The sometimes prudish, sometimes lascivious folk over at the Daily Mail routinely react in horror to some people getting naked, getting all huffy and conservative, then react rather more excitedly, getting all celebratory and dribbling, often in the space of a few pages pages, or sentences. There’s no apparent mechanism for choosing between the two responses other than the toss of a coin, but they always manage to feature the pictures, either way.

Anyway, they were remarkably quick to spot actress Sila Sahin posing nude in the latest German issue of Playboy magazine, and essentially recycle the interview as a news story. The big media spin on the story is that she is a well-known German-Turkish soap actress, hence she becomes apparently “the first Turkish woman” to appear nude in Playboy. And therefore presumed a Muslim. A naked, Muslim woman.

Dum dum dummmm.

Posing provocatively on the cover of German Playboy magazine with one breast exposed, Sila Sahin seems to be sending a clear and deliberate message to her conservative Turkish family.

‘I did it because I wanted to be free at last,’ she said. ‘These photographs are a liberation from the restrictions of my childhood.’

Her family have, unsurprisingly, reacted with horror, and her mother has cut off all contact with the actress.

‘My mother is still angry. It will be even more difficult with my grandparents, my aunts and my uncles,’ she said on the website devoted to her television soap.

She has, however, managed to talk to her actor father, who expressed concern over the pressure she will inevitably face from those not only within the Turkish community in Germany, but from the wider Muslim community as a whole.

… ‘My upbringing was conservative,’ she told Playboy. ‘I was always told, you must not go out, you must not make yourself look so attractive, you mustn’t have male friends.

‘I have always abided by what men say. As a result I developed an extreme desire for freedom. I feel like Che Guevara. I have to do everything I want, otherwise I feel like I may as well be dead.’

Link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1378455/Sila-Sahin-poses-Playboy-Muslim-model-upsets-family-nude-cover.html

The lengthy photo feature (shown here) did the media rounds in Germany. Obviously there’s a “boo” from some of her family and various Muslim sources,(Sahin says she’s “not sure” about her own religious beliefs). There’s another “boo” from those worried that if avoiding doing “what men say” is your main aim, then stripping off for the male gaze may not be the best way to go about it. But there’s also a “boo” from commentators worried that the shoot is such a “cheap cliché” based on exoticism, all too conveniently playing on Europe’s current angst about race, immigration and integration.

“When you look at the pictures you can see how cheap these people at the magazine think about Turkish, Muslim, Islamic, Oriental people,” said Hatic Akyün, who writes a column for the Berlin daily newspaper Der Tagesspiegel and was born in Turkey but grew up in Germany. “It’s such a cheap cliché they’re using.”

Akyün said she and her Turkish friends were all exasperated to see that a Playboy cover was putting the issue of integration back into the headlines. She accused Playboy, Sahin and her handlers of stirring up controversy for publicity’s sake.

“That’s how it works in Germany. The integration debate works just like that,” she said. “They know exactly which buttons they need to push to get the media to jump all over it.”

Gökce Yurdakul, an expert on race, gender and Islam and a professor at Berlin’s Humboldt University, was equally disappointed with the way the German media have approached the topic. For too long women have been seen as representations of their nations, she said.

“She’s not a daughter of Turkish immigrants; she shouldn’t be represented this way in the newspapers,” she said. “This is an individual woman who is acting on her own behalf, not as a daughter, not as a part of a community.”

Yurdakul said Sahin is just tapping into what Germans expect to read about Turkish and Muslim women, that German society can liberate them.

Link: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15021188,00.html

The Gather : Celebs channel is a bit more forgiving.

Good for her. This message is one that most people can certainly embrace, and hopefully, her family will get over their dismay at her decision to pose nude. Who would have thought that Sila Sahin’s nude pictures could end up helping advance the cause of world peace?

Who indeed.

Link: http://celebs.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474979263193

Serrano's "Piss Christ"

There have been weeks of protest at a gallery in France showing Andres Serrano’s famous – and infamous – work, Piss Christ. The artwork has now been “attacked” (say AFP) or “destroyed” (Guardian, below).

