Swiss voters have narrowly approved a proposal to ban face coverings, both niqabs and burkas worn by a few Muslim women in the country and the ski masks and bandannas used by protesters.

The measure will outlaw covering one’s face in public places such as restaurants, sports stadiums, public transport or simply walking in the street.

It foresees exceptions at religious sites and for security or health reasons, such as face masks people are wearing now to protect against Covid-19, as well as for traditional carnival celebrations. Authorities have two years to draw up detailed legislation.

Two Swiss cantons, or states, Ticino and St Gallen, already have similar legislation that foresees fines for transgressions. National legislation will put Switzerland in line with countries such as Belgium and France that have already enacted similar measures.

The Swiss government had opposed the measure as excessive, arguing that full-face coverings are a “marginal phenomenon”. It argued that the ban could harm tourism – most Muslim women who wear such veils in Switzerland are visitors from Persian Gulf states, who are often drawn to Swiss lakeside cities.

Experts estimate that at most a few dozen Muslim women wear full-face coverings in the country of 8.5 million people.

Supporters of the proposal, which came to a vote five years after it was launched, argued that the full-face coverings symbolise the repression of women and said the measure is needed to uphold a basic principle that faces should be shown in a free society such as Switzerland’s.

In the end, 51.2% of voters supported the plan. There were majorities against it in six of Switzerland’s 26 cantons – among them those that include the country’s three biggest cities, Zurich, Geneva and Basel, and the capital, Bern. SRF public television reported that voters in several popular tourist destinations including Interlaken, Lucerne and Zermatt rejected it.

Backers included the nationalist Swiss People’s Party, which is the strongest in parliament. The committee that launched the proposal is led by a politician from the party, Walter Wobmann, and also initiated a ban on the construction of new minarets that voters approved in 2009.

A coalition of left-leaning parties that opposes the proposal put up signs ahead of the referendum that read: “Absurd. Useless. Islamophobic.”

Mr Wobmann told SRF that the initiative addressed both “a symbol of a completely different system of values… extremely radical Islam” and security against “hooligans”. He said that “this has nothing to do with symbolic politics”.

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The New Zealand Police force has incorporated a hijab into its official uniform, with the first officer to wear it reporting that it “feels great”.

Constable Zeena Ali had the opportunity to trial several versions of the hijab before she began her police training, with the item now an official elective item of uniform.

The force worked alongside apparel design researchers Deb Cumming and Nina Weaver, from Massey University School of Design Wellington, to create the hijab, with Constable Ali taking part in the development process.

Constable Ali, who is originally from Fiji but has lived in New Zealand since she was a child, said: “Police and the Massey design team have been really easy to work with to make adjustments to the hijab.”

Initial work to develop a police uniform hijab started in 2018, with the hijab formally approved as an elective item of uniform on November 4 this year.

Constable Ali said: “It feels great to be able to go out and show the New Zealand Police uniform hijab because I was able to take part in the design process.

“Having a police-branded hijab means women who may not have previously considered policing can do so now. It’s great how the police incorporated my religion and culture.”

The force added that Sikh men have been able to wear a New Zealand Police turban since 2008.

Muslims in Buddhist-majority Myanmar usually keep a low profile for fear of intimidation, but Win Lae Phyu Sin, one of the community’s rare bloggers on beauty care, has gone the other way.

The 19-year-old was the centre of attraction at a recent launch of beauty products in Yangon, her striking multi-coloured make-up offset by a long-sleeved green-and-white gown and matching hijab, a headscarf worn by some Muslim women.

“I don’t regret my decision to wear the hijab,” the blogger said. “Our God opens many ways for me. Hijab is like a key for me. I can use it to go where I want to go, and do what I want.”

Muslims, who make up about 5 per cent of the nation of around 50 million, say they have not been able to open new mosques in decades and struggle to rent apartments from Buddhist landlords.

