Free Republic

Full title: Iranian women's rights activist condemns Western feminists for wearing the hijab in 'solidarity', saying: 'Calling the compulsory headscarf my country's culture is INSULTING' Masih Alinejad said female visitors to Iran were leaving activists 'on their own' She rejected the argument that visitors should wear the hijab 'out of respect' The issue has been thrown into new focus in the wake of the Christchurch attack

After years of playing with pawns and bishops, the reigning queen of US chess finds herself in the biggest stalemate of her career. Nazi Paikidze, 22, shook up the chess world over the weekend when the US women’s champion announced she’s boycotting the Women’s World Chess Championship in Iran in February instead of complying with the country’s law that women cover up with a hijab. The Russian-born star, who now lives in Las Vegas, told The Post she won’t budge unless FIDE — the world chess federation — moves the competition to a “no-conflict” zone or makes wearing the hijab...

Complete title:Napolitano: ‘Adjustments,’ ‘More to Come’ on Whether Muslim Women in Hijabs Will Undergo Airport Body Pat-Downs Homesland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. When asked today if she will insist that Muslim women wearing hijabs must go through full body pat downs before boarding planes, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano did not say yes or no, but told CNSNews.com there will be “adjustments” and “more to come” on the issue.“On the pat downs, CAIR [the Council on American-Islamic Relations] has recommended that Muslim women wearing hijabs refuse to go through the full body pat downs before boarding planes,” CNSNews.com asked Napolitano...

France could bar Muslim women from wearing full veils in public, a government minister said yesterday as parliament took action over concerns about an increase in women who are wearing the niqab and burka in big cities. The latest controversy over dress habits among France’s six million Muslims follows public differences this month between Presidents Obama and Sarkozy over the merits of legislating on religious clothing. A group of 58 MPs from the Left and Right called on Wednesday for parliament to react to the phenomenon of women who are adopting what they called oppressive head-to-toe Islamic dress that “breaches...

DOUGLASVILLE, Ga. - A judge ordered a Muslim woman arrested Tuesday for contempt of court for refusing to take off her head scarf at a security checkpoint. The judge ordered Lisa Valentine, 40, to serve 10 days in jail, said police in Douglasville, a city of about 20,000 people on Atlanta's west suburban outskirts. Valentine violated a court policy that prohibits people from wearing any headgear in court, police said. The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations urged federal authorities to investigate the incident as well as others in Georgia. "I just felt stripped of my civil, my human rights," Valentine...

Two women are filing a discrimination lawsuit against a Michigan McDonald’s that they claim refused to hire them because they wear the hijab, a Muslim headscarf. “These unbelievers insult our religion by insisting that we expose ourselves in order to get a job at their restaurant,” charged litigant Toi Whitfield of Detroit. “We will not submit to decadence.” “Our virtue should not bar us from employment,” fellow litigant, Quiana Pugh of Dearborn added. “We have a dress code at the restaurant,” explained Bud Bland, manager of the targeted McDonalds. “Everyone who works here wears a standard uniform—pants, shirt and hat....

Friends and classmates of a 16-year-old girl who police say was murdered by her devout Muslim father in a Toronto suburb told local media Tuesday she was killed for not wearing a hijab. Police said in a statement they received an emergency call at 7:55 am local time Monday from "a man who indicated that he had just killed his daughter." The victim, Aqsa Parvez, was "rushed to hospital with life-threatening injuries, but tragically passed away late last night." Her father, Muhammad Parvez, 57, was arrested at the scene and will be formally charged with murder when he appears in...

OTTAWA (REUTERS)— Muslim women in niqabs or burqas would no longer be allowed to stay veiled when voting in Canada under government legislation introduced yesterday. The bill seeks to force the hand of Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand, who rebuffed a request by a parliamentary committee that he require the lifting of veils to prove a voter's identity. He had insisted the existing law did not require it. The new legislation would allow an exception only for someone whose face is bandaged after surgery or covered for other medical reasons. The issue has become a hot potato, especially in the...