The controversial work Piss Christ by the New York photographer Andres Serrano has been destroyed at a gallery in France after weeks of protests.

The photograph, which shows a small crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist’s urine, outraged the US religious right in 1987, when it was first shown, with Serrano denounced in the Senate by the Republican Jesse Helms. It was later vandalised in Australia, and neo-Nazis ransacked a show by the artist in Sweden in 2007.

The work has previously been shown without incident in France, but for the past two weeks Catholic groups have campaigned against it, culminating in hundreds of people marching through Avignon on Saturday in protest.

Just after 11am on Sunday, four people in sunglasses entered the gallery where the exhibition was being held. One took a hammer from his sock and threatened security staff. A guard restrained one man but the remaining members of the group managed to smash an acrylic screen and slash the photograph with what police believe was a screwdriver or ice pick. They then destroyed another photograph, of nuns’ hands in prayer.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/18/andres-serrano-piss-christ-destroyed-christian-protesters

The gallery and the artist had been reporting escalating levels of harassment and abuse prior to the attack, which a French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand has condemned. The gallery says it will continue to show both works in their damaged state for all the world to see!

Far from being offensive, open criticism of deeply held beliefs is part and parcel of respect. Eve Hendrick writes – and you have the right to read.

The right to freedom of speech is one of the fundamental principles of democracy, and it is one which democratic societies are rightly very proud of. The right to freedom of speech includes the right, within limits, to say and write whatever we like about any subject. Putting aside the chances of being accused of slander, libel, or incitement to racial or religious hatred, the right to freedom of speech ensures that we are free to express ourselves and our opinions.

Treating all beliefs equally - Christina Martin's God Trump cards from New Humanist magazine

The right to free speech found its original justification in protecting people from authoritarian oppression because the concept enabled people to speak out against governments without fear of punishment. In addition to this and as a fundamental principle of liberalism, freedom of speech falls in line with other liberal rights as enabling the individual to do and say whatever they like as long as they don’t harm others. In other words, individual freedom is paramount. Furthermore, J. S. Mill thought that freedom of expression did not just ensure an individual’s freedom and happiness but that it might actually contribute to society by revealing better ways of living.

What is interesting about freedom of speech is that it is defended as being an important right of the person doing the speaking, writing or drawing (although Mill thought that free expression would eventually benefit society, this was arguably an added bonus and definitely came second to the idea of the right of the individual to be free). Is there another side to free speech? Can it be defended not only as a right of the speaker, but perhaps as a right of the listener also? If I have a right to say and write what I like, does it make sense to say I also have a right to hear and read what others say?

This sounds like a strange suggestion, but it may well turn out that free speech is important not only because of what it allows me to say and write, but because of what it forces me to hear and read as well. Consider the idea of religious offence.

Some religious believers find it incredibly offensive to hear criticisms of their beliefs, especially if these critiques take satirical or mocking forms. Perhaps the biggest example in recent history would be the Danish cartoon saga of 2005. Many Muslims, Christians and atheists found the Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad deeply offensive, insulting and even racist. There was outcry; one side championed free speech and the other championed religious respect.

What was largely ignored in the debate however, was the possibility that satirical cartoons (and other forms of expression) of a religious figure or belief could be defended, not only on the principle of the individual’s right to express themselves, but because such ‘expressions’ demonstrate respect for the religious believer. This is not as bizarre as it sounds, although it does require a little more work than the simple free speech defence.

The case for this position can be made by understanding what “respect” means. There are many subtleties in the concept of respect but it can be stripped down to the fairly simple (and not so simple) idea that respecting something or someone means recognising what that object is, and recognising what characteristics make that object worthy of whatever we discern respectful treatment to be. So to respect a human being, I must recognise a ‘thing’ as belonging to the group ‘human being’, then I must acknowledge what aspect of being a ‘human being’ make such things worthy of being treated with respect. Then I must decide what respectful treatment actually entails. Crucially, the treatment we decide upon must make reference to the feature we found so respect-worthy. Phew.

