Free Republic

As Islamists condemn the French ban on face-covering attire in public, it is worth noting that some of the strongest words in support of the law — and in opposition to the burqa and niqab — actually have come from Western Muslims. A few recent highlights:

Amid demonstrations, terror threats, and hyperbolic headlines, France has become the first Western country to enforce a ban on face-covering attire in virtually all public places, more than six months after the Senate approved sweeping legislation. Penalties for wearing garments such as burqas and niqabs include a fine of €150 and citizenship classes, while those who intimidate others into donning the apparel risk a €30,000 assessment and a year in prison. Tickets are being issued, but questions persist about legal challenges and enthusiasm to administer the law. Though France is the pace setter, efforts to impose burqa bans, both broad...

Lleida in the northeastern Catalonia region on Thursday became Spain's first city to introduce a ban on wearing the face-covering Islamic burqa in public places. These places include offices, sports centres, markets and other property owned by the city council. The niqab - which covers the face but leaves a small slit for the eyes - has also been banned. In neighbouring France, the national parliament in September outlawed the burqa and veils which cover the face... The same month, two separate bills were presented in the upper and lower houses of the Italian parliament which aim to end the...

I visited Toronto in early March 2010 and as I left the country I passed through the usual security check at Pearson International Airport. What made it different is that the next passengers after me in line were a man, a small child, and a person in niqab. (I write "person" rather than "woman" as I hardly know who was under the niqab outfit.)Curious how the niqabi's hidden identity would be handled, I looked back as the trio was dealing with the security agent. To my astonishment, the agent did not demand to see the niqabi's face but was...

Syria has banned the face-covering Islamic veil from the country's universities to prevent what it sees as a threat to its secular identity, as similar moves in Europe spark cries of discrimination against Muslims. The Education Ministry issued the ban Sunday, according to a government official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly. The ban, which affects public and private universities, is only against the niqab — a full Islamic veil that reveals only a woman's eyes — not headscarves, which are far more commonly worn by Syrian women. The billowing black robe...

Funny that the ‘Toronto Star’ writer had the opposite view when it came to my columns Quebec’s move to nix the niqab continues to tie Canada’s commentariat in knots. The funniest column to date was by Haroon Siddiqui, “editorial page editor emeritus” of the Toronto Star. Mr. Siddiqui was not impressed by the arguments mounted against the head-to-toe body bag—for example, the notion that it is a “symbol of oppression”: “Let’s assume that it is,” he wrote. “Whose business is it to end the practice—that of the state?”

Picture me on the Eurostar, in Brussels, Belgium. The year is 2004. There’s a veil-wearing lady sitting behind me with her friend. Like most women of a certain age, they’re chattering their heads off. Later, however, the loud conversation takes a sharp turn, when the Muslim lady pontificates about the superiority of Islam and the evils of paganism. But, if I had been sharing my Protestant beliefs? From a theological perspective, there’s nothing wrong with Muslims or Christians peacefully evangelizing. I am a friend of free speech. But the subject of clothing politics (for want of a better term) is...

MONTREAL -- In recent years, the few fully veiled Muslim women who had dealings with Quebec's health-insurance board could choose to be served by a woman to avoid exposing their faces to a man outside their family. But in the latest example of the province's growing resistance to the accommodation of minority religious practices, the insurance board on Tuesday announced the end of the policy after the provincial human rights commission said it has no duty to acquiesce. "From now on, for a woman who is veiled with a niqab or a burka and comes to our office asking to...

Countries from Italy to Sweden are debating the right of women to wear the niqab. Canada is the latest country to enter the fray, with the Muslim Canadian Congress desiring to ban it. Is such a ban possible in the U.S., where its prevalence is evident in certain urban centers, like Philadelphia? Muslim women's wearing of niqab, the veil covering everything but the eyes, and, by extension, the face-concealing mesh that is combined with a long garment to form the burqa in South Asia, has been introduced into the West as a purported religious obligation, and therefore, is put forward...

