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Michelle Obama travelled to the United Kingdom today, choosing to give a speech on female empowerment while surrounded by hijab-clad girls in the ethnically “diverse” London borough of Tower Hamlets. But the Commercial Road in Tower Hamlets, from where Mrs. Obama chose to lecture, isn’t ethnically diverse, and nor is the Mulberry School for Girls that she visited. Tower Hamlets, which only days ago managed to shake off its Islamist-linked Mayor, boasts a Bangladeshi, Indian, and Pakistani, and otherwise Asian population. At the last census, in 2011, 39 percent of the population self-identified as Christian, while 36 percent identified as...

Female members of Saudi Arabia's advisory Shura Council attend a session (AFP) Saudi Arabia’s consultative assembly has passed a law requiring female television to wear “modest dress”, according to local media reports. Arab News, which is part of a group of companies owned by King Salman's son Prince Turki, said the law passed in the Shura Council, an advisory body, will make it mandatory for women not to “show off their beauty” while on air. The law will come into force once approved by the country's cabinet and will apply to “women media workers in the Kingdom” including on the...

It's time to ban the burka in the US now. Which one of the new congress people will stand up and sponsor a bill. Will all good men be quiet now?

For the first time in history, and in the wake of the December 1st stabbing death of an American teacher in Abu Dhabi by a woman wearing a burqa, Gulf region media are questioning whether the burqa is a security risk. Historically, other Muslim and Arab governments, as well as feminist activists, have not only questioned the burqa—they have also abolished it. Such countries include Turkey, Egypt, the Maghreb, Iran, and Afghanistan. Educated Muslim women living in large cities in these countries went unveiled for at least 100 years. However, Saudi Arabia and environs, and rural regions in the Arab...

Primary school teachers should be allowed to wear Muslim veils in the classroom, according to the former Archbishop of Canterbury. Rowan Williams claims that there is no reason to “panic” over the use of the niqab and that even young children do not necessarily need to be able to see their teacher’s face. Speaking in an interview for the Christian think-tank Theos, he argued that there fears over how such a practice might affect children’s learning were “misplaced.” […] His comments are set to reignite the row over the role of the controversial full-face veil in public life which have...

Since 2011, France has enforced a so-called “burka ban” on Muslims covering their faces in public, making it the first European country to take such measures against publicly-demonstrated Islamic dress codes. About five million Muslims live in France. Offenders in and around Paris usually receive a fine, but on Oct. 3, the ban reached a new level of enforcement, as a Muslim woman was kicked out of the Bastille Opera house after refusing to uncover her face. Performers of La Traviata didn’t notice the woman until the second act, at which point they refused to continue performing until she was...

Australia’s Parliament House on Monday lifted a short-lived ban on facial coverings including burqas and niqabs after the prime minister intervened.The department that runs Parliament House had announced earlier this month that “persons with facial coverings” would no longer be allowed in the open public galleries. Instead, they were to be directed to galleries usually reserved for noisy schoolchildren where they could sit behind soundproof glass. That announcement was made just as Parliament’s last two-week session was ending and had no practical effect. On Monday, the Department of Parliamentary Services, or DPS, said people wearing face coverings would be allowed...

A French politician was so upset after seeing a Muslim woman sitting on a French beach fully clothed and in a headscarf that she decided to take a picture and write a provocative opinion piece on Facebook. In her rant former minister Nadine Morano, from the UMP party, said Muslims should go elsewhere if they don’t want to integrate. The former French deputy used a picture of former sex icon Brigitte Bardot alongside that of the veiled woman on the beach to make her point that France has a proud history of women being free to dress how they wish....

No-go Zones (NGZ) are typically referred to as being places where non-Muslims dare not tread, even in their own countries. Take heart. There appears to be a new dynamic at work unfolding in a British town known as Leicester. There, Muslim women who wear burkas in public feel like they’re entering NGZ’s themselves. A new book by two brainiacs at the University of Leicester features the “plight” of these victims: Muslim women who wear a full veil say there are no-go areas in Leicester which they feel frightened to visit – even in a car. They claim they are subjected...

