According to the Washington Post:

The ugly wave of anti-Arab feelings immediately after Sept. 11, 2001, may have been responsible for a sharp increase in the incidence of premature and low-birth-weight babies born to women of Arab descent in the United States in the months that followed the terrorist attacks.

The evidence is circumstantial but compelling, epidemiologist Diane S. Lauderdale of the University of Chicago says in the latest issue of Demography.

Satnam Singh who is currently in federal prison, may have to cut his hair and remove his turban when he is transferred to the Florida state prison system after April 9, 2006. Chapter 33-602.101(4) of the Florida Administrative Code states that “[m]ale inmates shall have their hair cut short to medium uniform length at all times….” No similar provision exists for female inmates. [Link]

The petition is available here.

An 18-year-old man was charged with arson yesterday after a fire destroyed the interior of a Sikh temple in Williams Lake.

The RCMP said the Crown is also asking that the man be remanded in custody for a 30-day psychiatric evaluation.

He is accused of setting a fire on Sunday that caused about $500,000 damage to the Guru Nanak temple.

RCMP Corporal Mark Menard said police are confident the temple fire was not racially motivated. [Link]

A film by an Indian-American depicting the story of a Sikh faced with the post 9/11 realities is being appreciated in international movie circles.

The film The Gold Bracelet by Hollywood based Indian actor and film producer Kavi Raz won the best feature drama award at the Cinequest, ranked among the top ten film festivals in the world, recently. [Link]

Bloomberg News is reporting that

A British high school that excluded a girl from class for wearing a head-to-toe Muslim dress didn't infringe her right to practice her religion, the U.K.'s highest court ruled....

Cherie Booth QC, Prime Minister Tony Blair's wife, argued the case for Shabina Begum, now 17. The student had insisted on wearing the floor-length jilbab to class and was excluded for two years until she switched high schools. Booth had argued that the school had not considered her client's right to practice her religion and receive an education before making its decision.

Today's unanimous ruling by five Law Lords overturns a Court of Appeal judgment. The lower court had found Denbigh High School in Luton, north of London, didn't properly weigh Begum's human rights in 2002 when she was told to change into her school uniform or stay home. [Link]

The opinion is available here.

[Hat Tip: The Basher]

According to the Associated Press:

"A controversial civilian border patrol group is planning a return to Arizona in two weeks to again confront the problem of illegal immigration.... [M]any Hispanic groups and advocates for immigrant rights still call the Minuteman group racist or vigilantes."

Our previous report on the Minutemen is available here.

Contradicting traditional stereotypes of Muslim women as veiled and oppressed, Muslim Women in America: The Challenge of Islamic Identity Today (Oxford University Press, 2006), by Georgetown University Professor Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and co-authors Jane I. Smith and Kathleen M. Moore, reveals Muslim women in America to be diverse and active in shaping the role of Muslims in the West.

“Muslim women have been empowered to participate in the public arena to pursue their interests, whether these interests are counteracting prejudice or pursuing professional dreams or serving the common welfare through community service,” the authors write. “They have contributed in especially significant ways in the negotiation of what it means to be Muslim in the American context.” [Link]

Sarah Khan's schoolmates have called the 17-year-old Muslim a terrorist since the 9/11 attacks.
Khan, who attends Hialeah-Miami Lakes Senior High, said all she wants is to focus on her schoolwork and her role on the cross country team -- and for the harassment to stop.
Khan and other students, teachers and equal-rights activists gathered in the Capitol on Monday to support a bill sponsored by state Rep. Ken Gottlieb, a Hollywood Democrat.
His bill would require Florida school districts to enact policies prohibiting harassment and discrimination based on race, religion, disability, ethnicity, sexual orientation and other differences. [Link]

IT MUST be a trick of fate that the Sikhs, some of the bravest soldiers in history, ended up in the highly perilous job of urban taxi driving. At the beginning of Kavi Raz's The Gold Bracelet, a Sikh cabby is shot—a senseless, wrong-time, wrong-place death staged with maximum surprise and probability. [Link]

As a relative newcomer to the Royal Family, the Duchess of Cornwall can be forgiven for still being shocked by the often wonderful and bizarre sights that go with official duties.

However, even such an old hand as her husband looked mildly alarmed at the sight of a blindfolded Sikh swordsman slicing through a melon on a man's stomach.


