Wednesday, September 18, 2013

British College "Unbans" Burqa



Facebook  Twitter  RSS
Gatestone Institute
In this mailing:

British College "Unbans" Burqa

by Soeren Kern
September 18, 2013 at 5:00 am
Be the first of your friends to like this.
"People are frightened of standing up and speaking out…because of political correctness and the intolerant reaction from Muslim groups who jump up and down with fury whenever anyone says it makes sense to for people to go around with their faces perfectly visible to everyone else, which is the way human beings were created in the first place…If we all covered our faces, the world would be a very different place. Imagine Parliament where everyone had their faces covered." — Philip Hollobone, MP
A college in England has reversed a ban on Islamic veils after furious Muslim students complained of discrimination, and launched an online petition drive that gathered more than 8,000 signatures in just two days.
Birmingham Metropolitan College backed away from its ban on September 12, just hours before a mass demonstration by hundreds of Muslim students threatened to disrupt the normal functioning of the college.
The controversy began on September 9, the first day of the autumn term, when the college announced that students and employees would be ordered to remove any face coverings so that individuals are "easily identifiable at all times."
The college's ban on face-covering niqabs or the body-covering burqas -- as well as caps, hoodies and other types of head covering -- was billed as a security measure.
Christine Braddock, the college's principal, said the policy had been developed to keep students safe. In an interview with the Birmingham Mail, she said:
We have a very robust equality, diversity and inclusion policy at Birmingham Metropolitan College but we are committed to ensuring that students are provided with a safe and welcoming learning environment whilst studying with us.
To ensure that safeguarding is a priority, we have developed our policy alongside student views to ensure we keep them safe," Braddock added. "This needs individuals to be easily identifiable at all times when they are on college premises and this includes the removal of hoodies, hats, caps and veils so that faces are visible. All prospective and progressing students, as well as staff, have been advised of the policy, which will mean everyone allowed on the premises can understand and know each other in a safe environment.
Muslims were livid. One prospective Muslim student said she was so upset about the policy that she decided to look for another college in the city. The angry 17-year-old girl, who did not want to be named, told the Mail: "It's disgusting. It is a personal choice and I find it absolutely shocking that this has been brought in at a college in Birmingham city center when the city is so multicultural and so many of the students are Muslim. It upsets me that we are being discriminated against."
Another student at the college, Imaani Ali, also 17, told the Mail that her "freedom has been breached" by the rule. "Me and another friend who wears the veil were only told we wouldn't be allowed inside the college after we had enrolled," she said. "They haven't provided us with another alternative. We said we would happily show the men at security our faces so they could check them against our IDs, but they won't let us. It's a breach of my freedom and I feel discriminated against. This is my religion, it is what I believe in. I don't really want to go to a place that doesn't accept me but I have no choice now."
Muslim politicians were quick to chime in. Birmingham MP Shabana Mahmood said she was "shocked" and "deeply concerned" at the policy, and demanded an urgent meeting with college leaders about the decision. "For those that chose to wear the full veil, it is an important article of faith," she said. "I would like to know how many students are affected and a full explanation as to why the compromise suggested by students at the College, that the veil is removed for security staff to check and verify identity before being put back on, was not accepted by the College."
"I am deeply concerned that other colleges may follow suit, as a result of which increasing numbers of women will be locked out of education and skills training," Mahmood added. "We must not allow this to happen."
A member of the Birmingham city council, Waseem Zaffar, called the move "baffling" and said: "How they dress in their lessons should be entirely up to the students as there is no uniform policy at the college. I hope the college comes to its senses and does a U-turn."
The Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS), an umbrella organization of student groups that represents the interests of more than 100,000 Muslim college students in Britain and Ireland, issued a statement saying: "This senseless decision is massively divisive and will only lead to an environment in which the rights of many will be disproportionately suppressed. The fundamental rights to freedom of religious expression are at stake here and this sets out an extremely dangerous precedent not only for the Muslim community but for members of all faith backgrounds."
The college was ultimately forced into a climb-down after nearly 600 angry students threatened to participate in a campus demonstration on September 14 with the stated aim to "protest against this Islamophobic and illogical decision to ban the face veil...to take a stand against such hysterical and discriminatory decisions."
Fearing that the protest could potentially turn violent, the college issued a statement saying, "We are concerned that recent media attention is detracting from our core mission of providing high quality learning. As a consequence, we will modify our policies to allow individuals to wear specific items of personal clothing to reflect their cultural values."
Muslims reacted with jubilation. Protest organizer Sabiha Mahmood, 27, a former student at the college, said, "We are very happy that the ban has been overturned but there is still the wider issue of why it was ever allowed to happen in the first place. This is a victory for now but we have to make sure it does not happen again in Birmingham or in any other college in the UK. Our primary concern is that this student is part of British society and in this country we allow women to express themselves how they want to. We believe it is a fundamental right for Muslim women to be allowed to wear the face veil and to ban it was a violation of our human rights."
Waseem Zaffar, the city counsellor, said it had been a "sad few days" for Birmingham but was glad "common sense" had prevailed after the U-turn. "I think democracy has won here," he said. "The college has heard 8,000 people signed a petition in 48 hours and they have been brave enough to admit they were wrong. The reputation of the city and the college has been damaged but I hope we can move on now."
A spokeswoman for the Muslim Council of Britain, a Muslim umbrella group that is pressing the British government to implement Islamic Sharia law, described the ban as "shocking," "draconian" and "unBritish," and welcomed its reversal.
"This was a clear case of religious discrimination masquerading as a security measure," she said. "In Britain, we pride ourselves in the freedom of religion. While there may well be many views on whether this aspect of clothing is a religious obligation, we nevertheless respect a woman's right to wear the niqab if she freely wishes to do so."
But others say the college's reversal represents a capitulation for the British way of life.
Tory MP for Kettering Philip Hollobone told the British newspaper The Independent that the college's change of heart was a shameful disgrace and argued for the urgent need for legislation to ban the niqab in all public spaces.
"People are frightened of standing up and speaking out in this discussion because of political correctness and the intolerant reaction from Muslim groups who jump up and down with fury whenever anyone says that it makes sense for people to go around with their faces perfectly visible to everyone else, which is the way human beings were created in the first place," Hollobone said.
Hollobone presented a bill in the British Parliament on September 6 that would make it illegal to wear clothing obscuring the face in public; the bill will be considered on February 28, 2014.
In a live debate entitled, "Should Britain Ban the Veil?" and aired on BBC Radio 5 on September 6, Hollobone said, "Society can't function if people go around with facial coverings. If we all covered our faces the world would be a very different place. Imagine Parliament where everyone had their face covered. It makes it very difficult for the police to identify troublemakers. I am sad that legislation may be necessary to address this problem. It's basic common sense to most people. It would ultimately lead to the breakdown of our society."
Hollobone denied that his proposal amounted to an attack on Islam: "We have to be quite clear -- the burka isn't religious clothing. It's a choice."
Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.
Related Topics:  United Kingdom  |  Soeren Kern

