French Airports Forcing Muslim Women to Remove Veil

The growing injustices of French Government against its Muslim citizens are on high. The airports in France are forcing Muslim women to take off their hijab.

The incidents have triggered outrage in France's Muslim community for ignoring the religious minority’s personal freedoms as reported in Today’s Zaman.


In the report Narin Yuksel told Zaman that “I am 65. What could there be under the headscarf of a 65-year-old woman?” Narin is one of the women who were asked to remove their headscarves at Nantes Atlantique Airport.

She further said “they told me that I would not be able to board my plane if I don't take off my headscarf.”

The report further says that Muslim women problem started two weeks ago when the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) announced that Nantes Atlantique Airport has made it obligatory for veiled women to take off their hijab and place it in the X-ray machine along with their other belongings.

The practice was applied by the SGA, the company responsible for Nantes Atlantique Airport's security.

Airport officers asked women to remove their hijab at the conveyor with other belongings.

When women asked to be allowed to take hijab off in a special room for women only, their request was rejected.

The women were told that they must place their headscarves on the conveyor going through the X-ray machine if they wanted to avoid missing their plane.

“When we asked them to do the security check in a special room, they threatened to call the police if my mom didn't take off her headscarf,” Yüksel's daughter Hatice said.

The SGA defended their actions, claiming that dangerous materials could be hidden under the headscarves, which has triggered outrage in France's Muslim community.

According to EU airport security regulations, security staff do not have the authority to ask women to take their headscarves off.

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Iranian parliament summons Ahmadinejad

The Iranian parliament has summoned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to answer questions about his alleged mismanagement of the country's economy, Iranian media reported.

The summons -- the first of its kind for an Iranian leader -- come ahead of next month's parliamentary elections.

Mohammad Reza Bahnoar, the deputy speaker of the Majlis, said the president must appear before lawmakers within one month.

Ahmadinejad will be queried on his economic record, including an improper implementation of an aid package, and his administration's domestic and foreign policy, the Fars news agency reported.

Lawmakers will also question Ahmadinejad over his attempts to curb the powers of the Majlis.

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New York Muslims to rally against NYPD

New York, February 02: The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in the US city of New York has planned a rally to protest the recent actions of the New York Police Department (NYPD) against the Muslim community.

CAIR-New York has posted an announcement for the “Rally for Justice” on Friday Feb. 3 from 3-5pm in Foley Square on its website cair-ny.org urging the Muslim community of New York City to participate and call their family and friends to do so as well.

“The NYPD has transgressed all boundaries of respect for our community namely in their instillation of spying and surveillance program of masjids (mosques) … and more recently in the use of the anti-Muslim film “The Third Jihad” in NYPD trainings,” CAIR wrote on its website.

The “The Third Jihad” is a 72-minute documentary-style film Many Muslim produced by the American-Israeli institution Clarion Fund makes controversial movies to promote Islamophobia in America. Many Muslim organizations have branded the movie as inflammatory.

CAIR-New York's announcement said the movie “depicts the majority of American Muslims as supportive of violent extremism” adding that, “most disappointingly is the participation of current police commissioner Ray Kelly in the video.”

Kelly had denied the use of the film before it was revealed that the movie had been used in police training for over 1500 NYPD anti-terrorism police cadets.

According to CAIR, since Kelly and Mayor Bloomberg both refuse to accept the severity of the case, or meet with local Islamic leaders in an attempt to mend the situation “we as a community with full force must stand up to the mistreatment and dismissal of our community at large. Silence and lack of reaction to this pressing issue will only allow this type systematic persecution of a minority community to continue and escalate without any reprimand.”

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UK's first course in women, Islam and the media launched

London, January 19: Challenging stereotypes connected to women in Islam, a British university has developed a new course to cover topics related to Muslim women to change wrong perceptions of Islam in the world media, the Guardian reported on Thursday, January 19.

