ATLANTA -- A Muslim woman is claiming in a federal lawsuit that she was dismissed from the Atlanta Police Department's civilian honor guard because she refused to remove her traditional headscarf.

Helen Lane says in a federal lawsuit filed this week that the head of the voluntary guard laughed at her when she told him she would wear her hijab at a September 2006 funeral. She said she felt "humiliated, hurt and was traumatized" by the laughter.

Lane, who is seeking $250,000 in damages, said she was told by another Atlanta official that "the hijab was like a swastika."

The city has denied the allegations and the honor guard has since been disbanded.

AP, 28 December 2009

On Christmas day, a family doctor in Utrecht refused to allow a woman into his surgery because she was wearing a niqab, or burqa.

The 23-year-old woman had brought her baby to see the doctor. The three-month-old child had diarrhoea and had not drunk for several hours, a situation which is potentially dangerous in young baby. However, the doctor refused to see the woman because she was wearing Islamic dress, with her face covered.

The Equal Treatment Commission confirmed it has received a complaint from the woman, following a report in the newspaper AD. A spokesperson said the commission would definitely be dealing with the complaint, as a GP provides a service and should not refuse to see a woman on the ground of her religious expression. According to the commission this is the first time such a case has been reported.

The woman has also lodged a complaint with the GP's practice and the medical disciplinary tribunal.

RNW, 29 December 2009

(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - Most people in Germany express a certain degree of anxiety over the growth of the Islamic religion and culture in the country, according to a poll by Infratest-Dimap released by ARD. 33 per cent of respondents are very concerned about this matter, and 29 per cent express moderate concern.
Germany is home to Europe’s second-largest Muslim community after France.

Last month, voters in Switzerland participated in a referendum which banned the construction of minarets in Swiss mosques. The minaret—a tower from which the call to prayer is sounded—is a distinctive architectural feature of Islamic mosques.

On Dec. 13, Thilo Sarrazin, a former Berlin finance senator and current member of the German Central Bank committee, said Muslim headscarves should be banned in Germany.

Earlier this year, Sarrazin was criticized after he declared: "A large number of Arabs and Turks in this city, whose number has grown through bad policies, have no productive function other than as fruit and vegetable vendors."

Polling Data
 
Are you concerned about the growth of Islam in Germany?

Yes, very concerned	33%
Yes, moderately concerned	29%
No, not concerned	22%

Source: Infratest-Dimap / ARD
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,000 German adults, conducted in December 2009. Margin of error is 3.1 per cent.

Angus Reid Global Monitor, 19 December 2009

So this is how democracy works?

In 2004, France banned headscarves and school principals chased after young "defiant" Muslim girls who continued to cover their heads in school. Now, following a national referendum, Switzerland has banned the construction of minarets, because minarets also somehow symbolize oppression. Thanks to the dedicated action of the far-right Swiss People's Party, the Alpine skies will be free from the snaking menace, which would spread intolerance and taint the splendor of Swiss architecture.

In between these two peculiar events, the targeting of Muslims in Western countries and the subjugation of entire Muslim nations all over the world has never ceased. Not for a day.

Moreover, the collective targeting of small or large Muslim communities in Western countries, and the deliberate abuse and degradation of Muslim individuals and Islamic symbols (from the Holy Qur'an to the Prophet Mohammed) has also never ceased.

Bizarrely, most of these actions have been done through "democratic" channels and justified in the name of democracy, on the basis of upholding the principles of secularism and Western values.

Many thoughts come to mind here; all unreservedly angry.

I remember when the word "democracy" used to resonate so loudly among Arabs and Muslims around the world. The more they were denied it, the more they yearned for it. University campuses in Cairo, Gaza and Karachi took their student union elections so very seriously. Innocent blood was spilled in clashes around campuses as students desperately tried to express their right to vote, to speak out and to assemble.

Those were the days, when al-demoqratia, Arabic for democracy, was the buzzword in the Middle East and beyond. Even Palestinian political prisoners held their elections, ever so faithfully, surrounded by highly fortified towers and under the deriding gaze of armed men in the unforgiving heat of the Naqab desert.

Arab and Muslim masses were keen on democracy to the extent that there was a near consensus that democracy, although a Western conception, could be distinguished from the many ills invited by Western interventions, imperialism and wars that scarred and continued to impair the collective Muslim psyche.

An entire school of Muslim thought was in fact established around the concept that democracy and Islam are very much compatible. Such a notion goes back to Egypt's Azharite scholar Rifa'a al-Tahtawi, who argued in the first half of the 19th century that the principles of European modernity were compatible with Islam.

"Al-Tahtawi's work influenced the philosopher Muhammad Abduh [1849-1905], another Azharite who is often described as the founder of Islamic modernism, which is captured in his statement that in Europe he found Islam without Muslims, while in Egypt he found Muslims without Islam," wrote German anthropologist, Frank Fanselow.

