuwait to Iraqi parents and spent my childhood in Abu Dhabi, by the time I was 14 my family was ready to call Canada home and I was growing up learning how to embrace Canadian values.

Nevertheless, my name was foreign, I spoke both Arabic and English at home and I stood out like a sore thumb in my Wasp-ish high school, where I was one of about five Arab teenagers. But I never felt resentment; I was proud of being different. By university, I was just another teenager trying to carve out an identity and looking into my heritage for answers. I read and talked to others about why they were Muslim. And soon, I felt as if I was actively following my faith; before, it had seemed as if I was only born into it. I wanted a way to express this choice outwardly and make it public and the hijab gave me this option.

I talked to women about why they wore it. They told me about their experiences as Muslims living in the West. I knew it was going to be a struggle, but one that I wanted to go through. My first hijab was a black hand-me-down from my mother. I wore it as a sign of rebellion, religiosity and deference.

But I found it difficult from the outset. There was always the idiot on the bus who yelled “Terrorist!” at the top of his lungs, or the woman who disgustingly stared me down at the mall, or the old guy breathing “go back home” in the grocery line. It gets tiring always having to justify your actions. But, in my experience, where more enlightened classes mixed I was given a space to lead by example and an opportunity to express my abilities without condescending judgement. By the time I was 25, I was reading the news and reporting for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. I was engaged with my community at large and I felt accepted.

I brought this attitude with me to Egypt in late 2006. What I was not ready for was the switch – while I blended in without harassment on the street, it was among Westernised liberal Egyptians that I experienced prejudice. Much like the old man in the shopping line, or the guy yelling on the bus, it did not matter to them what my accomplishments were. I was wearing a veil and it disgusted them.

The first time I was hit with this was when I introduced myself to a famous Egyptian cartoonist. I wanted to look over his shoulder as he drew his latest sketch and tell him I enjoyed his work. Instead he looked me up and down and asked where I was from. When I answered “Canada”, he asked if I wore the hijab there. When I answered yes, he pointed a finger at me and said, “Well, you are aware that this is how the servants dress”. In a classist society such as Egypt, calling someone a maid is another way of saying that person is uneducated. He did not ask me my name, or what my story was. Instead, he felt he was totally within his rights to insult me, because of my scarf.

In a country where there exists a culture of shaming women into taking on the hijab to conform with local ideas of modesty, there is also a culture of shaming educated, upper-middle class hijabis. I was made to feel backward, brainwashed and a symbol of political Islam instead of a woman who had made a choice.

Having come back to live and work in the Middle East, I have been forced to re-evaluate my identity. I knew I did not identify with many of the ways Egyptians practised their faith. I am a Muslim who was raised in the West, so I practise my faith differently. Equally, I do not identify with the way some of Egypt’s elite define being Western. I respect non-conformity. Even though I have to field personal and often rude questions from so-called liberals here, I still feel it empowers me to have control over my body. And while it is not as exhilarating to wear it as when I was 18, I still like surprising people when they are unsure of what to make of me in a hijab.

I also now know life as a woman is not going to be that easy. We are judged no matter what we do. So if I am to be labelled, I am determined to define my category. And while the struggle I face because of my hijab can get very tiresome some days, I am just not ready to give it up.

Hadeel al Shalchi is a writer for The Associated Press, based in Cairo.

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The right to say no

Surrey, B.C. — Irshad Manji writes beautifully that Muslim women in Canadian society must not be denied the right to wear the hijab, for freedom is “the great gift Canada offers to immigrants” (Canadian Freedoms Clothe The Muslim Body Politic – Oct. 14).

Yet Ms. Manji also notes that many Muslim females are not volunteering to cover – including some students I teach. She argues that we must remind newcomers of their liberties, including their right not to wear a head scarf or veil.

Globe and Mail

To honour the memory of Aqsa Parvez, the Mississauga, Ont., teenager killed last December, schools must find a way to remind female students of their liberties.

Dutch to ban burkas when picking children up from school

The Dutch government is to extend a ban on the burka to all schools, a measure that includes a prohibition on Muslim mothers from picking their children while wearing face-covering Islamic dress.

