15 Jan - Australia:

SHOPKEEPERS are demanding sunglasses, baseball caps and religious face veils be banned to guard against criminals trying to hide their identities.

The Queensland Retailers Association yesterday declared its members should have the right to ban customers from wearing any clothing that obscured faces.

But the proposed ban has outraged civil libertarians, Islamic groups and Queensland's Anti-Discrimination Commission. They say the move would be unlawful and unfairly target Muslims and teenagers.

Link

A Muslim student was attacked at Elmhurst College in what school officials described as a hate crime had found anti-Islamic slurs and a swastika scrawled in her locker a week earlier, police and students said Friday.

The 19-year-old sophomore told police a masked, male attacker struck her in the head with a handgun about 8:30 p.m. Thursday after she entered a restroom in the school's Schaible Science Center. She suffered a concussion.

Threatening graffiti - "Kill the Muslims" - was written on a mirror in the restroom, students and police said.

Earlier Thursday, the victim had spoken at a demonstration called to denounce the anti-Islamic slurs and swastika she had discovered Oct. 2 in her locker, school officials and students said. Among the slurs was the phrase "Die Muslims."

Both cases are being investigated as hate crimes, Elmhurst College spokesman Charley Henderson said.

"They have some common threads," Henderson said.

The victim - who wears an Islamic head scarf - and two other Muslim students had been verbally harassed and taunted Sept. 18 during a campus protest calling for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention center, friends said.

The Thursday night attack triggered an hourlong lockdown at the college while police searched the campus - and prompted hundreds of students to rally again Friday to protest the incident and call for unity. [Link]

The outcome of a complaint filed by a Tulsa Muslim teenager against Abercrombie & Fitch may never be made public.

The girl ... filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last month alleging that the popular clothier's Woodland Hills store refused to hire her because she wears a religiously mandated head scarf....

EEOC attorney Michelle Robertson said her office cannot comment on any charge that is still open because of confidentiality requirements of the Civil Rights Act, and cannot even confirm that the case was filed.

In general, she said, when a complaint is filed, it is assigned to an investigator who gets information from the employer and elsewhere and makes a recommendation to the area director.

In 5 percent of the cases, there is enough evidence to determine that discrimination occurred, she said.

Nearly all of the cases with evidence of discrimination are settled out of court and remain confidential.

Only 1 percent of those 5 percent wind up in court, where they become public, she said. [Link]

Abercrombie & Fitch, the mega-clothier accused of not hiring a teenage Muslim because she wears a religiously-mandated head scarf, has a history of discrimination complaints.

The unnamed Tulsa teen, who has not responded to requests for an interview, filed a complaint with the Oklahoma office of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in Oklahoma City. [Link]

A ban on Muslim head gear in schools could spark a rift with minority communities, an intercultural affairs expert has warned.

Introducing rules against the hijab head scarf or other religious symbols is "likely to result in tension with those communities where no tension existed before," said the director of the State's advisory body on intercultural affairs, Philip Watt.

During the debate over whether Muslim pupils should be allowed wear the headscarf in State schools, Mr Watt, who sits on the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism, said most schools had already found their own "sensible and sensitive compromise".

He explained that the majority of schools allowed the head scarf to be worn provided it was the same colour as the school uniform. [Link]

As Senator Barack Obama courted voters in Iowa last December, Representative Keith Ellison, the country’s first Muslim congressman, stepped forward eagerly to help.

Barack Obama spoke at the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago on Fathers’ Day. Mr. Obama has visited churches and synagogues, but he has yet to appear at a single mosque.

Mr. Ellison believed that Mr. Obama’s message of unity resonated deeply with American Muslims. He volunteered to speak on Mr. Obama’s behalf at a mosque in Cedar Rapids, one of the nation’s oldest Muslim enclaves. But before the rally could take place, aides to Mr. Obama asked Mr. Ellison to cancel the trip because it might stir controversy. Another aide appeared at Mr. Ellison’s Washington office to explain.