If one sets his prejudices aside to ponder this for a moment, one would realize the intellectual valor it takes to consider and even embrace commonalities with the very powers that have instilled so much harm and fear.

Even in their darkest, least proud moments, Muslim intellectuals and nations displayed impressive open-mindedness. They are hardly ever credited for that.

More recently, in Egypt, people tried hard to vote, in the face of beatings, public humiliation and imprisonment. In Palestine in 2006 the price was even higher — starvation. Gaza continues to endure under a medieval Israeli siege, ultimately because of an election.

Muslim communities in the West have long been considered the luckiest; after all, they live in the abodes of democracy. They drink from the fountain of rights and freedoms that never runs dry.

However, these idealized assumptions missed the fact that Western democracy was conditional. And unconditional democracy can only be a farce.

Much has been said to explain the West's faltering on its own commitment to democracy. No, the tragedy of September 11, 2001, is hardly the defining moment that created the growing chasm that made the West fearful of Islam. Despite all that has taken place since then — the constant spewing out of right-wing hatred, fanatic evangelical preaching and all the rest — America is still more tolerant than Europe. Nor was the growing anti-Muslim sentiment in Europe a response in solidarity to America's woes.

Honestly, the French are not fond of Americans, nor are the Germans necessarily that passionate about the Swiss. But this didn't stop a German Christian Democratic state interior minister, Volker Bouffier, from making a "recommendation" to Muslim communities in his own country: "Naturally the Muslims in Germany have a right to build mosques. But they should make sure not to overwhelm the German population with them."

How do you overwhelm people with minarets? Is this a post-post-post-modernistic logic that we are yet to be informed of?

There are only four minarets in the entire country of Switzerland, a country with a population of approximately 7.6 million people. How overwhelming can that be? And aren't religious freedom and the freedom of collective and individual expression basic rights guaranteed by democratic values?

But this is hardly about a 4.8-meter tall minaret in the northern Swiss town of Langenthal. It's about the fact that the one who suggested the structure is a Muslim furniture salesman by the name of Mutalip Karaademi. He didn't know, of course, that his modest idea of adding a minaret to the community's mosque would generate a nationwide referendum, and an international "controversy."

Karaademi was not trying to "Islamificate" the Swiss. He just wanted his community to have a place for worship (as opposed to the unused paint factory it currently uses for prayer), to be able to express its collective identity without fear. Ironically enough, the Muslim community in Langenthal is mostly Albanians, refugees who fled Kosovo seeking escape and deliverance.

What a strange paradox: Muslims escaping to the West, physically and figuratively, only to find double standards, self-negation and, at times, pure hypocrisy.

For now, however, a new consensus is forming: democracy can be invoked and used against Muslims only, and not for Muslims. It can be manipulated to deny them their identity in Europe and their freedom in Palestine, to ensure their subjugation in Iraq and in Afghanistan, and to meddle in their internal affairs everywhere else.

Al-demoqratia, indeed.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle," (Pluto Press, London), and his forthcoming book is "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story." (Pluto Press, London), now available for pre-orders on Amazon.com.

Arab American News, 11 December 2009

PARIS — France's immigration minister said Wednesday that he wants the wearing of Muslim veils that cover the face and body to be grounds for denying citizenship and long-term residence.

Eric Besson said he planned to take "concrete measures" regarding such veils, which are worn by a small minority of women in France but have become the object of a parliamentary inquiry into whether a ban should be imposed.

Besson spoke during a hearing before the panel of lawmakers as their nearly six-month inquiry draws to a close.

Besson said he believed a formal ban on veils that cover the face and body seemed to him "unavoidable," with a ban in public services as a minimum step.

Whether such veils are banned or not, he said he intends to personally move forward to ensure that women wearing such veils and seeking French nationality or residence cards are denied.

"I want the wearing of the full veil to be systematically considered as proof of insufficient integration into French society, creating an obstacle to gaining (French) nationality," he said.

He said he would advise prefects, the highest state representative in the various French regions, that the wearing of such veils is a motive for not delivering 10-year residence cards.

Besson said he was prepared to put the measures before parliament to make them law. In November, Besson ordered a nationwide debate on the French identity, to conclude by the end of January with possible measures.

Conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy is the force behind both the national identity campaign and the targeting of full-body veils, which he has said are not "welcome." Critics claim he is playing to traditional far-right fears of immigration, particularly by Muslims.

There is concern that some immigrants and citizens, including members of its Muslim population — at some 5 million the largest in western Europe — are failing to fully integrate and even defying the nation's secular values. A law was passed in 2004 banning Muslim headscarves from classrooms.