"Lots of people have written about women and Islam, lots of people have written about Islam and media or women and media, but they haven't been brought together before," Dr Eylem Atakav, a graduate of Ankara University and lecturer at University of East Anglia (UEA), said.

Developing the course, Atakav focused on topics about women and Islam which usually get the focus of media coverage.

The 12-week module, the first of its kind in UK, will cover issues about the topics of hijab, arranged marriage and "honor" crimes and the way they are portrayed in contemporary film, TV and other media.

Study materials include films and TV programs from around the world, including Iran, the US, Turkey and China.

Launching this week, 18 third-year students have enrolled with roughly equal numbers of men and women signing up for the module.

Atakav said the course had added relevance in the light of the Arab spring and new forms of political activism by women.

Britain is home to a sizable Muslim minority of nearly 2 million who have taken full brunt of anti-terror laws since the 7/7 attacks.

Islam sees hijab as an obligatory code of dress, not a religious symbol displaying one’s affiliations.

Misconceptions

Atakav said she hopes the course would be an important way of changing perceptions of Islam.

"We will look at how the media talk about 'honor'-based violence, for example. If it's a Middle Eastern woman who happens also to be a Muslim woman it's called an 'honor crime',” she said.

“But if it's a British woman who was killed because her husband was jealous because she was having an affair with another man, it's called murder.

"These crimes happen everywhere in the world, it's not just a Muslim, or just a Middle Eastern thing."

In Islam, there is no place for unjustifiable killing as the case in honor killing.

Even in case of capital punishment, only the government can apply the law through the judicial procedures.

Though portrayed in the Western media as exhorted by Islam, honor killing is a cultural act and has nothing to do with the faith.

Journalist and broadcaster Nabila Ramdani agrees there is a need to challenge stereotypes.

"The media caricatures [Muslim women]," Ramdani said.

“It is the same kind of media treatment which sees Muslim men portrayed as swarthy types with beards or – at worst – potential terrorists.”

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Social evils not the issue of Muslim society alone

Hyderabad, December 21: The issue of social evils spreading in the society is not of Muslim society alone but it is the issue of humanity at large. No society considers the degeneration among youth as good; as this degeneration is against nature. This was said by Maulana Obaidur Rahman Nadvi Ather, khateeb and imam Jamia Masjid Teenposh Red Hills.

He told that the basic cause of degeneration in the society is the role of TV serials and films but internet and mobile have removed the stumbling blocks in the path of shameless activities and have opened several doors for sins.

He said the evils begin when we drift away from natural requirement and that in turn lead to major sins.

Maulana Obaidur Rahman Nadvi Ather told that elders of Muslim community had 

prophesized regarding television long back that TV is identical to the dog’s poison, when its indications appear then its treatment becomes impossible.

He said more than paying attention towards society reformation we should focus our attention towards protecting the next generations from degeneration.

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30 of world’s 50 wealthiest Arabs are Saudis

Jeddah, December 20: Saudi Arabia has once again topped the Middle East for its super-rich residents, cornering 60 percent on the Arabian Business Rich List 2011 published Sunday. Thirty of the world’s 50 wealthiest Arabs are Saudis.

Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Al Saud for the eighth consecutive year topped the List with a fortune of $21.3 billion, as overall wealth of the world’s 50 wealthiest Arabs rose nearly 5 percent to $257 billion, despite global economic gloom and a year of unprecedented popular unrest in parts of the Middle East.

At No.2 is the founder of MBI Group, Mohammed Al Jaber, with $12.6 billion in the bank.
The UAE got only four on the list and Qatar just three.

Kuwait managed to get three on the list while Egypt just one.

Saudi Arabia’s Olayan family, who deals mainly in banking and finance, retained third position with an estimated net worth of $12.4 billion, up from $11.9 billion a year ago.

Issam Alzahid, also from Saudi Arabia, jumped to fourth position this year, ranking 22nd in 2010, after he saw his wealth more than double to $10.7 billion from $4.3 billion. Alzahid is the chairman of Alzahid Group of Companies, which deals in construction and industries.