Systematic persecution of Muslims is growing in Myanmar, rights groups say, though world attention has focussed on its stateless Rohingya Muslims, with the United Nations and aid groups saying more than 700,000 were driven into neighbouring Bangladesh after an army crackdown last year.

But many Muslims of all ethnicities had been refused national identity documents, and denied access to some places of worship, Burma Human Rights Network said in a report last year.

For some of Win Lae Phyu Sin’s students, her tutorials are not merely about applying eyeshadow and highlighter, but also about building confidence and pride in an identity constantly questioned by Buddhist fellow citizens.

“I saw her applying make-up while wearing the hijab and it’s amazingly beautiful,” said Hay Mann Aung, 20.

“I wanted to be as beautiful as her.”

Win Lae Phyu Sin’s effort to impart a cool, chic vibe to the image of Myanmar Muslims, deploying stylish clothes that match her hijabs, elaborate mascara, and eyeshadow layered in bold colours, has drawn admirers.

She has 6,000 followers on social media site Facebook and 600 students have attended more than 150 classes on the use of cosmetics run in a makeshift studio.

CRITICISM

But her high profile has drawn criticism and even discrimination: a Buddhist woman who enrolled in her class backed out on discovering Win Lae Phyu Sin was Muslim.

Some Facebook commenters have attacked her for being too flamboyant and using make-up, which conservative Muslims regard as taboo, but the blogger refuses to let critics waste her time.

“When people attack or criticise me outside and online, I choose to ignore them,” she said. “I have a lot of work to do.”

Her growing fame, fed by dozens of online make-up tutorials and events at shopping malls, has prompted trips to Myanmar’s second largest city, Mandalay, and she plans to visit Kuala Lumpur, the capital of neighbouring Malaysia.

Win Lae Phyu Sin started with tutorials on make-up filmed in a bedroom shared with her sister, posting them on Facebook before offering classes.

“After I graduated from high school, my boyfriend gave me make-up palettes as a present,” she said. “I didn’t know how to use them so I Googled it and learned.”

But acquiring professional expertise proved too expensive, so Win Lae Phyu Sin came up with the idea of six-hour sessions, aimed at regular “girls like me”, that cost less than $25.

A year on, she brings to every lesson two bags packed with eyeliners, brushes and small mirrors for every student. At one recent session, she discussed skin types before handing out bottles of foundation and eyeshadow for students to try.

Win Lae Phyu Sin is undeterred by those who denigrate her for being a Muslim and wearing a hijab that exposes the face.

“‘Don’t you know you will go to hell if you do that? Why don’t you take off the hijab during shooting?'” she quoted some Facebook critics as asking.

But she added, “I will keep on doing this, because this is my passion.”

As powers in Iran realise the futility in enforcing morality on women through the Hijab, a report just released shows how views have changed within the country with many Iranians believing that wearing the Hijab should be a personal choice and not state sanctioned or enforced. 

Indeed, such has been the courage of some women in standing without the Hijab in Iran that their simple actions have seemed to shake the foundations of the theocratic state. A simple action by some Iranian women has shown the futility of the state sanctioning of religion on the clothes and dress of citizens. It is those men in theocratic positions in Iran who feel fear now and not those women who risked their personal safety in taking off the Hijab.

So, just as we defend the right for women to take off religious clothing and symbolism, we understand that within different countries, women may also choose to put on the Hijab through choice. Choice is the fundamental word here. In the UK, many Muslim women have made the choice to wear the Hijab and that choice as to cover their bodies or not should be defended.

Much of the debate about the Hijab is polarising into the ‘for’ or ‘against’ camp, which is not helpful and misses the very fact that many Muslim women make that choice without parental pressure. In relation to children, this simple and straightforward rule becomes more difficult within public institutions such as schools. At the moment, there is a much heated debate about school uniforms and the Hijab, much of which is not bringing communities together or indeed, to a point of listening to each other. 

