Free Republic

French President Nicolas Sarkozy says there is no place for full face and body veils such as the burqa, or for the debasement of women, in France. Sarkozy says all beliefs will be respected in France but says "becoming French means adhering to a form of civilization, to values, to morals." Sarkozy said Thursday during a speech on national identity that "France is a country where there is no place for the burqa."

KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) — Some women strode the catwalk in vicious spiked bracelets and body armor. Others had their heads covered, burqa-style, but with shoulders — and tattoos — exposed. Male models wore long, Islamic robes as well as shorts and sequined T-shirts. As surging militant violence grabs headlines around the world, Pakistan's top designers and models are taking part in the country's first-ever fashion week. While the mix of couture and ready-to-wear fashions would not have been out of place in Milan or New York, many designers made reference to the turmoil, reflecting the contradictions and tensions coursing through...

A burka-wearing student has been banned from enrolling at a college after staff claimed the Muslim garment was a barrier to ‘safety and communication’. Shawana Bilqes, 18, was forced to abandon her learning plans after she refused to remove the head-to-toe gown which reveals only her eyes. She had been asked to show her face as a check to avoid identity fraud in case she was posing as someone else. But when she explained she could not due to her religious belief she was forced off her Access course for an HE Diploma at Burnley College, Lancashire. Today Miss Bilqes...

The shameless phenomenon of Western leftist feminists abandoning millions of persecuted Muslim women under Islamic gender apartheid continues. Naomi Wolf has now come forward to say that she finds the Islamic chador sexy and supports its institutionalization throughout the Islamic world. Never mind that Muslim women in most cases do not have a choice of whether or not to cover themselves, and face bodily harm and death if they do not veil. How much, one wonders, does Wolf care about Aqsa Parvez, a 16-year-old Muslim girl who was murdered by her father for refusing to wear the veil? Does...

As I always do around this time of year, I pushed aside the Arab-Israeli conflict for a moment to contemplate the more serious conflict between secular Muslims and Christian Arabs and the growing religious extremism in the Middle East. There are 22 Arab countries, yet only two had the courage (or pride in their women) to field entrants in this year's Miss Universe Pageant, which was held in the Bahamas, where string bikinis replace car bombs and women are truly free. The only two Arab countries that entered contestants, again, were Egypt and Lebanon. Now I know Egypt and its...

At the recent World Swimming Championships, officials announced that competitors would soon be banned from using the new record-smashing, limit-testing buoyant high-tech polyurethane bodysuits. I’m sure Michael Phelps and his friends are bummed out. As a former record-setting competitive swimmer who used to shop for tight racing suits in the “infant” apparel section to score an advantage, I can attest to the desire to push the limit with one’s aquatic apparel. So can Muslims, apparently. Bans on their traditional burqas are sweeping Europe, so now they’re making them into “burqinis”, and arguing that since they have an aquatic spin, the...

There's been a big fuss this week because Michelle Obama wore shorts. She's worn shorts before - to walk the dog, do stuff around the White House. But the photos of her wearing them in that iconic descending-from-Air-Force-One-onto-the-tarmac setting proved too much for the media. Obamas? Check. Summer news doldrums? Check. Controversy? Close enough. It was a story. And people reacted. The Today Show's poll on whether she should have shown that much thigh got one of the show's biggest responses ever, with 83% pro-shorts. Local papers found "experts" to discuss the implications of the shorts for the Obama White...

An outright ban of the wearing of the burka in France would help stem the spread of the “cancer” of radical Islam, according to the country’s Muslim minister for urban regeneration. Fadela Amara, who is of Algerian descent, said the veil and headscarf combination covering everything but the eyes represented “the oppression of women, their enslavement, their humiliation”. In an interview with the Financial Times, Ms Amara said she was “in favour of the burka not existing in my country”.