AP, 16 December 2009

French President Nicolas Sarkozy's party, the UMP, says it will push for a law banning the burqa, the full-face Islamic veil, according to its parliamentary leader Jean-François Copé.

"The issue is not how many women wear the burqa," Copé wrote in an article in the right-wing newspaper Le Figaro. "There are principles at stake: extremists are putting the republic to the test by promoting a practice that they know is contrary to the basic principles of our country.”

He said the legislation will be enacted after consultation with Muslim communities "so that this measure is understood for what it is: a law of liberation and not a ban".

Three ministers were to testify before a parliamentary panel debating the ban on Wednesday.

Home to Europe's largest Muslim minority, France set up the panel of 32 lawmakers six months ago. It will report next month after hearing the views of Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux, Immigration Minister Eric Besson and Education Minister Xavier Darcos.

Despite an intelligence service report that fewer than 400 women in France wear the full veil, an Interior Ministry study has put the figure at a few thousand.

This proposed ban comes as pressure mounts on Sarkozy to scrap his debate on national identity. The government last month invited citizens from across the country to discuss what it means to be French on the internet and at town halls across the country.

On Monday when Families Minister Nadine Morano told a meeting in the provinces that she wanted young Muslims to "love France, find a job, stop wearing their caps back to front – and to stop speaking verlan” - a popular form of slang in which words are inverted.

The remark has caused a storm of protest, while Pierre Merle, author of Argot, Verlan et Tchatches told the Direct Matin free paper that the slang is used by all young people, not just those of immigrant origin.

"Enough!" said former Socialist leader Francois Hollande. "This debate was badly defined, poorly chosen from the start, and now it is going to the dogs."

Cracks also emerged within Sarkozy's camp, with Higher Education Minister Valérie Pécresse saying there was a need to "shift the focus toward concrete proposals" to prevent the debate from further spinning out of control.

Morano on Wednesday defended her remarks, claiming those who criticised her "did not want to open their eyes to the integration problems that our young people in the suburbs are having".

Her critics are "Champagne socialists who have never set foot in those areas", she claimed

The debate is scheduled to end with a national conference on 4 February.

Paris - Comments by a French junior minister about young Muslims in France have provoked a firestorm of criticism and put the spotlight on a controversial debate on national identity that threatens to spin out of control.

In one of the many local debates scheduled to be held as part of the nationwide discussion on what it means to be French, the junior minister for families, Nadine Morano, suggested Tuesday to a young Muslim that he should change his behaviour.

'We are not putting young Muslims on trial,' she said in a small city in eastern France, in comments that were widely reported. 'What I want of a young Muslim is that he loves France when he lives here, finds work and does not speak in slang. And that he doesn't wear his cap back to front.'

Morano, who is a member of President Nicolas Sarkozy's inner circle, later tried to qualify her statement and complained that it was taken out of context, but the reaction was immediate and violent.

'This brings back the ethnic vision of the nation, the one that took place at (the pro-Nazi puppet government of) Vichy,' opposition Socialist law-maker Arnaud Montebourg said.

The president of the human rights NGO Movement Against Racism (MRAP), Mouloud Aounit, told the online edition of the daily 20 Minutes that Morano's words 'are especially dangerous and extremely violent ... I think today there is a terrible increase in Islamophobic statements.'

Criticism also came from conservatives who are growing increasingly afraid that the debate on national identity is turning into a clash of cultures between mainstream France and the large French Muslim community, which numbers about 5 million.

'That was one word too many,' said Francois Baroin, former minister and now parliamentarian for Sarkozy's UMP party. 'I don't understand and I can't see what the aim of this debate is.'

Conservative former prime minister Dominique de Villepin charged, 'This debate makes no sense. (It is) a false debate which should never have been started in the current circumstances. During a period of crisis there are other things to do than to be divided on an issue as important as this one.'

Opposition politicians as well as a large majority of the French believe that the real aim of the debate is to draw votes from the far-right National Front at next March's regional elections, which the conservatives currently seem poised to lose.

That may be one reason Morano has not been the only conservative politician to use the debate as a stage for making nationalistic comments.

Prime Minister Francois Fillon has several times tried to redirect the discussion, reminding his party colleagues that this was not a debate about Islam, and noting that 'fundamentalism (should be) fought, but absolutely not the Muslims.'

In fact, this debate on national identity has turned into a forum on immigration in general, and more specifically on the presence and behaviour of France's Muslims.

The question that now appears to be at the heart of the event is if Muslims are willing to be integrated and if their religion is at all compatible with French values.

A recent survey found that only a small majority of French adults, 54 per cent, believe that Islam is compatible with life in French society.

The discussion will not be helped by another debate, scheduled to begin Wednesday in the lower house of the Parliament, the National Assembly, where law-makers are to discuss a law on banning the burqa, the garment some Muslim women wear to conceal their faces and bodies.