“I will never forget the quote,” Mr. Ellison said, leaning forward in his chair as he recalled the aide’s words. “He said, ‘We have a very tightly wrapped message.’ ”

When Mr. Obama began his presidential campaign, Muslim Americans from California to Virginia responded with enthusiasm, seeing him as a long-awaited champion of civil liberties, religious tolerance and diplomacy in foreign affairs. But more than a year later, many say, he has not returned their embrace.

While the senator has visited churches and synagogues, he has yet to appear at a single mosque. Muslim and Arab-American organizations have tried repeatedly to arrange meetings with Mr. Obama, but officials with those groups say their invitations — unlike those of their Jewish and Christian counterparts — have been ignored. Last week, two Muslim women wearing head scarves were barred by campaign volunteers from appearing behind Mr. Obama at a rally in Detroit.

In interviews, Muslim political and civic leaders said they understood that their support for Mr. Obama could be a problem for him at a time when some Americans are deeply suspicious of Muslims. Yet those leaders nonetheless expressed disappointment and even anger at the distance that Mr. Obama has kept from them.

“This is the ‘hope campaign,’ this is the ‘change campaign,’ ” said Mr. Ellison, Democrat of Minnesota. Muslims are frustrated, he added, that “they have not been fully engaged in it.” [Link]

I wear a head scarf. When I read the story about Sen. Barack Obama's volunteers telling two Muslim women they couldn't sit where they would be on camera ("A little trouble with the image," Pruden on Politics, Nation, Friday), I was not surprised at all. As I sat examining the news in a coffee shop in Harvard Square, I thought to myself, "How many times have I been the object of discrimination as a woman in a headscarf in the post-Sept. 11 United States?"

Here is a tough pill to swallow: Religious and ethnic discrimination continues to exist in the United States and is often ignored. Addressing it should be consistent and necessary, not just when it is politically useful.

My community of Muslim Americans suffers all sorts of stereotypes. Anti-Muslim comments have become as commonplace as ever for many Muslims of America - the conflation of radicals and fundamentalists with many of us mosque-goers, the oppression of women who wear headscarves, the inherent violence of observers of Islam. And these are to name a few.

Mr. Obama's volunteers were only acting on the hard reality we Muslim Americans often experience. [Link]

For years, Germany's legal experts have been arguing about whether Muslim public officials have the right to wear headscarves. The issue raises difficult questions about religious tolerance and constitutional rights in Germany.

Head scarves go before the court. What are the limits of modern German tolerance?

Head scarves go before the court. What are the limits of modern German tolerance?
"When you do something," Brigitte Weiss says, "you need to do it right."

It's a motto she knows from home. She remembers people saying it where she comes from, a coal-mining area in Germany's western Ruhr region. Later, as a grade school teacher in Mettmann, a small town near Düsseldorf, she tried to pass the homespun wisdom on to her students. Whether it was their homework in German, geography, home economics, or whatever else they were doing -- the main thing was to do it right.

"All of my students," Weiss says, "were happy to have me as their teacher."

Now this is no longer entirely the case. The reason is Brigitte Weiss's conversion to Islam. Now she has a new name, Maryam, and she dresses differently: She wears a headscarf.

The problem is that for nearly two years it has been against the rules for teachers in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia to wear headscarves in public schools. So Weiss has received a letter from the schools administration asking to know why she wore hers.

Yes, why? "Because I'm a Muslim," she says.

But what does wearing the headscarf mean? Is it obedience to religion? Or submission to a man? Or is it a rebellion against the society shaped by Germany's post-war constitution?

Nonsense, says Maryam Brigitte Weiss. For her, wearing a headscarf is something "typically German, 100 percent German" -- just like herself. At home, at school, or as a Muslim, she applies the same rule -- no half measures. "Whenever I do something, I do it right, dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's."

The question of what the scarf on Maryam Brigitte's head signifies is now being examined by the courts. She lost her case before the administrative court in Düsseldorf, but the judges allowed an appeal because of the case's "fundamental importance." It's precisely because of this fundamental importance that Weiss, who is also women's affairs representative for the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, has no intention to back down. She plans to fight this all the way to the nation's highest court. [Link]

A Muslim woman was awarded £4,000 yesterday after the owner of a hair salon refused to employ her because she wears a headscarf.