So, what does that mean? Why do we think humans deserve this ‘respect’? Arguably, what marks humans out as beings worthy of the kind of respectful treatment we don’t think we owe to animals (few would claim it is equally disrespectful to mock a dog for example), is our rationality and our autonomy. This is the Kantian idea that what makes us worthy of certain treatment is our powers of reasoning and the ability to adopt and follow our own rules. It is true that many of our other features demand specific treatments or attitudes from others, for example our ability to feel pain means others are morally required to avoid (and protect us from) injury, but it is our features of rationality and autonomy that require others to treat us with what we call ‘respect’.

Deciding what respectful treatment of human beings actually entails must therefore recognise and refer to them as reasoning and autonomous beings. ‘Respectful treatment’ must therefore endorse and encourage the manifestation of reason and autonomy. Respectful treatment does therefore not entail backing quietly away from views which others might find offensive. In fact, exposing the potentially offended to these ‘offensive’ views is arguably the epitome of ‘respect’. A mocking, critical, offensive or challenging statement about religion requires the religious believer to use those powers of rationality and autonomy to either challenge in return, or assess and alter their own views. When we criticise anyone’s deeply held views in this way we are recognising that the believer has those rational powers and we are asking them to fulfil them. That is real respect.

Satirising religious views can therefore be defended not only because writers, artists, commentators and everyone else has the right to express themselves, but because the potentially offended have a right to have their powers of rationality and autonomy respected by those who disagree with them. The potentially offended have a right to see and hear material which simply by existing, recognises and respects the very features that qualify them as human beings.

Eve Hendrick is a Campaigns Volunteer at the British Humanist Association.

There are lots of responses today to the French ban on – no not burkas – but the covering of faces. The ban comes into force today and has already led to women being arrested in Europe at a public protest because of what they are wearing. With little  political or social pressure to repeat any such policy in the UK, the government here has stated that there is no prospect of replicating the ban on this side of la Manche. The French ban is estimated to effect only a few thousand Muslim women throughout the republic… and also skiers, people at Halloween costume parties, and possibly bearded men, says Viv Groskop, challenging what she sees as a threat to European freedoms.

For Sarkozy and his friends, the burqa is no joke. It’s dangerous and illegal. Women wearing the burqa and the niqab (the more common facial veil) will not exactly be arrested on sight. But if they wear a veil over their face in a public place, anyone can ask them to uncover their face – or leave. Not quite stop and search. Just stop and unmask. If a woman refuses to co-operate, citizens are advised to call the police. The fine is €150.

Does this sound a little unfriendly to you? If so, be very worried. Because this trend is spreading. A ban is already in operation in Belgium and under discussion in Canada, Denmark and Spain. It is likely to become law in the Netherlands this year or next. There have been calls in Sweden for the niqab to be prohibited in schools and universities.

A de facto ban already exists in Italy (where a 1975 antiterrorism law forbids the covering of the face) and Berlusconi’s party has drafted a new, more specific ruling. Last year, a Tunisian woman was fined €500 for wearing a burqa in Italy’s Piedmont region.

… [T]he women’s rights defence is a ridiculous excuse for something very close to racism. As Ed Balls, then schools secretary, put it last year: “I wouldn’t want to be part of a religion myself where we said to women and girls, ‘You have to wear a veil.’ But I also would not want to be in the kind of society where people were told how to dress when they walked down the streets.”

… If the French were not so cowardly – and were being transparent about what they are doing – they would actually outlaw the burqa and the niqab by name, instead of coyly banning “the covering of the face”. Presumably, it’s now against the law in France to attend a fancy dress party dressed as Zorro or Catwoman. Because if there’s one rule for one set of people who cover their face, that same rule should surely apply to anyone whose face is not immediately visible. Non?