Just as we respect the choice of a woman to wear the Hijab in the UK, so we should respect the choice of a woman to take it off in countries like Iran. Taking off the Hijab does not make a Muslim woman less Muslim, nor does it entitle anyone to moralise about her body. Additionally, anyone who believes that taking off the Hijab makes a Muslim woman less Muslim, actually is part of the problem and not the solution. For in the end, the link with faith is a personal one and no state, nor any male dominated theocracy can change that simple fact.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls defended a ban on burkinis in more than a dozen coastal towns on Thursday, saying France was locked in a “battle of cultures” and that the full-body swimsuit symbolised the enslavement of women.

Photographs of armed police ordering a Muslim woman on a beach in the Mediterranean city of Nice to partially disrobe went viral on social media this week, upsetting many French Muslims and causing global consternation.

In a sign of rifts opening in the socialist government before a presidential election in 2017, France’s Moroccan-born education minister said the debate was fanning racist rhetoric and being used for political gain. The health minister said France’s secular values did not mean a rejection of religion.

“We have to wage a determined fight against radical Islam, against these religious symbols which are filtering into public spaces,” Valls said in an interview on BFM-TV.

Reiterating his stance on the issue, he said: “For me the burkini is a symbol of the enslavement of women.”

France’s Conseil d’Etat, its highest administrative court, on Thursday began hearing a request by a human rights group for the burkini ban in the Mediterranean town of Villeneuve-Loubet to be overturned.

The debate over the burkini ban encapsulates the difficulties secular France faces as it grapples with a response to homegrown jihadists and foreign militants, following Islamist attacks on Nice and a Normandy church in July, and major deadly attacks in Paris last year. Security and immigration are now central issues in the presidential election campaign.

Former head of state Nicolas Sarkozy, who joined the presidential race on Monday, told the Figaro magazine that France under President Francois Hollande had become too timid.

“The Burkini is a political act, a militant act, a provocation. Women who wear it are testing the Republic,” Sarkozy told the magazine in comments to be published on Friday.

In a demonstration of how the Burkini controversy has reverberated abroad, British author J. K. Rowling tweeted: “So Sarkozy calls the Burkini a ‘provocation’. Whether women cover or uncover their bodies, seems we’re always ‘asking for it.'”

France is not the only country where restrictions on face and head coverings are back in the spotlight, and debate on assimilation is raging in Western Europe after a wave of militant strikes and an immigration crisis that has forced a rethink of Europe’s internal open border policy.

In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives want a partial ban on the niqab, or face veil, while in Austria right-wing politicians have called for a ban on the burqa, which covers the face and body. In Switzerland there are calls for a popular vote on a ban on the burqa.

On a visit to Paris on Thursday, London’s Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, condemned the ban, saying no one should tell women what to wear.

“I don’t think it’s right,” Khan told the Evening Standard newspaper. “One of the joys of London is that we don’t simply tolerate difference, we respect it, we embrace it.”

ISLAMIC STATE AND THE BURKINI

The burkini has been banned by at least 15 French towns from Corsica to the northern coast but most restrictions have been enforced in the southeast, an area where the far-right is strong and which is a gateway and home for many immigrants.

It has also been a fertile zone for Islamist militant networks recruiting would-be jihadists to fight in Syria.

The stigma caused by the ban “would only encourage Islamic State’s recruiters”, said Abdallah Zekri of the National Observatory against Islamaphobia.

At least two ministers came out in open disagreement with the government’s stance on the burkini bans on Thursday.

“To pretend that swimming veiled or bathing on a beach dressed is in itself threatening to public order and the values of the Republic is to forget that those (secular) values are meant to allow each person to safeguard their identity,” Health Minister Marisol Touraine wrote on her website.

Education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem said she opposed burkinis but dismissed the argument of Prime Minister Valls that the ban was a useful tool in France’s fight against militants.

“There is no link between the terror attacks of Daesh and the dress of a woman on the beach,” Vallaud-Belkacem told Europe 1 radio, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

While Valls on Thursday rejected the idea the ban might fuel sympathies for militant groups, some government officials are worried.