Camilla covers her eyes as the blindfolded swordsman...
But the hair-raising climax of a spectacular martial arts display laid on for the royal couple proved too much to bear for the duchess.

As the critical moment approached, to the roll of drums, she held her hands over her face and averted her eyes. [Link]

Associated Press writer Daniel Woolls notes, in a story picked up on the front page of Yahoo.com:

Two years after the bombings that killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,500, human rights groups and Muslims themselves say with relief that there has been no significant backlash against Spain's estimated million-strong Muslim community.

But Muslims feel targeted in subtler ways — a rise in job application rejections, trouble finding housing, grumbling from neighbors when they want to set up a mosque.

"This is not something you can measure. But people live it. They notice it," said Begonia Sanchez, spokeswoman for immigrant aid group SOS Racism. "They notice it when they get on the bus. They notice it when they seek work. They notice it when they run into neighbors in the stairwell." [Link]

According to the Sikh Coalition:

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has ordered Kawaljeet Kaur, an accountant in the IRS’ Houston office, to stop wearing her kirpan to work. The Sikh Coalition is prepared to file a lawsuit on behalf of Kawaljeet Kaur’s right to wear her kirpan to work if necessary.

Senate Republicans on Tuesday agreed to expand oversight of President George W. Bush's domestic spying program but rejected Democratic pressure for a broad inquiry into eavesdropping on U.S. citizens.

Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, Republican chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said the committee voted to create a new seven-member subcommittee that would scrutinize the eavesdropping under a plan approved by the White House. [Link]

After a major nationwide victory allowing their children to go to school wearing ceremonial daggers last week, Quebec Sikhs have another cultural battle on their hands.

This time the fight is between Sikh truck drivers and the Montreal Port Authority.

Quebec Sikhs are angry about a new law that requires all truck drivers coming into the Port to wear hard hats.

Sikh truck drivers say that wearing a helmet is not possible because it is against their religion to remove their turbans.

Prithvi Saluja, a Quebec Sikh, argues that throughout history Sikhs have preformed dangerous tasks without helmets.

"Indian Sikhs have served the Royal British Army in World War One and WWII and they didn't wear helmets at that time, they didn't need extra protection from the bullet," Sulaja said. [Link]

ABC News reports:

27-year-old suburban Chicago man has pleaded guilty to trying to intimidate a Palestinian Muslim family by setting off an explosive in their unoccupied van in March 2003.

Eric K. Nix of Burbank pleaded guilty in federal court yesterday to one count of criminal interference with the right to fair housing.
Nix admitted targeting the family because they were of Arab descent and had chosen to live in Burbank in Chicago's southwest suburbs.

According to the BBC:

French Sikhs have appealed to President Jacques Chirac over a ruling that they must remove their turbans for driver's licence photographs.
France's highest administrative body reversed an earlier ruling in favour of Shingara Mann Singh, a French citizen forced to remove his turban in 2004.

It said the order was justified on the grounds of public security and was not a restriction on freedom of faith.

An 80-year-old East Indian man sustained a fractured hip after he apparently was knocked off his bicycle by unknown assailants in Yuba City.

Shawna Pavey, spokeswoman for the Yuba City Police Department, said Yuba City resident Harbans Singh was reportedly riding his bike at 4:51 p.m. Saturday on Winship Road near Garden Highway, when four or five occupants of a maroon-colored Chevrolet Tahoe sport utility vehicle began throwing rocks at him.

Pavey said none of the rocks hit Singh, so he ignored the men - described as either Hispanic or white males between 25 and 30 years old - and continued riding. The drove ahead of Singh to the corner of Winship and Main streets and stopped the vehicle, where one man got out and allegedly pushed Singh, causing him to fall off his bicycle.

"It was reported as an accident by a witness who looked out the window," Pavey said Monday. "It looked like a car had hit the gentleman, so the witness called it an accident."

[link]

The Supreme Court of Canada Sikh students can carry kirpans, or ceremonial daggers, to schools and that the kirpans do not present an undue danger to others. The Court specifically held, "an absolute prohibition against wearing a kirpan infringes the freedom of religion of the student in question under s. 2(a) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (“Canadian Charter”). The infringement cannot be justified under s. 1 of the Canadian Charter, since it has not been shown that such a prohibition minimally impairs the student’s rights."

The opinion is available here.