The government wants to introduce a bill that would make it illegal to wear the burqa in state buildings and public service areas. However, the daily Le Figaro reported Wednesday that UMP law-makers are pushing for a law to ban the burqa everywhere except at home.

In 2008, the Council of State, France's highest administrative court, ruled that wearing the burqa 'represented a radical religious practise (that is) incompatible with the essential values of the French community, notably the equality of the sexes.'

Only a few thousand women in France currently wear the burqa, but if a law banning it is passed, it is certain to keep alive a debate that is widening divisions in France, rather than healing them.

Monsters & Critics, 16 December 2009

A man who tore a Muslim woman's veil from her face as he passed her in the street has been ordered by a court to pay her £1,000 in compensation.

Stephen Ard, 29, of Gypsy Lane, Leicester, also received a jail term of 16 weeks, suspended for a year, and 150 hours of community service.

Leicester Magistrates' Court heard victim Rehana Sidat felt "invaded and scared to walk down the street alone".

Ard pleaded guilty to religiously aggravated assault.

Amid a rising tide of Islamophobia in Europe, a former finance senator in Germany has been strongly criticized for his racist, anti-Islam comments.

On Sunday, Thilo Sarrazin, former Berlin finance senator and currently a member of the German Central Bank committee called for a headscarf ban in German schools.

His comments come only four months after the official let loose against "Arabs" and "Turks" living in Germany in an interview with the culture magazine Lettre International.

"A large number of Arabs and Turks in this city, whose number has grown through bad policies, have no productive function other than as fruit and vegetable vendors," he had said.

(CHICAGO, 12/08/09) -The Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Chicago) today called on Citibank to apologize to a Muslim woman who was allegedly verbally abused by a security guard at a Gresham, Ill., branch because she wears a religious head scarf, or hijab.

According to the Muslim woman, the guard said it was against Citibank’s policy for customers to transact business wearing head coverings. While another Citibank employee did allow the woman to complete her business, that employee insisted on personally escorting her to the counter and watched over her shoulder as she conducted her transactions.

LONDON (Reuters Life!) – A Christian couple who run a hotel in northern England were cleared on Wednesday of abusing a Muslim guest for wearing a hijab and then insulting her beliefs.
Benjamin and Sharon Vogelenzang were accused of launching a tirade against white British Muslim convert Ericka Tazi, 60, at their hotel in Liverpool where she had been staying while she attended a course at a local hospital in March.

The Local: Sweden's News in English
By David Landes

A Muslim woman from Kista north of Stockholm who was denied a job as a dentist after refusing to wear short-sleeved work clothes for religious reasons has lost her discrimination case against the Swedish Public Dental Service (Folktandvården).


“It’s incomprehensible,” the woman told The Local following the ruling by the Stockholm District Court.

Following the completion of her dental studies in January 2008, the now 29-year-old woman applied for a position with the public dental service in Stockholm.

During the hiring process, she was informed that the dental agency requires personnel to wear short-sleeved gowns when treating patients.

Huffington Post
By Ahmed Rehab

The Fort Hood massacre committed by Major Nidal Hassan was a national tragedy that took us all by surprise. It was quickly and widely condemned by the American Muslim community who were as shell-shocked and dismayed as anybody else, and who were additionally concerned about a potential backlash against those who happen to share Hassan’s faith, though not his crime.

It is no surprise that the usual culprits who have built careers out of inciting hysteria against Muslims saw this tragedy as an opportunity on a golden platter. The hate blogs and radio talk shows were quickly abuzz with familiar voices trying hard to extend Hassan’s guilt to every Muslim and the faith they practice .

Unfortunately, there are always the vigilante Joes and Janes out there who consume this stuff with little critical scrutiny and, in some cases, act upon it.

The Muslim News
By Ahmed J Versi

An 18-year-old Muslim student was attacked and beaten even after he lost consciousness by a gang of white youths on November 6. As they attacked him, they shouted “Where is your Allah now” and “Where is He to help you now.”

The first year business and computer undergraduate student had just left De Montfort University, Leicester, library with his friend at around 8.30 pm when they were attacked by around 10 white youths in Great Central Way, near the junction with Briton Street, Bede Island. The two students, Ahmed and Umar, (not their real name as they wish to remain anonymous) saw the gang taunting and abusing a Muslim woman wearing the hijab. She was with two other women who had gone ahead of her.

DALLAS – A Muslim doctor interviewing for a job at a suburban Dallas medical clinic says officials there told her she couldn't wear her headscarf in the workplace.
Dr. Hena Zaki of Plano, Texas, said Friday that she was shocked when CareNow officials told her that a no-hat policy extended to her hijab.