One senior French government official warned that missteps would only exacerbate tensions heightened since a Tunisian drove his truck through a crowd in Nice last month, killing 86 people, and youths slit the throat of a Catholic priest in Normandy.

“We have several million Muslims in France who are mostly moderates or non-practicing. If they feel that it is the only subject in public debate they won’t feel at home and will be tempted to withdraw to their communities,” the official said.

The Conseil d’Etat is expected to rule on the Villeneuve-Lobet ban on Friday at 3 p.m. (1300 GMT).

When Nicolas Sarkozy went fishing for votes in the electoral waters of France’s far right for a second presidential term in 2012 it ended in defeat, as voters alienated by his rhetoric and disappointed by a moribund economy deserted him.

Fast forward four years and the conservative is banking on a change in mood.

Islamist attacks on French soil have killed some 230 people since January, 2015. Europe’s migrant crisis has exacerbated concerns about immigration and fuelled the rise of far-right Front National leader Marine Le Pen.

An Ifop poll in July showed security trumping unemployment as the hot-button issue of the 2017 race despite an economic malaise and Sarkozy’s comeback bid pitches him as a president who would be tough on security and immigration.

In a new book entitled “Everything for France”, to be published on Wednesday, Sarkozy courts National Front voters with a promise to limit the right to French nationality of children born to immigrants.

He pledges to suspend the right of immigrants to bring immediate family members to live in France until the European Union draws up what he says is a coherent immigration policy. And he vows to “drastically reduce” the number of migrants France accepts and end economic migration within five years.

By promising to ban the Muslim head scarf from universities and public companies he furthermore presents himself as an energetic defender of the secular state that is a key part of France’s identity.

Sarkozy said France’s biggest battle would be how “to defend our lifestyle without giving into the temptation of cutting ourselves off from the rest of the world,” a veiled reference to British voters’ decision in June to leave the European Union – in part due to concerns over immigration.

CHANGING CAMPAIGN

The Nice attack on crowds celebrating the Bastille Day national holiday and the murder of a Catholic priest in a Normandy Church have shifted the focus of the campaign away from the economy and towards Sarkozy’s strongest suit, said Frederic Dabi at pollster IFOP.

At the turn of the year, opinion polls showed him well behind Alain Juppe, a mainstream conservative and his principal rival for the Republicains nomination, both among party supporters and the centre-right more broadly.

Now, Sarkozy leads Juppe by 63 percent to Juppe’s 36 percent among the party faithful, an Elabe poll showed on Tuesday. However the primary is open to any voter who pays 2 euros (dollars) and signs a pledge that they agree with the “values of the right and centre”.

That wider constituency favours Juppe. The Elabe poll gave him 53 percent support to Sarkozy’s 46 percent, underscoring the challenge facing the one-time interior minister.

“Sarkozy is in the stronger position, even if – for now – Juppe remains ahead in voter support,” said Dabi. “The primary race on the right will be somewhat hardline in tone. That doesn’t have to mean that Juppe fails.”

“NOT SEEKING REVENGE”

Monday’s comeback announcement was vintage Sarkozy: drawing parallels between the challenges awaiting the next president with those that confronted war-time hero Charles de Gaulle, the architect of France’s current political system.

In his first term, Sarkozy’s high-energy style and abrasive manner polarised voters, while his modest attempts at tax and labour market reform and limited success fostering job creation disenchanted both free-marketeers and leftist voters whom he had also assiduously courted to win election.

After his May 2012 defeat to Francois Hollande, Sarkozy promised to quit politics altogether, but returned to the fray in September 2014 citing the need to rescue France from what he described as the socialist’s catastrophic presidency.

“I am not seeking revenge, I have no egotistical score to settle,” Sarkozy said on social media on Monday as he announced his bid.

While Juppe has kept a low profile over the summer — campaigning for the primary in November is expected to hot up in the days ahead. Juppe holds a rally outside Paris this weekend.