Saudi energy tycoon Mohammad Al Amoudi fell one place to fifth position but still added 4 percent to his net worth, which now stands at $10.4 billion.

Kuwait’s Al Kharafi family, which trades mainly in real estate and retail, maintained sixth spot at $8.7 billion, up from $8.2 billion a year ago.

The Bukhamseen family, also from Kuwait, shot up to seventh place from rank 25, adding $3.25 billion to its net worth to a total $7.25 billion.

Saudi’s Binladin family, active mainly in construction and industries, fell to eighth position after its wealth dropped about 26 percent to $7.25 in 2011, the biggest decline of any list entry.

Ranked ninth, Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah-based Bugshan family, who deals in businesses including automobiles, real estate and electronics, saw its wealth unchanged at about $7 billion.

At tenth place is Said Khoury from Palistine at $6.52 billion, who is in the construction and industry business.

Just one Bahraini family, the Kanoo family, made it the Arabian Business Rich List 2011 at the 14th place with $6 billion in wealth.

Across the region, which sits on some of the world’s largest oil reserves, there are 4,490 so-called ultra-high-net-worth individuals, compared with 62,960 in North America and 54,325 in Europe, Wealth-X said last November.

Private banks and wealth management firms have been quick to tap into the market, with a number of finance houses shifting their focus to wealth management following the credit crisis.

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Ishrat case: FIR registered against 20 policemen

Ahmedabad,December :The CBI on Saturday registered a case against 20 policemen in the 2004 Ishrat Jahan encounter case in Gujarat.

The fresh FIR was registered by the probe agency after the Special Investigation Team, probing the case, gave its complaint to the CBI on December 15.

All the 20 policemen have been charged with murder and destruction of evidence, a senior CBI officer said.

The Gujarat High Court had, on December 1, directed the CBI to take over further probe in the case in which 19-year-old Ishrat, Javed Sheikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were killed in an encounter in Ahmedabad.

The directives came as the Special Investigative Team constituted by the High Court had concluded last month that the encounter was staged by police.

A judicial inquiry report by metropolitan magistrate S.P. Tamang report had alleged that 21 police officers, including then crime branch chief JCP P.P. Pande, suspended DIG D.G. Vanzara, the then ACP G.L. Singhal and ACP N.K. Amin were involved in the conspiracy regarding the encounter.

Mr. Vanzara and Mr. Amin are also accused in the fake encounter killing of alleged gangster Sohrabuddin Sheikh and in the murder of his wife Kausar Bi and are at present in jail.

The High Court had ordered CBI to also probe the claims made by the state police after the encounter that Ishrat and the other three persons were LeT terrorists on a mission to kill Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

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The Shadows of Modernity

New Delhi, December : WHAT IS the big deal about modernity in India? In everyday conceptions, modernity is considered as the condition of being modern that originated in the West and then transferred to the ‘ rest’. We become modern in simple terms as the West remains a nagging, essential presence in our post- colonial predicaments.

The question of being modern can be answered as simply and seductively we can imagine.

But living as we do in such different ways, is it that simple? There are innumerable conditions, insurmountable limitations and unforeseen possibilities of modernity.

The idea of modern remains at once simple, yet elusive.

Saurabh Dube’s Modern Makeovers meanders into the abyss of modernity in South Asia. Not a conventional book that seeks to question modernity, this work recognises modernity as a concept and entity, and maps the divergent spaces where modernity enacts its uncanny dark script and powers.

The volume’s main intent is to establish that there’s no monolithic condition of being modern, and that the contradictory histories of modernity lie at the cusp of the universal claims of discourses of modernity.

The grand saga of its progress is frequently interrupted by its social subjects through textures of beliefs, structures of sentiments and the multilayered experience.