A Paris swimming pool has refused entry to a young Muslim woman wearing a "burqini," a swimsuit covering most of the body, officials said Wednesday, adding to tensions over Muslim dress in France. The incident came as French lawmakers conduct hearings on whether to ban the burqa after President Nicolas Sarkozy said the head-to-toe body covering and veil was "not welcome" in France, home to Europe's biggest Muslim minority.

Barack Obama gave the hijab the all-clear in his Cairo speech, but the poor female souls forced to live under asphyxiating layers are getting fed up. Obama said, “I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal,” creating the false impression that gender subjugation is an innocuous matter of beauty-salon options. Contrast that with yesterday’s Reuters story about burqas in Afghanistan:

PARIS (AP) — A top Muslim group in Britain lashed out at Nicolas Sarkozy as "patronizing and offensive" on Tuesday, after the French president said body- and face-covering Islamic garments such as the burqa turn women into prisoners. In Paris, parliament formally created a commission Tuesday to study the wearing of body-cloaking Muslim robes in France, a day after Sarkozy told lawmakers that the burqa would not be welcome in the country. A top official with the Muslim Council of Britain, an umbrella organization for British Muslim groups, accused Sarkozy of "divisive politics," and said his comments could fan an...

Almost every idea that ever came out of France has been bad for America, from the structuralist philosophical gibberish which has poisoned US academe to the grotesquely over-regulated tax and spend socialism which is now ruining the US economy. But if there's one area where the French do get it SO right it's in their uncompromising approach to Islam. President Sarkozy once again showed the way yesterday when in a presidential address to France's two houses of parliament, he said the burqa is not welcome in his country and should be banned. As he rightly went on to say the...

The Islamic burqa is ‘not welcome’ in France and should be banned, President Nicolas Sarkozy announced today. In comments which were set to infuriate radical Muslim leaders, he said the body covering ‘is not a sign of religion, it is a sign of subservience,’ adding: ‘It will not be welcome on the territory of the French republic.’ A group of 58 MPs from the Left and Right has called on Parliament to take action against women who are adopting what they called oppressive head-to-toe Islamic dress that ‘breaches individual freedoms’. There are more than five million Muslims in the secular...

FRANCE may introduce a law banning full burqas if a parliamentary commission finds the growing number of women wearing them have been coerced into doing so. Nearly 60 legislators signed a proposal on Wednesday calling for a parliamentary commission to look into the spread of the burqa in France, a garment that they said amounted "to a breach of individual freedoms on our national territory". France, home to Europe's largest Muslim minority, is strongly attached to its secular values and to gender equality, and many see the burqa, which covers the wearer from head to toe and hides her face,...

In a letter to parliament, Dutch Education Minister Ronald Plasterk writes that the government intends to introduce a burqa ban in education. Not only teachers and schoolchildren, but also parents and school caretakers will be banned from wearing face-covering garments, both inside the school building and outside in the playground. The minister writes that it is important for children to learn that proper communication requires being able to look the other person in the eye.

A Muslim member of the French Government has attacked the head-to-toe Islamic dress as a prison, applauding a court decision to deny citizenship to a Moroccan woman who wore it. “The burka is a prison, a strait-jacket,” Fadela Amara, the Minister for Urban Affairs and a longstanding women's rights campaigner, said yesterday. “It is not religious. It is the insignia of a totalitarian political project for sexual inequality.” The court decision denying Faiza Mabchour, 32, French citizenship has drawn approval from both Left and Right, highlighting a rejection of Muslim customs that conflict with the values of the secular French...

The fiancée of one of the leaders of the failed July 21 suicide attacks has been sentenced to three years in jail for helping him escape by dressing in a burka as a Muslim woman. Fardosa Abdullahi, who was 17 at the time, gave Yassin Omar her mobile phone handset, provided a scarf and handbag for his disguise and accompanied him to Golders Green coach station where he fled to Birmingham in his feminine disguise. Omar's family persuaded her to contact police but she claimed she did not know where he was and it was not until six days after...