Indeed, if the French are going to do this, let’s hope they do it properly.Le Figaro has already expressed distress that it is technically against the law to wear a ski mask in a public place. Bad news for the black run at Val d’Isère. Aren’t there some rampant beards that might sprout dangerously in the direction of facial dissimulation?

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/10/france-burqa-niqab-ban

John Lichfield in the Independent meets Parisian women protesting the ban.

Mariam says she wears the niqab, or full-length Islamic veil, by “personal choice” and for “religious conviction”. From today, if she leaves her home in the Paris suburbs she will have to expose her face in public for the first time in five years.

“I have decided to obey the law but to leave home as little as possible,” the 32-year-old said. “I accept that the law of France is the law, even though I think that it is foolish and wrong to force me to go against my beliefs.”

Most French Muslim women who wear the full-face veil are expected to bow, like Mariam, to the so-called “burka ban” which takes effect today.

But pockets of fierce opposition remain. On Saturday, police arrested 61 people who tried to hold an unauthorised demonstration against the ban in Paris. They included 20 women wearing the niqab – the Salafist or Saudi full-length veil with only a narrow eye opening.

Among those protesting or hoping to protest were a handful of Islamist extremists from Britain and Belgium, including Anjem Choudary, once a member of the banned group Islam4UK and a follower of the extremist preacher, Omar Bakri. Mr Choudary was arrested at the French border.

Their involvement was a political windfall for President Nicolas Sarkozy and a source of frustration for moderate Muslim leaders in France who have been trying to distance themselves both from the burka and the burka ban.

Link: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/france-wakes-up-to-a-burka-ban-as-sarkozy-unveils-a-new-era-2266054.html

Men and women have been banned from shaking hands in a district of Somalia controlled by the Islamist group al-Shabab.

Under the ban imposed in the southern town of Jowhar, men and women who are not related are also barred from walking together or chatting in public.

It is the first time such social restrictions have been introduced.

The al-Shabab administration said those who disobeyed the new rules would be punished according to Sharia law.

Continues: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12138627

REV JANINA AINSWORTH, Chief education officer, Church of England

The CoE strongly supports the requirement for collective worship. There is plenty of flexibility in the provision to enable all pupils to benefit without compromising their faith or lack of it.

Collective worship makes a major contribution to pupils’ personal development. Through their involvement in planning and delivering worship, engaging with external speakers and discussion as a whole-school community, understanding of spiritual and moral issues can be extended and enriched.

The unique contribution of worship is to involve pupils in a shared experience of reflection and silence, singing and story framed with reference to Christianity and a variety of other religious traditions.

It is part of the religious education of every child, whatever their family tradition, to think about God and other religious ideas. There is no expectation of commitment and the exposure to the range of religious traditions encourages community cohesion.

It is a parent’s right to withdraw their child from worship, and the very few who take up that right demonstrates that schools have found exciting and creative ways of using collective worship to further children’s spiritual and moral development.

Versus…

ANDREW COPSON, Chief executive, British Humanist Association

Good, inclusive school assemblies of a moral and reflective nature, which can bring the school community together to celebrate shared values, news and achievements are a proven success in maintaining a supportive and cohesive school community.

Many schools do this well and their pupils and staff benefit greatly from it. They are all breaking the law. The law requires daily acts of collective worship which should be wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character.

The continued existence of this prescriptive, coercive, educationally bankrupt and religiously chauvinist law is an affront not only to the rights of children to freedom of conscience but to the whole concept of a plural and democratic society.

It is the outdated product of a more homogenous society of six decades ago, less respectful of dissent and conscience that a liberal society of the 21st century, where all people – not just Christians – should be free to express and live by their beliefs.

All replies: http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6065655

Britain’s first female Muslim Cabinet minister pulled out of a high-profile debate where she was due to defend the burka because of “government pressure”, it has been claimed.

Baroness Warsi had been booked to appear in front of a global television audience of around 350 million people, as part of a two-person debating team opposing the motion that France is right to seek a ban on wearing the Islamic full-face veil in public.