A FEMALE Muslim juror has been arrested in Britain after allegedly listening to an MP3 player under her hijab headscarf during a murder trial, police said overnight. The woman in her early 20s was spotted by a fellow juror listening to music as she was meant to be helping try the case of a pensioner accused of bludgeoning his wife to death after 50 years of marriage. She could now be charged with contempt of court and, if convicted, may be punished with an indefinite jail sentence and an unlimited fine. Details emerged after the defendant was convicted and Judge...

Montreal: First soccer, then Tae Kwon Do. A team of mainly Muslim girls had to pull out of a Tae Kwon Do tournament on Sunday because members refused to remove their hijabs. Tournament organisers told team officials the girls could not compete because the head scarves posed a safety risk. It is the second ban of hijabs in Quebec sports in recent months, part of a larger debate in the province about accommodations for cultural and religious minorities. International referee Stephane Menard said the decision was made at a referees' meeting earlier in the day. "The equipment that is allowed...

Pupil refused to wear uniform of 'non-believers' By Joshua Rozenberg, Legal Editor (Filed: 08/02/2006) A Muslim schoolgirl refused to wear school uniform because she was not prepared to dress in the same clothes as "non-believers", Britain's highest civil court was told yesterday. Five law lords were hearing an appeal by Denbigh High School, Luton, against an earlier ruling that Shabina Begum, 17, had been denied the right to manifest her religion under Article 9 of the Human Rights Convention. She was sent home in September 2002 when she insisted on wearing a jilbab, a full-length Islamic gown that hides the...

Tehran, 3 Feb. (AKI) - Judicial authorities in the central Iranian city of Isfahan have announced that women state employees who fail to wear the Islamic hijab or head scarf, face lashing as punishment. Isfahan's director general for Judicial Authority, Mohammad Ansari, apparently wants to apply to the letter an article in Iran's penal code stipulating 74 lashes for women who do not dress according to Islamic law including wearing the chador, the black veil that covers women from head to toe. Since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election as Iranian president in June last year, pressure has increased on people to...

Muslims in the Austrian city of Linz are demanding that all schoolteachers must wear a head scarf; here is a Google translation of an article at Austrian news site kurier.at: Fathers want head cloth for teachers.Three Muslim fathers demanded a head cloth obligation for teachers in an elementary school in Linz. The indignation about it is large: Upper-Austrian national school advice president Fritz Enzenhofer spoke of “insanity” and reported that one had directly acted. FPOe Secretary-General Herbert Kickl demanded in response a “head cloth prohibition” in schools. BZOe speaker Uwe Scheuch called the demands of the Muslims “inakzeptabel”. The “VS...

DHAKA (Reuters) - A banned Islamist militant group blamed for a series of bombings in Bangladesh has threatened to kill women, including non-Muslims, if they do not wear the veil, a statement said.The statement by the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen came hours after Thursday's suicide bomb attack in a northern town that killed at least eight people, the latest of a series of blasts blamed on militant groups in their campaign for an Islamic state."Women will be killed if they are found to move around without wearing burqa (veil) from the first day of Jilhaj," the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen said in the statement sent to...

The fear that gripped Americans following 9/11 filled many Muslims in this country with an added sense of dread. They not only felt anxiety about terrorism on U.S. soil but also had to worry about religious discrimination. Rather than wrapping herself in an American flag, however, Azadeh Zainab Sharif, a Muslim student at San Francisco State University who grew up in San Diego but lived for several years in her father's native Iran, decided it was time to bring her religious identity out in the open. After 9/11, she began wearing a hijab, the scarf worn by many Muslim women...

France's Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has just appointed a committee to draft a law to ban the Islamist hijab (headgear) in state-owned establishments, including schools and hospitals. The decision has drawn fire from the French "church" of Islam, an organisation created by Raffarin's government last spring. Germany is facing its hijab problem with a number of Islamist organisations suing federal and state authorities for "religious discrimination" because of bans imposed on the controversial headgear. In the United States several Muslim women are suing airport security firms for having violated their first amendment rights by asking them to take off their...