Muslim women of the Middle East and beyond are shielded, clothed, and occulted away through a series of archaic dress rituals, collectively known as the Hijab, that subjugates and entraps them to an ossified code of conduct, which long ago, should have been abandoned. The Abbaya, Burqa, and Niqab, function as baggy drapes of cloth, which render Muslim women formless, invisible to her surroundings, a non-entity outside the domestic sphere, and should be viewed as a transgression against God's wishes...I present to you, the Beautiful and Vivacious Ladies of Iran, unhijabbed and free...

When I came to this country, I took off my hijab. It wasn't an easy decision. I worried at night that God would punish me for it. That's what I had been taught would happen, and it filled me with fear. I was 27, coming from my home country of Iraq to study in California. I hoped that by taking off the hijab I had been wearing for eight years, I would be able to maintain a low profile. In Baghdad, you keep a low profile to stay alive. But in the United States, I merely wanted not to be...

THE HAGUE, 25/04/08 - The cabinet proposal to ban face-covering clothing for government functionaries, in education and in public transport is supported by the Lower House. But the Christian democrats (CDA) and Labour (PvdA) disagree over a ban in the health sector. The CDA wants to extend the 'burqa ban' to the health sector. "We do not want any face-covering in healthcare, certainly not among the personnel," according to MP Madeleine van Toorenburg. PvdA MP Jeroen Dijsselbloem is unconvinced. "The healthcare sector has never been asked for its opinion," he tried. But CDA's Healthcare Minister Ab Klink told Van Toorenburg...

NOUAKCHOTT, April 10 (Reuters) - Mauritanian police arrested a suspected al Qaeda militant accused of killing four French tourists as he attempted to avoid capture disguised as a woman, a government spokesman said on Thursday. Marouf Ould Haiba is one of four suspected al Qaeda militants accused of killing the French tourists during a roadside picnic last Dec. 24. Fellow suspect Sidi Ould Sidna escaped from police custody outside a courtroom last week, sparking a manhunt that has led to two fatal shootouts in the usually sleepy capital Nouakchott that have killed three people in as many days. Police arrested...

Cambridge University has been given £8 million by a Saudi Arabian prince to establish an Islamic studies centre. Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, ranked in the top 20 richest men in the world, with a fortune of about £10 billion, has donated the cash to the university to fund a centre in his name for the study of the role of Islam in the Middle East and globally. The gift has been recommended by the university's general board and is expected to be announced in June. advertisement The grandson of King Ibn Saud and nephew of King Abudllah, the prince counts...

The bright blue veil of the burqa is one of the most iconic and widely worn pieces of women’s clothing in Afghanistan. Since the fall of the Taliban, fewer women wear the burqa in Kabul, but elsewhere, in the provinces, the burqa is as ubiquitous as ever. The Zamarai family, shown in the video, have been tailors and burqa-makers for three generations. But recently there’s a new player in the Kabul burqa market: China, which mass-produces a style of burqa that many women here find more fashionable than the Zamarais’ traditional hand-assembled garments. The Chinese-made burqas’ tightly-crimped folds and machine-produced...

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The Dutch government is set to impose a ban on the Muslim burqa in schools and government offices, media reported on Wednesday, in a retreat from the previous cabinet's plan for a general ban. The cabinet has decided against a broad ban on burqas in public as that would violate the principle of freedom of religion, news agency ANP said, citing unnamed cabinet sources. The Muslim community says only about 50 women wear the head-to-toe burqa or the niqab, a face veil that conceals everything but the eyes. They said a general ban would heighten alienation among...

ASADABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A woman carrying a waistcoat filled with explosives under her all-enveloping burqa was arrested on Monday in eastern Afghanistan, provincial officials said, in the first possible reported case of a female suicide bomber in the country. She was arrested on a tip-off in Jalalabad after being followed by intelligence department officials near the border with Pakistan. The elderly woman's identity was not given, but she was now being questioned, officials said. It was not immediately clear if the woman wanted to use the explosives herself or was carrying the bomb to deliver it. If the former,...