Sarkozy’s leftist opponents, meanwhile, have been swift to attack the former president’s social policies.

“This policy platform is a platform for the division of French people, not their coming together,” Socialist lawmaker Jean-Marie Le Guen told Europe 1 radio.

Le Guen said Sarkozy’s economic platform would favour the wealthy. Sarkozy’s friendships with the rich, powerful and the world of showbiz earned him the nickname “President Bling Bling” and caused widespread distaste on the left but also in some conservative circles.

Individual Pleads Guilty to Islamophobic Assault on Muslim Woman Wearing the Hijab

A North Carolina man admitted on Friday that he ripped off a Muslim woman’s head scarf during a flight to New Mexico last December after saying, “Take it off! This is America!”

Gill Payne, 37, pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court in New Mexico to one count of using force to intentionally obstruct the woman from freely exercising her religious beliefs, prosecutors said.

“No matter one’s faith, all Americans are entitled to peacefully exercise their religious beliefs free from discrimination and violence,” said Vanita Gupta, head of the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

An attorney for Payne did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Payne admitted that on a flight last December, he approached the aisle where the Muslim woman was seated shortly before landing in Albuquerque, and stopped next to her seat, Prosecutors said.

Payne then told the woman, a stranger identified in court documents as K.A., to take off her hijab, saying something to the effect of “Take it off! This is America!” prosecutors said.

Payne then grabbed the back of the hijab and “pulled it all the way off,” leaving her head exposed.

“As a result, K.A. felt violated and quickly pulled the hijab back up and covered her head again,” prosecutors said in a statement.

A sentencing hearing for Payne has not yet been set, prosecutors said.

The guilty plea comes in the wake of a number of anti-Muslim incidents in the United States.

Earlier this week, a Muslim advocacy group said a California student was embarrassed and distressed after her name was incorrectly listed as Isis, the abbreviated name of the Islamic militant group.

In late April, a New Jersey school board member resigned after drawing fire over anti-Muslim Facebook posts, including one saying, “America needs to get rid of people like you.”

In the wake of deadly attacks by Islamist militants in Paris and California last year, Donald Trump, now the presumptive Republican White House nominee, called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States.

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A recent story published by MailOnline and The Sun reposted an argument between TfL passengers from December 14, 2014.

The respective headlines gave weight to the ‘You white sl*g!’ and ‘Don’t call me a white b***h!’ comments. We are then informed that ‘Two white women and two women wearing hijabs fired insults at each other while a horrified onlooker filmed the whole thing’. And ‘Shocking moment ‘racist’ Muslim women face off with white women in vicious confrontation on a London train’.

Both journalists make efforts to transcribe the argument, its insults and abuses. Yet the MailOnline copy makes little effort to highlight the abusive comments directed at the Muslim women. It acknowledges that they experience a ‘torrent of racist and Islamophobic abuse’; but does little to provide readers with statements until the end of the article.

Missing from the MailOnline copy are these statements:

“I don’t care if that’s your family or not or one of yous (sic), I don’t give a s**t she’s sitting there with her headscarf on being racist.”

“She’s sitting there with a headscarf on like I’m going to be threatened.”

“You’re a Muslim p***k, with that s**t round your head.”

To the Sun’s credit, the journalist did acknowledge that the argument was not quite so one-sided. But the accusation of racism remains directed solely at the Muslim women, abusive statements directed at the Muslim women are not afforded the same scrutiny, even when the MailOnline article acknowledges that the Muslim women experienced racist and Islamophobic abuse.

The MailOnline copy did acknowledge that the video surfaced in December 2014; but you’d need to read further down the article to learn this fact. The Sun, however, made the odd claim that  ‘an eyewitness filmed the altercation in March but the footage has only just surfaced online’. This may owe to the fact the article appeared a day after the MailOnline version appeared online.

