Free Republic

Eleven Christian nurses fired by a public hospital in Nigeria's strongly Islamic north for refusing to wear Muslim-style head scarves are appealing for international pressure to help restore their jobs. The women are among 21 fired in December 2001 by a federal government hospital in Azare, in the northern state of Bauchi, for refusing orders to cover their heads with scarves. Ten of the women later had their jobs reinstated after they agreed to abide by the directive. Seven of those still out of jobs met Monday in Lagos with Baroness Caroline Cox of Queensbury, deputy speaker of the British...

PARIS, 2 October 2003 — The only Muslim woman in France’s center-right government broke a long silence yesterday to say she opposed letting girls wear traditional Islamic headscarves in school and wanted the practice outlawed. Development Minister Tokia Saifi told RTL radio she hadn’t spoken out before because she did not think the fact she was the French-born daughter of Algerian immigrants meant she had to make statements on every Islamic issue that arises in France. With the headscarf’s growing popularity among Muslim girls in the poor suburbs of big cities, the government has launched an inquiry into the place...

A court in the Russian republic of Tatarstan on the Volga river has refused to allow Muslim women to wear headscarves on their passport photos. Three Muslim women appeared in court on Friday to protest against having to remove their traditional headwear on official ID cards. "It is Islamophobia that moves our officials to refuse our women such an elementary right," said Walliulla Yakupov of the Tatar Islamic Administration. After the verdict the women said their human rights have been violated and vowed to fight on. Islam renaissance The three women filed suits after the local passport agency refused to...