Little girls in the militancy-hit Swat Valley in northwestern Pakistan hate a diktat issued by pro-Taliban rebels to attend school in burqas. Burqas are the only option some girls' schools in northwestern Pakistan have against being shut down or worse, being bombed. "I want to study, but not in a burqa," said Shah Rukh, a 12-year-old girl enrolled at a primary school at Saidu Sharif in Swat. Shah Rukh is just one of many girls who have learnt to speak out against the burqa diktat in the picturesque Valley. "My 11-year-old daughter cries every morning when she has to wear...

via translation - PESHAWAR (Pakistan) - A woman suicide bomber dressed in a burqa, the veil full traditional Afghan women, detonated the bomb she was wearing next to a military checkpoint in Peshawar, in northwestern Pakistan, make killed or wounded, said the police. It is the first suicide bombing ever perpetrated by a woman in Pakistan, assured AFP Mohammad Sharif, the chief of police in the province. A school run by Christian missionaries, as well as sensitive military installations, including offices of the intelligence services, are located near the explosion, said Kadir Khan, a police officer on the spot, to...

Mannequins removed from Peshawar shops after threats Islamabad (PTI): Garment shop owners in northwest Pakistani city of Peshawar are removing mannequins from their displays or covering them up with clothes following threats from militants. A meeting of the shopkeepers' association of Karimpura in Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province (NWFP), on Wednesday discussed the threatening letters from militants. The association decided to either remove the mannequins from shops or cover them up fully with clothes. The meeting was informed that 10 militants visited Shaheen Bazaar, a market for women, and asked shopkeepers to remove mannequins. The militants claimed...

HIDDENITE -- A teller was robbed at gunpoint at a Hiddenite bank Tuesday afternoon. The suspect was dressed from head to toe. The robbery happened around 3:40 p.m. at People’s Bank on N.C. 90 East, five miles outside of Taylorsville. No one was injured. No one has been arrested. Alexander County sheriff’s deputies and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents are investigating the robbery. Deputies say the robber entered the bank, approached the teller and demanded money. The robber pointed a small handgun at the teller. The suspect (deputies have not released the gender) gave the teller a black plastic bag...

Afghan models reveal the beauty under the burqa By Jon Hemming Sun Sep 30, 9:03 PM ET MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A model strutting the catwalk is hardly revolutionary in most countries, but Afghan television's answer to "America's Next Top Model" is breaking boundaries and revealing the beauty under the burqa. Nearly six years after the overthrow of the strict Islamist Taliban government, almost all women in deeply conservative Afghanistan still only appear in public wafting past in the burqa's pale blue, their dark eyes only occasionally visible behind the bars of its grille. But in the relatively liberal northern...

One of the most remarkable among the many and varied tribal customs that survive in Saudi Arabia is one that forbids anyone at all seeing a woman’s face. In parts of the Al-Kharj region, not even a woman’s husband and children are permitted to see her face uncovered.In interviews with Al-Kharj residents, Sayidaty, a sister publication of Arab News, heard that often the first time even a daughter sees her mother’s face is after the mother’s death.“I always dreamt of seeing my mother’s face because I am a woman like her,� resident Hissa Al-Massareir told the magazine. “But because of...

Once-exotic forms of Muslim women's head and body garments have now become both familiar in the West and the source of fractious political and legal disputes. The hijab (a hair-covering) is ever-more popular in Detroit but has been banned from French public schools, discouraged by the International Football Association Board, and excluded from a court in the US state of Georgia. The jilbab (a garment that leaves only the face and hands exposed) was, in a case partly argued by Tony Blair's wife, first allowed, then forbidden in an English school. The niqab (a total covering except for the eyes)...