A German court has rejected a Muslim student’s lawsuit against a vocational school’s ban on wearing face-covering veils in class. The Bavarian Administrative Court said Friday the school’s ban didn’t infringe illegally on the right of the student to exercise her religious rights freely. …

Education departments in a number of regions in Saudi Arabia have banned female employees and visitors who do not wear a face veil from entering girls’ schools, the Saudi Gazette reported on Monday. The report cited a pamphlet sent by education departments to school principals, in which male and female school guards are instructed to abide by Islamic rules, regulations and directives and moral principles. …

Most teenagers do dumb things. But not trying-to-rob-Joe-Galiano dumb. Who is Joe Galiano? He's the owner of Suburban Armory, the gun shop on MacDade Boulevard in Collingdale Borough, Delaware County. He is surrounded by guns, including the one on his hip. Like his .45-caliber pistol. Can't miss it. Despite this fact, police say two teenagers dressed in burkas walked into his store this afternoon, pulled a gun on Galiano and tried to stick him up. Galiano, less than thrilled about having a man in female Muslim garb pointing a silver handgun at him inside his own store, decided not to...

Women with uncovered faces might give the little tykes all sorts of ideas. This isn’t happening in Afghanistan… but in Tunisia. The heartland of the Arab Spring. A group of Salafites has issued death threats against teachers at an elementary school in Djerba, Tunisia, if they will not start wearing the Islamic veil within a week. ... Some might complain that it’s unfair to call Salafis moderate. But I’m not being sarcastic. If the Muslim Brotherhood can be repeatedly referred to as a moderate group as well as many of the Salafist militias in Syria that aren’t Al Qaeda… that...

Four female members of Ankara’s Islamic-rooted government attended a parliament session on Thursday wearing headscarves, a first in 14 years in secular Turkey. The last time a headscarf was seen in Parliament was when Turkish-American MP Merve Kavakci turned up for her swearing-in ceremony in Islamic dress. She was booed out of the house and eventually had her Turkish citizen(ship) revoked. Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lifted a decades-old ban on headscarves in the civil service in early October as part of a package of reforms meant to improve democracy and freedoms. …

Burka bandit tries to hold up National City bank, CBS8 San Diego, August 2, 2013 A woman tried to rob a bank in National City, and officials sought the public's help locating her. The attempted robbery occurred at around 6 p.m. Thursday at a Wells Fargo Bank branch at 1199 Highland Ave., according to FBI Special Agent Darrell Foxworth. "At the time of the robbery, the woman entered the bank and stood in the teller line until summoned by a teller," Foxworth said. "Upon arriving at the teller counter, the woman presented a demand note." The teller read some of...

The Islamic Solidarity Games open in Indonesia this weekend following a chaotic run-up, with controversy over female athletes competing in sports bikinis adding to the turmoil. Some nations demanded that all women cover up for the beach volleyball, track and field, and swimming events, but organizers have refused to axe the two-piece sporting outfits. "If some countries do not want to use the bikini, that's fine, but if other countries want to, we will allow that," senior organizing committee member Djoko Pramono told AFP.

France witnessed another apparent incident of violent Islamophobia on Tuesday, after it was reported that a 16-year-old girl in the suburbs of Paris was attacked and had her Islamic veil torn off her face. The teen victim was leaving a friend’s house in Trappes, the same Paris suburb that saw violent clashes between youths and police last month, at around 5.45 pm on Monday, when two “European-looking” men confronted her near Square Berlioz, according to reports in French media. The victim reported her assailants shouted racist and anti-Muslim insults at her before brandishing a boxcutter. She said they then tore...

Authorities are seeking for the public's help Friday in locating a woman who tried to rob a bank in National City. The attempted robbery occurred at around 6 p.m. Thursday at a Wells Fargo Bank branch at 1199 Highland Ave., according to FBI Special Agent Darrell Foxworth. "At the time of the robbery, the woman entered the bank and stood in the teller line until summoned by a teller," Foxworth said. "Upon arriving at the teller counter, the woman presented a demand note." The teller read some of the demand note then alerted another bank employee, Foxworth said. The woman...

The town of Trappes in Yvelines department (county), just outside Paris, was again the scene of street disturbances Sunday night as protesters, thought to be mainly Muslims, faced off with local police and riot police. Trappes and surrounding towns had also witnessed violent protests Friday and Saturday evening after police had attempted to book a Muslim woman for wearing a full face niqab in contravention of France’s so-called burqa ban. ... The violence stemmed from an incident last Thursday when police tried to carry out an identity check and give a ticket to a woman wearing a niqab — a...

"The law should be applied, and applies to everyone." That principle, so hard-won in the West, is rapidly giving way. "5 injured in clashes at burka riot outside Paris ... About 250 people hurling projectiles clashed with police firing tear gas west of Paris, in apparent protest over enforcement of France’s ban on Islamic face veils. Five people were injured and six detained in the violence, authorities said Saturday.