exploring muslim identities in europe & north america

This is Rasheed Wallace. He is Muslim, and he is wearing an ensemble from the Middle Ages Hats off to this amazing and imaginative attempt to deconstruct our stereotypical views of Muslims. For a humorous yet sober treatment of the subject visit http://muslimswearingthings.tumblr.com/ Former NPR analyst Juan Williams, among other ignorant people, has an irrational fear of Muslims, and thinks you can identify them based on what they look like. Here I will post pictures of Muslims wearing all sorts of things in an attempt to refute that there is such a thing as "Muslim garb" or a Muslim look.

This entry was prompted by an article by Andrew Brown that appeared in Saturday's Guardian. Asking whether Sunday's Swedish election could give power to the country's far right, Brown identifies the potency and divisive character of the issue of immigration in Swedish politics. But immigration is not a new phenomenon in Sweden as it has traditionally been a haven for various refugees/asylum seekers and economic migrants. It is clear that the issue the far right Swedish Democrats have been exploiting is Muslim immigration in Sweden and the impact this has on Swedish society at local and national level. But, I think more importantly, Brown's article focuses on the Rosengård district of Malmö and identifies the conflicting perceptions about access and usage of this urban space as one of the key elements in shaping perceptions about Islam, immigration and attitudes towards foreigners in the Swedish election. This is by no means something new. Back in 2004, Fox N...

The French Senate voted almost unanimously to ban face-covering Islamic veils in public, opening the way for the enactment of the colloquially called anti-burqa law. Interestingly, 246 senators overwhelmingly outnumbered the one and only opponent of the law who voted against it. Similarly, in July, the bill sailed through the Assemblée nationale by a vote of 335 to 1. Despite the intense public debate, within the serene confines of France's legislature the law united government and opposition and was met with virtually no resistance.  It is telling that not only the rights of the estimated 2,000 French Muslim women who wear variants of the full cover, but also the broader right of self determination of hundreds of thousands of French Muslim women which the bill symbolically challenges have not been deemed worth defending by the French legislators.

The debate about the face veil, and more generally the acceptability of other forms of female Muslim attire in the West, is not a novel one. Muslim notions of modesty, have often been subverted and colonized by patriarchal practices seeking to restrict women's autonomy. As such, the veil issue has mobilized social forces inspired by liberalism and feminism and generated valuable criticisms of patriarchy in Muslim communities. On the other hand, the 'out of place' look of veiled women in European public spaces has provided fertile ground for the transformation of the veil issue into a potent mobilizing symbol for xenophobic, right wing forces only too happy to jump into the bandwagon of the secular, liberal and feminist opposition to the veil and, often, to incorporate these discourses into their own arguments. In this way, for example, spokespersons of the conservative Spanish Partido Popular such as Alberto Fernandez, a Barcelona city councillor, shed crocodile tears about...

The French Conseil d'Etat considered back in May that a total ban of the face veil in France would present serious constitutional risks and could not rest on any sound juridical foundation.           Burqa : le Conseil d'Etat écarte l'interdiction - kewego Une interdiction totale du port du voile intégral en France présenterait de sérieux risques constitutionnels et ne pourrait trouver aucun fondement juridique incontestable, estime le Conseil d'Etat.     Keywords: voile intégral nijab burqa musulman conseil etat loi interdiction                 Video from bfmtv    

Earlier yesterday members of the French parliament approved with 336 votes for and 1 against a controversial law banning the voile intégral (the burqa). The vote has not come as a surpise as it has been discussed and anticipated for several months. Although the reasons put forward in support of the ban consider the burqa a “prison for women” and a “sign of their submission to their husbands, brothers or fathers” and therefore identify Muslim women as the target of this law, the legislators crafted the law in such a way as to ban any face-covering material, to “forbid concealing one’s face in public.” On the surface, a gender blind piece of legislation whose authors claim no intention to discriminate against Islam, the law curiously contains elements that clearly negate the declarations of its sponsors. In a display of determined arrogance that totalitarian regimes would envy, the law stipulates that, alongside a fine of  €150, women who will be caught covering their faces will b...

In my post of 26 June, I expressed my doubts as to the stated rationale behind Barcelona’s ban of the face veil from civic buildings. Despite the feeble attempts of Barcelona’s mayor, Jordi Hereu, to decouple the burqa ban from popular and official unease and prejudice towards Islam, the statements of Spanish Justice Minister Francisco Caamano reveal the complexity of the issue: the Spanish Government is prepared to repeat the onslaught against Muslim women at national level on the grounds of safety and security and of its concern about the dignity of Muslim women. Poster from the Swiss minaret referendum where the face veil is recruited to add to the moral panic about the Islamization of the country "We have to defend women's dignity and the burqa and similar garments - regardless of the religion they are from - that do not permit identification of the wearer, affect the dignity of that person, and in this case women," Caamano told reporters. Spokespersons of the cons...