JUNE 17, 2009 Should Witnesses be Allowed to Wear Niqabs While Testifying? By Ashby Jones In our opinion, the best legal controversies arise when two compelling principles smack headlong into each other. Here’s one: should a devout Muslim woman be required to lift her veil when testifying in court? The issue pits two cherished American values: the desire to let people practice their religions freely against the desire for transparency and integrity within our justice system. The issue has been kicking around courts in Michigan for some time, as it turns out. And the Michigan Supreme Court made a bit...

CAIRO // Afaf al Sayed spent 10 years feeling like she was staring at life from inside a coffin. That is how she remembers the period between 1983 and 1992, when she wore a niqab, a variation on the Islamic veil worn by women that shrouds the entire face save for the eyes. “There are small details that are still painful when I think about them after all those years,” said Ms al Sayed, 45, who is now the head of Heya, a feminist women’s organisation. “I think during these years, I stopped looking at myself in the mirror, until...

An Ontario Superior Court judge has unexpectedly been thrust into a high-profile debate over the rights of Muslim women to wear a veil while testifying in court. Superior Court Justice Frank Marrocco must decide whether to issue what could be a broad, precedent-setting ruling or resolve it on much narrower technical legal grounds. And, set aside from the debate about religious freedom are the two Toronto men charged with sexual assault -- who want to resume the preliminary hearing that has been on hold for nearly five months. The legal wrangling stems from a desire by the alleged victim (who...

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...

- Top Islamic Proselytizer As soon as I heard about the Muslim women in hijabs being excluded from sitting behind Barack Obama at a Michigan rally, I knew what you probably knew: that CAIR and ADC and MPAC and ISNA, the alphabet soup of terrorist-sympathizing, pan-HAMAS/Hezbollah Islamofascist grievance theater, would milk the story like there's no tomorrow. It was ripe fodder for their PR branch of the jihad against America and the West. Now, I've come to learn that one of the hijab-encrusted, rejected whiners, Hebba Aref, was an official of the Muslim Students Association (MSA), in charge of proselytizing....

Boy, 14, fights for life after being stabbed in football game row by sword wielding youths wearing niqabs   By Charlotte Gill Last updated at 4:34 PM on 18th June 2008  Two youths were seen wearing niqab-style face masks and wielding a sword after a 14-year-old boy was stabbed, locals have claimed.One was heard to say 'I'm going to kill him' as the pair walked calmly down a residential street chatting at about midday yesterday.The schoolboy was knifed in the chest just yards away at 5pm on Tuesday.He collapsed in a pool of blood in front of drinkers outside...

Two Muslim women at Barack Obama's rally in Detroit Monday were barred from sitting behind the podium by campaign volunteers seeking to prevent the women's headscarves from appearing in photographs or on television with the candidate. The campaign has apologized to the women, all Obama supporters who said they felt betrayed by their treatment at the rally. "This is of course not the policy of the campaign. It is offensive and counter to Obama's commitment to bring Americans together and simply not the kind of campaign we run," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton, who added that the volunteers were acting...

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...

Strong opposition to the use of the Muslim veil in schools and face covering in public is revealed today in a new opinion poll for the Evening Standard. Nearly 90 per cent of respondents say that Muslim teachers should not be allowed to wear a veil when teaching. And 84 per cent say that Muslim pupils should not be allowed to wear a veil at school. The survey shows the sharply divided views of Britons on Islam and the contribution of Muslims to life in the capital. Among the most striking findings are that half believe that Islam is a...

CAIRO — The federal government in Canada has introduced a new draft law that would bar Muslim women from voting if they show up at polling places with a niqab (face-veil), a move criticized by the opposition and Muslim leaders as unnecessary, The Globe and Mail reported on Saturday, October 27. The new bill would close a loophole that had enflamed the debate about niqab in Canada in the wake of the government's recent dispute with Elections Canada, which has refused to bar people with veiled faces from polling places. The draft legislation provides for only one exception: bandages on...

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)...