Ronald Plasterk, the Dutch education minister, announced that the ban would apply to all schools, including private Muslim religious establishments, and their immediate surroundings.

Not only teachers, but parents and all visitors to schools, including suppliers making deliveries, will be forbidden the burka, even though only 100 women in the Netherlands, out of a population of 16.5 million, are estimated to wear it.

Legislation is expected to be agreed by the Dutch parliament next year.

Mr Plasterk has cited security concerns and the need for teachers and schoolchildren to be able to communicate properly with each other.

“It is important for children to learn that proper communication requires being able to look the other person in the eye,” he said to Dutch MPs.

The legendary tolerance of the Dutch has been tested by years of controversy over the burka and radical Islam in the Netherlands.

Local authorities are now expected to follow the government ban by extending restrictions on Islamic dress to council buildings and public transport.

The burka, also known as a Niqab, is a wide dress covering the entire body, hair and neck face of a woman, leaving only a slit for the eyes.

The Dutch ban will not apply to the more common Hijab headscarf, where a woman’s face is clearly visible.

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City OKs Hijabs, In Public Pools

Concern for flowing fabric that could tangle around a swimmer’s legs or get caught in the filter intakes

CALGARY, ALBERTA CANADA — (OfficialWire) — 08/22/08 — The city of Calgary, Alberta, has decided to allow Muslim women to wear the hijab headscarf and Indians to wear saris in public swimming pools, safety allowing.

One of the restrictions enacted was that saris wouldn’t be permitted in the deep ends of pools because the flowing fabric could tangle around a swimmer’s legs or get caught in the filter intakes, the Globe and Mail reported Friday.

Heather Bruce, the Canadian city’s superintendent for aquatics and fitness, said a study found some Muslims and people of other religious minorities weren’t “participating in the water because they didn’t feel comfortable wearing traditional swimwear,” and the goal was to accommodate everyone, but safely.

“Young women and girls, around the age of 12, would stop taking swimming lessons because they weren’t comfortable in traditional swimwear,” Bruce said.

Official Wire

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Scarf resulted in hiring refusal

A Muslim teenager in Tulsa has filed a federal complaint alleging that a Woodland Hills store refused to hire her because she wears a head scarf.

An Abercrombie district manager allegedly told the girl in late June that her religiously mandated head scarf did not fit the store’s image.

The girl took her case to the Council on American-Islamic Relations-Oklahoma, which helped her file a complaint with the Oklahoma City office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

“Employers have a clear legal duty to accommodate the religious practices of their workers,” said Razi Hashmi, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations-Oklahoma. “To deny someone employment because of apparent religious bias goes against long-standing American traditions of tolerance and inclusion.”

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires employers to reasonably accommodate the religious practices of an employee unless doing so would

According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s Web site, “absent undue hardship, religious discrimination may be found where an employer fails to accommodate the employee’s religious dress or grooming practices,” including a head covering.

“This shouldn’t create undue hardship,” Hashmi said. “This level of disrespect is unfair.”

Hashmi would not identify the girl but said she is younger than 18.

He said the store’s corporate policy forbids discrimination based on religion.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations-Oklahoma has written a letter asking the company to apologize to the girl, to clarify its policy on religious discrimination, and to institute workplace sensitivity and diversity training.

A manager at the Tulsa store referred all questions to the corporate office. At press time, the corporate office had not returned telephone calls.

Sheryl Siddiqui, a spokeswoman for the Islamic Society of Tulsa, said she had heard of the case but knew little about it and could not comment.

James Habas, a supervisory investigator for the EEOC in Oklahoma City who handled the case, was out of town and could not be reached.

Ibrahim Hooper, the national communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Washington, D.C., office, said workplace discrimination historically has been one of the agency’s most common types of incidents.

The EEOC received 2,541 complaints of religious discrimination in fiscal year 2006.

CAIR is the United States’ largest Muslim civil liberties group. It has 35 offices and chapters in the U.S. and Canada.

Tulsa World