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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Hijab Battles Around the World

Tayyibah, St. Paul Minnesota. Fatima, Creil, France. Samira, Algiers, Algeria. What do these women have in common? They are all Muslim, and they’ve all had a run-in with the law.

Their crimes, you ask? Wearing Hijab, or the Islamic head scarf. Worldwide there seems to be a growing consensus that a few yards of cloth on a woman’s head, especially if it covers part or all of her face, is a threat to education, women’s rights, public security and even to freedom of religion itself.

MUSLIM COUNTRIES NOT IMMUNE TO THE TREND
Amazingly, countries whose populations are predominantly Muslim are not immune to this trend. Indeed, it seems they have led the charge.
For many years, Turkey, followed more recently by Algeria and Tunisia, has had a prohibition on wearing Hijab.
Egypt, up until a few weeks ago, also forbade women students to wear scarves. Morocco forbade its citizens living in France to join protests against Hijab strictures there.
Women who defy the bans may be arrested, denied jobs and education, fined or even thrown in prison. More recently, moves against the Hijab have been made in European and American countries.
THE CASE OF HIJAB DISCRIMINATION IN FRANCE
This September in France, the national minister of education issued a directive that effectively banned head scarves from the classroom. On October 3, police were called in to prevent 22 Muslim girls from entering their school wearing the Hijab.
Since then polls have shown that 86 percent of the French populace supports the education minister’s decree.
The general perception is that Hijab is a threat to secularism and the separation of religion and state. In particular, there was concern that Hijab is responsible for dividing Muslim and non-Muslim students.
Some even claim that it is an Islamist plot to “demolish the secular public system” (Le Point Magazine).
Others worry that head scarves introduce religious influences into the public school and places undue strain on other students to conform to Islam’s dress or moral code.
HIJAB: A VIOLATION OF A WOMAN’S RIGHTS?
Another claim is that Hijab constitutes a violation of the female’s human rights because it is a form of discrimination.
Yet, it is common in France for students to wear crosses or yarmulkes (the Jewish skullcap) and for Jewish students to be exempted from Saturday classes. Defending his discriminatory decision, [French education minister Francois] Bayrou declared, “My instructions to school heads will be very clear. We will continue to accept discrete religious signs, as has always been the case. But we cannot accept ostentatious signs that divide our youth.”
BENAZIR BHUTTO ON THE HIJAB
Visiting Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto added insult to injury, when addressing the French Diplomatic Press Association on November 3.
[She]said that Muslim girls who want to wear head scarves perhaps “want to make an identity of their own and to observe what they consider to be their traditions,” and declared “luckily my father did not ask me to wear a veil, otherwise I might not be here before you today.”
HIJAB DISCRIMINATION IN AUSTRALIA
Sociology professor Gary Bouma, of Melbourne’s Monash University, who authored [the] Australian Bureau of Immigration and Population Research’s report, says wearing the Hijab “clearly sets a woman aside as different and as a serious Muslim,” adding “that wearing the Hijab made it difficult for them to get jobs.”
The report, which said that many of Australia’s 150,000 Muslims have experienced harassment and bigotry, was released by Immigration Minister Nick Bolkus on November 4, just days after his government announced new laws carrying jail sentences for inciting racial hatred.

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Australian PM over Muslim Dress

Prime Minister John Howard says he does not have an opinion yet on a proposal to ban Muslim women from wearing their traditional robes and veil that has outraged church groups.

New South Wales Christian Democrat MP Reverend Fred Nile says the chador could be used to hide explosives and is a perfect disguise for terrorists.

Mr Howard says while Australia respects people’s religious beliefs, that can be overridden in the public interest, but he has told Southern Cross radio he is not sure whether that is appropriate in this case.

“I don’t have a clear response to what Fred’s put – I mean I like Fred, I don’t always agree with him, but Fred speaks for the views of a lot of people,” Mr Howard said.

“On the other hand, I feel it’s very important at the moment that Islamic people don’t feel they’re being singled out.”

Meanwhile Reverend Nile is standing by his push for Muslim women to be banned from wearing traditional dress in public places.

But New South Wales Premier Bob Carr has rejected the comments as vilifying.

Islamic leaders want an apology while the Independent Education Union has called for his resignation.

Reverend Nile has rejected both demands.

“This is not Iran where you don’t have free speech,” Reverend Nile said.

Mr Carr says the threat is likely to be from a car bomb and not the chador.

He has labelled Reverend Nile’s approach as unhelpful at an already difficult time for those of the Islamic faith

“And there should no finger pointing or vilification or stereotyping of them as we go through this difficult period,” Mr Carr said.

Meanwhile, church and union groups have joined the list of people outraged by the comments.

The Lebanese Muslims Association has labelled the comments outrageous and deeply offensive.

The Anglican church in Sydney has dissociated itself from the remarks.

The Bishop of South Sydney Robert Forsythe says the comments demonstrate a profound misunderstanding of religious freedom in a democratic society.

“I think all Christians are embarrassed when other Christians say things that are unhelpful like that,” he said.

ABC Politics