In a heated and unpleasant argument where neither side comes across well, the context of what triggered the argument eludes both articles. That context does appear in the original video description.

YouTube user Jo Hip wrote that the argument had started ten minutes before they hit record. According to Jo Hip, “it all started when the white girl noticed the somalian girls steering at her and making comments under their breaths, after a while the white girl asked them, ‘Why do you keep on looking at me?. The Somalian girls responded by saying, ‘We’re free to look at whoever we want’”.

The description then adds:”After a while the white girl said ‘ I’ve dealt with many people like you and I won’t be intimidated’. When the Somalian girls heard the White girl say ‘People like you’, they assumed she was talking about their religion or race, they then said’ What do you mean people like us? Somalian? Muslim?? Well you’re nothing but a ‘White Slag’.”

Only after hearing the utterance of ‘white slag’ did the video record. The justification for filming was “to show the ignorance of people. Ignorance knows no colour or religion.”

This distorted framing of the article perhaps influenced some the comments from MailOnline readers. It reflected their own anxieties towards multiculturalism. Others recycled myths that the police would favour the Muslim women. It also captured their pessimism and fatalism. Soon it became clear that the comments focused less on the content and more on their own broader concerns and biases.

A bigger question, however, remains: why was a video uploaded in December 2014 reposted in 2016?

The post How a MailOnline article distorted a video from 2014 to highlight ‘racist’ Muslim women appeared first on TELL MAMA.

Ruba Rosalina Bukhatwa, known to her teammates as Rose, may become the first Muslim women in Ireland to play competitive rugby in the hijab.

Tallaght Women’s RFC made a request to the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) after Bukhatwa had recently joined the club. Within four weeks, the IRFU confirmed that she could play in the hijab under certain conditions: she must ensure that the hijab is secure and tucked into her jersey and wear a scrum cap.

Martina Fitzpatrick, Women’s Development Officer at Tallaght Women’s RFC praised the IRFU’s speedy resolution. She hopes the decision will encourage more women in Ireland to pursue rugby.

The 18-year-old law student at Griffith University was born in Dublin to Libyan parents.

The town of Tallaght, in south Dublin, made headlines in 2014 with the “Hijabs and Hat-tricks” project after FIFA dropped its ban on hijabs. And Diverse City FC was soon born. Alongisde Sport Against Racism Ireland (SARI), the project helped Muslim women into football. The women’s team debuted at tournament that same year.

The post IRFU allows Muslim woman to wear hijab in competitive rugby appeared first on Religious Reader.

Merseyside Police reached out to Tell MAMA following a violent and unprovoked assault on a Muslim woman in the Everton area of Merseyside.

The 38-year-old, who wears the hijab and is of Arab descent, had passed a children’s play area on route to a supermarket at around 8pm on February 11. She noticed two white men stood near to the junction of Ullswater Street.

One of the men shouted racist abuse at her which was anti-migrant in nature. The second man then approached the woman, grabbed her hijab and punched her repeatedly in the face. Both men then left the scene.

The vicious assault left the woman with bruising and swelling to her face. Her fractured cheekbone will require surgery to repair. The attack left the woman feeling dazed, hurt and in shock.

Staff from Tell MAMA continue to offer further support to the woman. Merseyside Police released a public appeal and e-fit of one of the suspects on February 19.

Tell MAMA and Merseyside Police have been working together to support the victim. We are pleased that in a case as serious as this she had the confidence to contact the police.

Although physical attacks such as this are somewhat rare, it is essential that they are reported to the Police or Tell MAMA so that the perpetrators are brought to justice.

If you have been targeted with anti-Muslim hostility you can call us in confidence on 0800 456 1226 or email us at info@tellmamauk.org.

Anyone with information about the assault can contact Merseyside Police’s SIGMA team on 0151 777 4078 or the confidential Crimestoppers line on 0800 555 111.

The post Merseyside Police investigate unprovoked racist assault on Muslim woman appeared first on TELL MAMA.