The world's most upmarket beauty pageant - without a bikini in sight Last updated at 22:33pm on 28th July 2007 It must be one of the most upmarket beauty pageants ever - without a bikini in sight. Women from across the Arab world came together to compete in the Miss Arab World contest in Cairo - with Miss Bahrain, Wafa Yaqoop, being crowned the winner. It is the second time the competition has been staged.

Hijabs a source of illness, doctors say Doctors have claimed that Muslim women wearing the hijab could be at risk of serious illness because they do not get enough sun. It has been claimed that women who cover their skin are could be suffering bone deficiencies over a lack of vitamin D. Most of the body’s vitamin D - which prevents rickets - is obtained through sunlight acting on the skin. Only a little comes from food. Doctors told a London conference on Wednesday that people with dark pigment oare at risk because of "cultural reasons" and because they are...

LONDON: Increasingly, Muslim women in Britain take their children to school and run errands covered head to toe in flowing black gowns that allow only a slit for their eyes. Like little else, their appearance has unnerved Britons, testing the limits of tolerance in this stridently secular nation. Many veiled women say they are targets of abuse. At the same time, efforts are growing to place legal curbs on the full Muslim veil, known as the niqab. The past year has seen numerous examples: A lawyer dressed in a niqab was told by an immigration judge that she could not...

Manal Fageeh never liked the abaya, the long black cloak she was forced to begin wearing at 13. She resented the fact that it was obligatory for women in Saudi Arabia, and the black absorbed heat in the often-scorching climate. Saudi women have long been known in the West for their all-enveloping black attire, widely considered a mark of their oppression. But Sharif and Fageeh are among a growing number of women and girls here who are rethinking and reinventing the abaya to more closely reflect their personalities and religious beliefs. The redefinition of the abaya mirrors the greater, though...

Muslim peoples excel at expelling imperial powers by terror and guerrilla war. So wrote Patrick J. Buchanan six months before Operation Iraqi Freedom. "They drove the Brits out of Palestine and Aden, the French out of Algeria, the Russians out of Afghanistan, the Americans out of Somalia and Beirut, the Israelis out of Lebanon," he reminded us. Lacking institutional memory, Congress is blissfully unaware the history now being written on Capitol Hill will add yet another chapter -- "they also drove the Americans out of Iraq." And the scenario is eerily reminiscent of how Congress ensured a U.S. defeat in...

Saudi Women, Oppressed by Husbands, Turn to Stripping in Internet Chat Rooms in Search of "Admiration" Following are excerpts from a TV report on Saudi women and web cams, which aired on LBC TV on April 18, 2007: Reporter: Behind closed doors and far from any supervising eyes, they remove their shame and turn their backs on all customs and traditions. Girls display their bodies in chat rooms on the Internet, in most cases, free of charge. As soon as one of these girls places the camera in front of her, she begins to strip, displaying her seductive charms to...

Aniya Arrested Over Article “Against Islam” By Will Jordan in Male' May 3, 2007 Aishath Aniya was arrested on Thursday morning in connection with an article she wrote criticising the wearing of the veil. She was apprehended by police at around 9:40am outside the offices of Minivan Daily newspaper as she parked her motorcycle. Aniya was lifted into the back of a police van and taken to Police Headquarters, before being transferred to the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs for questioning. She refused to answer questions without a lawyer present and arranged to return to the Supreme Council on Sunday...

A bus driver in Malmö has been suspended after he allegedly tried to stop a woman from boarding because she was wearing a burqa. The incident happened on Tuesday morning when Leonora Osmani boarded the number 35 bus on her usual route between the Rosengård housing estate and the city's central station. According to Osmani, the driver stopped her from boarding, saying that her burqa made her hard to identify. A burqa covers a woman from head to toe, with a small mesh screen to see through. "I have never before needed to identify myself on a public bus. Wearing...