Bushra Noah, 19, who has been rejected for 25 hairdressing jobs, had accused Sarah Desrosiers of religious discrimination after she failed to offer her a position in May last year. Ms Desrosiers, 32, said she needed staff to display their hairstyles to customers at the Wedge salon in King’s Cross, North London.

A panel at the Central London employment tribunal dismissed a claim of direct discrimination but upheld a complaint of indirect discrimination.

Mrs Noah, of Acton, West London, applied for a job as a junior assistant. When she arrived at the salon she claimed that the owner was shocked that she wore a headscarf. Ms Desrosiers told the tribunal she was surprised that Mrs Noah had not mentioned it. She said she needed stylists to reflect the “funky, urban” image of her salon. [Link]

A ban on Muslim head gear in schools could spark a rift with minority communities, an intercultural affairs expert has warned.

Introducing rules against the hijab head scarf or other religious symbols is "likely to result in tension with those communities where no tension existed before," said the director of the State's advisory body on intercultural affairs, Philip Watt.

During the debate over whether Muslim pupils should be allowed wear the headscarf in State schools, Mr Watt, who sits on the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism, said most schools had already found their own "sensible and sensitive compromise".

He explained that the majority of schools allowed the head scarf to be worn provided it was the same colour as the school uniform. [Link]

Hundreds of headscarved women protested Friday against a court ruling to cancel a reform which would have allowed students to wear the Muslim garment at university.

About 500 women demonstrated in the southeastern city of Diyarbakır after Friday prayers, and hundreds more in colourful headscarves chanted slogans in Istanbul.

"I'm crushed and feel hopeless. I really don't feel equal to anybody else in this country anymore," said Esra Altınay Özbecetek, 29, who ditched university when she was 19 because she was not allowed to wear her headscarf to class. [Link]

A far-right party takes on the Islamic headscarf

PIA KJAERSGAARD'S Danish People's Party has a genius for attracting attention. Over the past month its campaign to ban public employees from wearing Islamic headscarves has dominated the headlines and also triggered squabbles within most of the country's other political parties.

The campaign began with a poster of a burka-clad woman wielding a judge's gavel. The implicit message was that Danes risk having their courts invaded by Muslim hordes and sharia law. Birthe Ronn Hornbech, the immigration minister, denounced the DPP as “fanatically anti-Muslim” and said the judiciary was capable of policing its own impartiality and dress code. Stig Glent-Madsen, a high-court judge, confirmed that the judiciary had always managed this itself.

Yet the government, which relies on the DPP's support to stay in power, has decided that a new law is needed to ban the wearing of all religious symbols by judges—from Christian crosses to Jewish skullcaps and even Sikh turbans. The hapless Ms Ronn Hornbech will have to frame the law. And the DPP is now calling for even broader bans. Muslim headscarves, says Ms Kjaersgaard, are a “symbol of political Islam and the discrimination against women”. She wants them “out of schools, off the streets and outside the doors of parliament”.

Many Danes share Ms Kjaersgaard's sentiments. A poll by Megafon for TV2 found 48% in favour of a ban on public employees wearing “religious garb”, and only 39% against. The international fallout could be large. Denmark is still struggling with the aftermath of the 2006 Muhammad cartoons affair, which led to protests, deaths and burnt-out embassies across the Muslim world.

One response has come from Danish-born Muslims. A poll by Politiken, a daily, of 315 young Muslim students, found that two-thirds of them were considering emigrating after graduation. Most gave as their reason “the tone of the Danish debate about Muslims”. Jakob Lange, head of studies at Copenhagen University, says that children of immigrants deliberately choose portable qualifications. “They want an education they can use abroad, where the tone of the debate is different. Which is why they often choose medicine, engineering or business-related disciplines.” [Link]

The Muslim head scarf is no real threat to Quebec values and most women in the province wear it by choice, not out of coercion. That's what a commission on the integration of immigrants concluded after a year of study costing $5 million.

