Tag Archive for "veil"

Posts Tagged veil

European Court upholds France’s veil ban because covered faces make people uncomfortable

In a surprisingly honest but disturbing decision, the European Court of Human Rights upheld France’s ban on the full-faced veil because veiling makes people uncomfortable.

S.A.S. is a 24-year-old French Muslim woman who wears a full-faced veil or niqab. She challenged the 2010 French law–which we’ve covered before–that bans wearing clothing that covers the face in public and imposes a fine of 150-euro ($205) and/or citizenship instruction. The ban, S.A.S. argued before the European Court of Human Rights, violates the European Convention on Human Rights, specifically the freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, and the prohibition of discrimination. The Court, however, disagreed and upheld the ban in a decision that cannot be appealed.

In a surprisingly honest but disturbing decision, the European Court of Human Rights upheld France’s ban on the full-faced veil because veiling makes people uncomfortable.

S.A.S. is a 24-year-old French Muslim woman who wears a full-faced veil ...

By Samhita • 12 years ago

Does Lena Dunham’s “casual racism” matter?

Twitter was abuzz over the weekend because of some rather unfortunate tweets sent out by–lady of the moment–Lena Dunham. Dunham instagram’ed a picture of herself with a shawl over her head, writing, “I had a real goth/fundamentalist attitude when I woke up from my nap.”

Arturo Garcia posted the offending tweet and image.

The goth community is outraged.

(Just kidding).

The tweet and pic are not obviously racist to most people, but should be annoying. It’s more like casual racism–or when someone reinforces something that’s inherently racist and rather than question it, they just goes with the flow. The most concrete offense is that she is conflating fundamentalism with veiling. Many women don headscarves who aren’t fundamentalist. And there are people that ...

By Jos Truitt • 12 years ago

Feministing Year In Review: Jos spreads the love

Do you have any idea how lucky I feel to blog with such a brilliant, badass crew? I was supposed to pick two posts to highlight, but I totally cheated. As you’ll see this afternoon, cheating is the theme of the day. Anywho, here’s a few examples of times my fellow bloggers made my brain explode this year:

The limits of a WOC feminist stance within the context of global racism by Samhita

Samhita came back from writing a book and dropped this. I’m still in awe. Rather than continuing the back and forth conversation about the veil, Samhita uncovers why the dialogue’s playing out the way it does, and how racism, colonialism, nationalism and global capital, and choice feminism constrict ...

Do you have any idea how lucky I feel to blog with such a brilliant, badass crew? I was supposed to pick two posts to highlight, but I totally cheated. As you’ll see this afternoon, cheating is ...

By Samhita • 13 years ago

Italy moves closer to banning face-coverings

Following in suit with Belgium and France, Italy passed a draft law yesterday that entertains the expansion of public safety laws that would ban women from wearing face coverings. It appears that using government to fight religious expression is a continuing trend in the European Union.

via Guardian UK.

The draft, which was passed by the constitutional affairs commission on Tuesday, would prohibit women from wearing a burqa, naqib or any other garment that covers the face in such circumstances. It would expand a decades-old law that for security reasons prohibits people from wearing face-covering items such as masks in public places.

Women who violate the ban would face fines, while third parties who force women to cover their faces ...

By Samhita • 13 years ago

The limits of a WOC feminist stance within the context of global racism.

A few days ago I was stuck in the airport and luckily caught Mona Eltahawy debating blogger Hebah Ahmed on Elliot Spitzer’s show on CNN “In the Arena” about the ban on face veils in France, piety, feminism and xenophobia. It is worth a watch because they both make really good points and also because it is rare that you see two actual real life Muslim women debating about the lives of, well, Muslim women, on television.

Eltahawy makes the point that the law in France is obviously part of the conservative xenophobia of the Sarkozy administration, however feels adamantly that a face covering is oppressive to women. It assumes piety means that women shouldn’t exist and is predicated on ...

A few days ago I was stuck in the airport and luckily caught Mona Eltahawy debating blogger Hebah Ahmed on Elliot Spitzer’s show on CNN “In the Arena” about the ban on face veils in France, ...

By Maya Dusenbery • 13 years ago

Agency is easily overlooked if you actively erase it

Via Muslimah Media Watch comes a lesson in how not to advocate for women’s rights. This ad is from Germany’s International Human Rights campaign.

The text translates to: “Oppressed women are easily overlooked. Please support us in the fight for their rights.”

As Jos wrote the other day about France’s ban on the full face veil, which went into effect this week, “It seems to me we have a lot easier time seeing -isms in a cultural context different from our own, and a lot harder time seeing agency.”

It seems the folks who created this ad not only have a hard time seeing agency but actually went out of their way to erase it as ...