74th OREGON LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY--2007 Regular Session House Bill 3539 Sponsored by Representatives HUNT, ROBLAN; Representatives BEYER, BOONE, CANNON, CLEM, D EDWARDS, GELSER, KOTEK, READ, RILEY SUMMARY The following summary is not prepared by the sponsors of the measure and is not a part of the body thereof subject to consideration by the Legislative Assembly. It is an editor's brief statement of the essential features of the measure as introduced. Requires employer to provide reasonable accommodation to religious observance or practices of employee unless providing accommodation would impose undue hardship on employer. Requires employer to permit employee to use certain leave...

Here is a very odd music video by a group calling itself "Burka Band" where three women in full body blue burqas sing their song about...burqas. Very strange...but it's a must see.

COLCHESTER -- Caitlin Dean was raised not to discriminate against others because of their race or religion. But as a white suburban teen of Italian and Irish descent, she often wondered what it would be like to be the target of such abuse. She found out "behind the burqa."

A model wears an outfit by Fashion East designer Louise Golden during her catwalk show at London Fashion Week in London, Monday Feb. 12, 2007. The designers are showing their Autumn/ Winter 2007/8 collections. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant) A model wears an outfit by Fashion East designer Louise Golden during her catwalk show at London Fashion Week in London, Monday Feb. 12, 2007. The designers are showing their Autumn/ Winter 2007/8 collections. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant) A model wears a creation by Louise Goldin for Fashion East during 2007 Autumn/Winter show at London Fashion Week in London February 12, 2007. REUTERS/Luke...

Dramatic film of a fireman confronting one of the alleged July 21 bombers on a Tube train as other passengers fled in panic was shown to a jury yesterday. The CCTV footage showed Ramzi Mohammed, 25, wearing a rucksack and boarding the busy Northern Line Tube at Stockwell, south London. He turned his back towards a mother with a child in a pushchair before detonating his device. The detonator exploded, although the main charge, made up of liquid hydrogen peroxide and chapati flour, failed to go off. As other passengers tried to run, Angus Campbell, an off-duty fireman, stayed and...

The would-be suicide bombers gathered the night before July 21 in a flat in north Kensington in London; everything was ready for an attack that had been planned for weeks and was to be carried out with explosive devices cooked up on a kitchen stove, mixing high-strength hair bleach, nail varnish remover, acid, lightbulbs, batteries and chapati flour, the jury at Woolwich crown court heard. When the five men walked out of 14 Dalgarno Gardens the next day, Ramzi Mohammed left the remnants of a draft suicide note to his two children; evidence found later suggested a suicide video had...

Women wearing the burqa and other face-concealing veils could be banned from jewelry stores in a west Indian city after a spate of thefts involving burqa-clad customers, jewelers said on Thursday. More than a dozen thefts have occurred in jewelry shops in Pune in Maharashtra state in the past two months, with at least three cases of women wearing burqas spotted by surveillance cameras as they stole gold ornaments. "Police could not find any clue about the women's identity because their faces were covered," Fatehchand Ranka, head of the Maharashtra Jewelers' Association, told Reuters. Pune's jewelers, who deny targeting any...

snip In other action today in Iraq, coalition forces operating near Baqubah engaged and killed four armed terrorists and detained 11 suspected terrorists during a raid that targeted individuals associated with al Qaeda. ... One of the 11 terrorists detained was hiding in a house dressed as a woman, pretending to nurse a baby, officials reported.snip

THE HAGUE -- The Dutch government announced plans yesterday for legislation banning full-length veils in public places and other clothing that covers the face -- putting the Netherlands at the forefront of a general European hardening toward Muslim minorities. The Netherlands, once considered one of Europe's most welcoming nations for immigrants and asylum seekers, is deeply divided over moves by the government to stem the tide of new arrivals and compel immigrants to assimilate into Dutch society. "From a security standpoint, people should always be recognizable, and from the standpoint of integration, we think people should be able to communicate...