In an intriguing introduction, Dube goes down many rabbit holes to arrive at various articulations of modernity. With a diverse range of interesting, exciting essays, Modern Makeovers unfolds the multiple ways modernity follows a contested and contradictory trajectory in modern times.

The contributors cover a galaxy of themes, probing an interplay of the individual and collective, the popular and political, the global and particular, the public and private, the impersonal and personal.

Mrinalini Sinha works around the non- linear histories of anti- colonial nationalism and imperial subjecthood.

Bodhisattva Kar evocatively unravels the complex interface of empire and nation through a focus on the province of Assam and its claims to a national identity. Rohan Deb Roy probes the crooked paths by which the imperial order, medicine and malaria intertwined to shape colonial modernity. Atig Ghosh’s essay goes beyond the idea of ‘ colonial modern’ in his sensitive unfolding of ‘ Kangal’ Hatinath Majumdar’s life.

A set of interesting articles focus on political modernity. Anupama Rao engages with the figure of the Dalit and the political predicament Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar in liberal politics. Ajay Skaria explores M. K. Gandhi’s religion. For Gandhi, says Skaria imaginatively, faith not opposed to reason.

F aisal Devji reads the Satanic Verses ( 1989) and the Jyllands- Posten ( 2005) affairs to underscore the limits of liberal democracy in the context of globalisation of Islam.

Ian Bedford discusses how a rigid, conservative Pakistani state identity was put in place under General Zia.

In the section on ‘ Critical Cultures’, Anand Pandian draws on historical and ethnographic materials from the Cumbum Val- ley and examines the issue of ‘ maturation’ in relation to Tamil pakkuvam or ‘ ripening’ in the agrarian and environmental contexts of his fieldwork. Veronique Benei enters the worlds of citizens and subjects, education and nation, and the school and state in western India. 

   

Kalpana Ram’s lively engagement with ‘ activist modernity’, via the woman’s body, explores the coercion of the state through oppressive policies of family planning. Townsend Middleton delves behind the rhetoric of affirmative action to reveal the complicated status of a ‘ Scheduled Tribe’ and the centrality of ethnological knowledge in the modern world.

Lastly, Dube takes us to the farrago of art and culture. Arvind Rajagopal looks at the development of advertising in the 20th century. The last two pieces are bold and irreverent. Jaideep Chatterjee moves from the scientifically rational world of design to jugaad and its expressions. Sanjukta Sunderason recreates an imaginative narrative of the modern and modernism in Indian art, especially in the works of Somnath Hore and Tyeb Mehta.

In the afterword, Prathama Banerjee raises provocative questions, and considers the volume as post- national in its intent. In her flights of creative imagination, Banerjee implicitly asks: What’s the big deal about modernity? This is a volume that excites you but leaves you asking for more. A surfeit of Foucault. Time to look inwards? Acritical collection.

To wrest different histories away from their encasement within national narratives. 

A chapter on sexuality would have been welcome. The last word to Ian Bedford: “ Modernity is easier to pursue than define.” Is that the big deal? — The writer teaches History at Miranda House, University of Delhi.

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'Makkah becoming one of world’s most modern cities'

Makkah, December 18: Makkah is being transformed into one of the world’s most modern cities as a result of the many multi-billion riyal projects underway, said Dr. Osama Al-Bar, Mayor of Makkah.

Al-Bar said that a number of projects are close to completion, including the additions to the Grand Mosque and two tunnels for pedestrians from Al-Hujun to the Grand Mosque.

The Jabal Omar Project is expected to be completed in the near future and would provide accommodation for pilgrims close to the Grand Mosque.

Many pilgrims have to rent accommodation far away from the Grand Mosque at present, making it difficult for them to attend the five daily prayers, said Al-Bar. Other mega projects underway are the SR23 billion Makkah metro that will provide public train transport for the entire city.

There are also extensions being made to Ring Roads two, three and four, costing SR200 million. A total of SR800 million is being spent on building 4,000 houses for citizens in the Umm Al-Jood area.