In the final draft of their report - which was submitted to the provincial government Monday and is expected to be made public at a news conference Thursday - scholars Gerard Bouchard and Charles Taylor say Quebec society will have a lot to lose if it restricts the wearing of the Muslim head scarf strictly to the home and outdoors. [Link]

Client Services Inc. agreed to pay $65,000 in back pay and other damages to resolve claims filed on behalf of a former collector, Mariam Soultan, who was not permitted to work while wearing a head scarf required by her Muslim beliefs, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said Thursday.

The suit alleged that in May 2007, St. Peters, Mo.-based Client Services, a collection company, terminated Soultan and told her that no exception could be made to the dress code policy, which prohibits hats and other head wear. Soultan would have been assigned to a cubicle and used a telephone head set to perform her collection duties.

The EEOC contended Soultan could have worn a head set over her scarf in her collector position, which has virtually no in-person customer contact.

"Title VII protects people of all religious beliefs," James Neely Jr., director of the EEOC's St. Louis District Office, said in a statement. "If a request can be reasonably accommodated, then an employee should never have to choose between performing her job and honoring her faith."

The two-year consent decree, which must be approved by the U.S. District Court in St. Louis, also requires Client Services to disseminate a revised dress code policy informing employees of their right to religious accommodation and to provide training to all managers on religious discrimination. [Link]

Conflicts are developing in Irish schools over the wearing of the hijab, or headscarf, by Muslim pupils, it was disclosed yesterday.

The issue is a major challenge in faith-based schools where the headscarf is definitely not part of the standard school uniform.

The president of the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals (NAPD) Aine O'Neill said that in some Christian faith-based schools, perhaps as much as a third of the students were not of the majority faith.

She was aware of some of her colleagues who were experiencing conflicts over religion in Christian schools where non-Christian students were enrolled.

"Unfortunately bullying has become part of the issue in some schools. Those of us who work with children know that a child who is different in some way to the majority is a target for bullies," she told an NAPD symposium on diversity in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham.

Education sources said last night that her comments are the first public statement about conflicts over the hajib, the use of which has caused tensions in schools in the UK and France."

Ms O'Neill said the "new Irish" came from many and varied cultures. While language differences were obvious, less obvious were the multiple, diverse and contrasting social and religious customs the newcomers brought with them.

She noted that in Ireland there is no official policy on facilitating the integration of children from culturally diverse backgrounds. [Link]

The dispute in Turkey reminds us of the importance of allowing 'others' emotional depth.

Just as a flag is not merely a swatch of material – stars, stripes, sickles – a scarf is no longer a piece of silk. Turkey is set to repeal its longstanding scarf ban in university settings – setting off a firestorm of controversy about class conflict, human rights, and the rise of Islam in a country fearful of religious influence.

Secular Turks, outraged that religious Muslim women may soon sport their head scarves in even elite urban schools, have resorted to demeaning their fellow citizens. As Turkish political philosophy professor, Atilla Yayla, told The New York Times, the secular Turks "don't encounter them [the religious Turks] as human beings.... They want them to evaporate, to disappear as fast as possible."

The developing story in Turkey of its heated head scarf dispute is an important reminder to us all. Conflict, especially internecine, grows dangerous when dehumanization begins.

It is one thing to disagree about the appropriateness of religious symbols in public places, to debate and be divided on the necessity of separation of church and state – or in this case, mosque and school – but it is another thing entirely to deny the humanity of a group of people.

We see the beginning of this process emerging in Turkey; dehumanization is so often incubated in callous language, in angry labeling, in base and unfair generalizations. We see the end of this process in the tragic examples of Rwanda, Bosnia, the Middle East, and even in the fates of America's hate-crime victims Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, among many others....

We will not, ultimately, be protected by laws or bombs. We will only be protected by the continued fight against dehumanization in all its myriad forms, and the renewed effort to focus on developing emotional awareness and empathy in our children and in ourselves. A flag is not just a flag. A scarf is not just a scarf. And a human heart, well it is most certainly not just an organ. It is our fiercest weapon against annihilation, and our most inspired ally toward creating a more peaceful world. [Link]

SECURITY workers at Brisbane International Airport have filed a complaint with the Federal Government over an order to remove passengers' headgear.
Employees of ISS Security, which is contracted by the Brisbane Airport Corporation, have told The Courier-Mail they were furious at the order demanding all passengers take off their headgear, including religious turbans, scull caps and veils, for the metal detectors.