Solving the Problem of Child Marriage

by Mohshin Habib
September 18, 2013 at 4:00 am
Be the first of your friends to like this.
Earlier this year, a 15 year old girl was sentenced to 100 lashes for being raped and made pregnant by her stepfather. Premarital sex is not legal, but flogging is.
An eight-year-old girl, identified as Rawan, and married the week before to a 40-year-old man in the northwestern Yemen, died of internal injuries the first night of forced marriage to a groom five times her age, the Daily Mail reports on September 9th.
Yemeni Human Rights Minister Hooria Mashour has now declared that enough is enough -- telling CNN that the growing anger over Rawan's case has presented Yemen with an opportunity to finally do the right thing. "Many child marriages take place every year in Yemen. It is time to end this practice," she said.
But practically nothing is taking place.
Although the situation of a ten-year-old Yemeni girl raped and abused by her husband led, in 2009, to the proposal of a bill establishing 17 as a minimum age for marriage, the legislation has not yet been enacted, mainly due to opposition from the Yemeni Parliamentary Committee on Islamic law.
Two earlier proposals for laws setting minimum ages for marriage in Yemen were stuck down in 1999, thanks to objection from religious leaders.
Whatever the constitution and penal code of a Muslim dominated country suggests, it seems that the society and the government itself are not able to budge Islamic instructions, values and tenets -- especially on the issue of child marriage. In most Muslim countries, laws and even constitutions, when they collide with Islamic trends that have existed for the last 1,400 years, seem to have absolutely no effect.
A Nigerian senator and ex-governor of Zamfara state Ahmad Sani Yerima appeared on Al-Jazeera's "The Stream" show on September 4th to argue that if a Muslim groom is selecting a bride from a Muslim family, whatever her age, it is no one else's business. He referred to the Islamic prophet Muhammad, who married a 9-year-old child, Ayesha (actually he wedded her when she was six, and consummated the marriage when she was nine). Therefore any Muslim who marries a girl of nine or above is following the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. Senator Yerima, 54, who married a 13-year-old girl in 2009 as his fourth wife, said he finds nothing wrong in his action.
In Nigeria, the NGO "Gender and Constitution Reform Network" [GECORN] sent a letter to the president of the senate on July 24, 2013, stressing the importance of removing the constitution's clause that legitimizes child marriage – clause 29(4)(b), which states: "any women who is married shall be deemed to be a full age". However, the senate committee that debated removing the provision failed to gain the required 73 votes required to remove it.
Senator Yerima, backed by some conservative members, also opposed the clause's removal, and insisted that under Islamic tenets, a woman, once married, is of age. "The constitution says the National Assembly shall legislate on marriage except those under Islamic rites," he said.
According to the UN, 20% of Nigerian girls are married by age 15. In addition, Nigeria's Child Rights Act is not recognized in 12 states of Nigeria, out of a total of 36.
Earlier this year in the Maldives, a 15-year-old girl was sentenced to 100 lashes for being raped and made pregnant by her stepfather.
In the Maldives, premarital sex is not legal, but flogging is, and an accepted punishment. The girl had been under house arrest on an island near the capital, Malé, since her sentencing. The charge against her of fornication sparked a petition by the global network AVAAZ, signed by two million people around the world who called for the sentence to be commuted. Opposition MPs called British Prime Minister David Cameron to put pressure on the Maldivian government.
According to Sharia law, if a woman is raped, she is considered guilty of adultery unless she can provide four adult Muslim male witnesses. Her punishment is stoning to death if she is married, or 100 lashes if she is single.
According to the constitution, the Maldives is a democratic republic based on the principles of Islam. Article 7 states that Islam is the state religion and Article 16 states that it allows for criminal defense in accordance with Sharia. According to Maldives's custom, the minimum age for marriage is 15, but the local Protection of the Rights of the Child law discourages marriage before the age of 16.
In Bangladesh, in April 2011, a politician and highly respected Islamic cleric, the late Fazlul Haq Amini, said that 200,000 jihadists were ready to sacrifice their lives to oppose any law restricting child marriage. He declared that those trying to pass a law banning child marriage were putting the prophet Muhammad in a bad light: "Banning child marriage will cause challenging the marriage of holy prophet of Islam. Islam permits child marriage and it will not be tolerated if any ruler will ever try to touch this issue in the name of giving more rights to women."
This situation apparently exists in every Muslim country: there are thousands of victims of ostensibly legitimate sexual abuse of children across the Muslim world.
Dr. Zakir Naik, originally from India, who is president of the Islamic Research Foundation that owns the Peace TV channel based in Dubai, has millions of followers around the globe. He has also been promoting child marriage through his preaching.
The International Center for Research on Women has stated about child marriage, that if present trends continue, 142 million prepubescent girls will marry over the next decade -- or 38,000 girls who will marry every day for the next 10 years. According to the study, most of the victims are from Muslim-dominated areas.
Advocacy groups from Western countries and say they are concerned about the issue. The United States alone spends billion of dollars to reduce maternal death and infant mortality, improve the attainment of education, and promote the rule of law for the affected countries. But the big question is: Will the effort bring any solution to the Islamic problem of child marriage so long as the preaching of these clerics is not countered?
Related Topics:  Mohshin Habib

To subscribe to the this mailing list, go to http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/list_subscribe.php

No comments:

Post a Comment