In addition, SR100 billion will be spent on upgrading various residential neighborhoods. A total of SR12 billion of this amount will come from the private sector.

The Bawwaba mega project, west of Makkah, will see 34 districts set up over an area of 80 million square meters. Tenders will be issued for this project.

Projects already completed include the two new floors of the Masa’a – where pilgrims perform the ritual of moving between the mounts of Al-Safa and Al-Marwa. In addition, the train service for pilgrims at the Holy Sites has been operational for the past two years, said Al-Bar.

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UK Experts Eye Islamic Finance Solution

Cairo, December 17: A decision by the UK government to put on hold earlier plans for the first Islamic sovereign bond from a western country was criticized as a setback for the initiative that could have provided more security to a shaking economy.

“It would certainly help the UK market if the government decided to go ahead with a benchmark sukuk,” Farmida Bi, partner at Norton Rose, the law firm, told the Financial Times.

“It could galvanize the market and would lead to more interest in Islamic finance in London and [continental] Europe.”

Affected by a financial crisis, the UK put the plans to issue the Islamic instrument on hold which would have been the first Islamic bond to be issued by a western government.

The government cited fears that a new instrument might struggle to attract demand in difficult market conditions that have been made worse by the troubles in the eurozone.

Yet, London still remains the main arena outside the Muslim world for Islamic finance.

In 2006, Britain's fifth-biggest bank, Lloyds TSB, began to roll-out its Islamic financial services across the country.

The UK is the only country in the European Union to have Islamic banks. It is also developing its takaful market for Islamic insurance.

The UK also has a strong foothold in developing products such as commodity murabaha – Islam’s version of interbank short-term lending and syndicated loans.

Moreover, London has established the first secondary market in sukuk outside the Islamic world to help Islamic investors who seek to buy property and assets in the UK in a way that fits in with their religion, which bans earning interest, speculating or risk-taking.

London is also advanced in Islamic retail services, with institutions offering a range of Islamic banking products, such as mortgages and car loans.

The Islamic Bank of Britain, granted a license in August 2004, became the first Islamic bank in the UK and has continued to attract customers for mortgages.

Enhance Market

Admitting that the government made huge efforts to facilitate Islamic finance in the UK, there is a feeling among many bankers that the government must launch a sovereign sukuk to help the market move to the next stage.

“I think it has been a mistake by this government not to revive the idea of an Islamic government bond,” a banker at a big City institution told Financial Times.

“They worry about price and demand, but the UK gilts market is a haven.

“We are confident there would be strong demand for this product, as it is Islamic and would be denominated in sterling, which is what investors want, as there are so many problems in the eurozone.”

Despite the recent decision to hold the new instrument, the Islamic finance was gaining popularity in UK better than other European countries.

For example, though France has around 7 million Muslims, compared with UK 2 million Muslims, progress in Islamic finance in France was stalled due to problems over banning the face veil and burka in public places which put off investors.

Starting almost three decades ago, the Islamic banking industry has made substantial growth and attracted the attention of investors and bankers across the world.

A long list of international institutions, including Citigroup, HSBC and Deutsche Bank, are going into the Islamic banking business.

Currently, there are nearly 300 Islamic banks and financial institutions worldwide whose assets are predicted to grow to $1 trillion by 2013.

Islam forbids Muslims from usury, receiving or paying interest on loans.

Islamic banks and finance institutions cannot receive or provide funds for anything involving alcohol, gambling, pornography, tobacco, weapons or pork.

Shari`ah-compliant financing deals resemble lease-to-own arrangements, layaway plans, joint purchase and sale agreements, or partnerships.

Investors have a right to know how their funds are being used, and the sector is overseen by dedicated supervisory boards as well as the usual national regulatory authorities.

The Shari`ah-compliant system is now being practiced in 50 countries worldwide, making it one of the fastest growing sectors in the global financial industry.

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