"The order was given after a senior BAC manager did a walk-through wearing a hard hat," a worker said. "He was asked to go back and put the hard hat through (on the X-ray machine) and he decided that was too much hassle, and everyone should have to remove their headwear as a matter of routine.

"From that one incident, supervisors were instructed to make all workers have passengers remove their headgear and we were told if we didn't do that we would be stood down," she said. "There was no terrorism threat. It was just one BAC manager who didn't like the standard procedure."

She said staff demanded the order be given to them in writing but were refused.

"We knew we'd be the ones in strife if it ended up in the anti-discrimination tribunal, to which it seemed destined to go."

Staff estimated 13 people of the Sikh religion had to remove their turbans and a Muslim woman forced to remove her veil before the edict was lifted on Monday. [Link]

Parliament took a major step on Saturday toward lifting a ban against women’s head scarves at universities, setting the stage for a final showdown with Turkey’s secular elite over where Islam fits in the building of an open society.

Lawmakers voted overwhelmingly in favor of a measure supported by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to change the Constitution in a way they say will guarantee all citizens the right to go to college regardless of how they dress.

The authorities imposed the ban in the late 1990s, arguing that the growing number of covered women in colleges threatened secularism, one of the founding principles of modern Turkey.

Secular opposition lawmakers voted against the change, with about a fifth of all ballots cast. Crowds of secular Turks backed them on the streets of the capital, Ankara, chanting that secularism — and women’s right to resist being forced to wear head scarves by an increasingly conservative society — was under threat. [Link]

Spain's opposition conservatives said Friday they would bar Islamic headscarves from public schools if they win next month's general election _ another divisive proposal in a campaign suddenly focused on immigration.
The center-right Popular Party said it is against symbols that denote discrimination against women.

"We feel that what makes sense is to establish in the framework of the law that use of symbols which might amount to discrimination or a demonstration of submission of women must be avoided. Therefore, as a principle, veils should not be used in classrooms," the party's campaign coordinator Juan Costa told a news conference.

The campaign for the March 9 election had been largely dominated by worries over Spain's once-buoyant but now-cooling economy. The governing Socialists have a small but firm lead over the conservatives.

But this week the Popular Party unexpectedly shifted the spotlight to immigration. It said Wednesday that if victorious it would require immigrants to sign a legally binding document obliging them to learn Spanish and observe Spanish social customs _ among other requirements _ in exchange for receiving the same rights as Spanish citizens.

Human rights groups criticized this as harsh and even unconstitutional. [Link]

Turkey's Islamic-rooted ruling Justice and Development party has won the first of two votes in parliament to change the country's constitution to lift a ban on the wearing of religious headscarves at universities. The move is proving deeply controversial with opponents of the reform who argue it threatens the secular foundation of Turkey. Dorian Jones reports for VOA from Istanbul.

In the first two rounds of voting, the parliament voted 401 to 110 and 404-99 in favor of constitutional amendments to end the 28-year ban on headscarves in universities. The amendment has to be confirmed in a second vote Saturday.

In an often heated debate, Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek said the reform will end an injustice. He said in a democracy everybody is equal before the law and the lifting of the ban is being done to end discrimination. He says the change is being made in the name of freedom.

The main opposition People's Party condemned the vote.

RPP parliament member Nur Serter says wearing a religious headscarf sends the wrong message. She points to the experience of neighboring Iran.

"Headscarf has always been used [in Iran] as the main symbol of the political Islamic movement," she said. "For example, headscarf has been the symbol of the Iranian Islamic revolution, so Turkey is very sensitive."

While its population is overwhelmingly Muslim, Turkey is a strictly secular state. Lifting the ban on headscarves at universities has raised concerns that the ruling party is trying to undermine secularism. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has denied this. [Link]