But the Conservative Party chairman cancelled her appearance at the “eleventh hour”, in what has been viewed as an illustration of the Coalition Government’s determination to distance itself from any possible links or suspicions of sympathies with radical Islam. Her decision not to take part in the debate follows allegations that David Cameron banned Lady Warsi from attending a prominent Muslim conference in London last weekend.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/conservative/8091819/Baroness-Warsi-was-pressured-to-skip-France-veil-ban-debate.html

[Three] Islamic schools have introduced uniform policies which force girls to wear the burka or a full headscarf and veil known as the niqab.

Moderate followers of Islam said yesterday that enforcement of the veil was a “dangerous precedent” and that children attending such schools were being “brainwashed”.

The Sunday Telegraph has established that three UK institutions have introduced a compulsory veil policy when girls are walking to or from school. They are:

• Madani Girls’ School in east London;

• Jamea Al Kauthar in Lancaster;

• Jameah Girls’ Academy in Leicester.

All three are independent, fee-paying, single-sex schools for girls aged 11 to 18. Critics warned that the spectacle of burka-clad pupils entering and leaving the schools at the start and end of the day could damage relations between Muslim and non-Muslim communities.

Continues: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8038820/British-schools-where-girls-must-wear-the-Islamic-veil.html

Gay rights charity Stonewall is being urged to “end its silence” and support full marriage equality for gay and straight couples.

The organisation successfully fought for civil partnerships but has said in the past that while it is not opposed to marriage for gay couples, it does not see it as a priority and prefers to focus on issues such as homophobic bullying.

An open letter signed by a number of gay rights activists, gay religious groups and individuals will be sent to the charity on Friday to ask it to publicly support the issue.

The letter has been signed by Peter Tatchell, Liberal Democrat MP Steve Gilbert, trans campaigner Christine Burns, human rights lawyer Professor Robert Wintemute and a number of other academics, including Professors Celia Kitzinger and Sue Wilkinson, a British lesbian couple who married in Canada in 2003 but whose marriage is not recognised as such in the UK.

Other signatories include straight couple Tom Freeman and Katherine Doyle, who have been campaigning for the right to a civil partnership, and representatives from a wide number of LGBT faith and humanist groups. An associated Facebook group has over 300 members, many of whom have signed the open letter.

A recent PinkNews.co.uk survey found that 98 per cent of respondents were in favour of allowing gay couples to marry but Stonewall declined an invitation to discuss its stance.

Continues: http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2010/09/15/stonewall-urged-to-speak-out-for-marriage-equality/

The British Humanist Association campaigns for full equality in marriage law.

The French Senate voted almost unanimously to ban face-covering Islamic veils in public, clearing the final legislative hurdle for a bill whose supporters have been accused of stigmatising the country’s Muslim population.

With 246 votes for and just one against, the bill sailed through the upper house of parliament after having already been passed by the Assemblée nationale in July. Barring a last-minute challenge from critics who believe it is unconstitutional, the ban should come into effect in spring of next year.

“The full veil dissolves a person’s identity in that of a community. It calls into question the French model of integration, founded on the acceptance of our society’s values,” said justice minister Michèle Alliot-Marie, presenting the law to the Senate. Living with one’s face uncovered, she added, was “a question of dignity and equality”.

A blanket ban which goes far further than initial proposals to prevent women from wearing niqabs or burqas in public services such as hospitals and buses, the law passed will make it illegal for anyone to cover their face – with certain exceptions – anywhere in public in France.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/14/france-senate-muslim-veil-ban

I woke up as usual yesterday in the “geopolitical epicentre of the culture of death” – and very pleasant it was. I fed the cats, read the papers and carried an espresso into the back garden, congratulating myself on being a citizen of a country that doesn’t stone women to death, hang gay men from cranes or murder people who change their religion. I mean, how great is that? I love living in the “selfish, hedonistic wasteland” that is London – both quotes come from one Edmund Adamus, who is apparently a senior British Catholic and an adviser to the Archbishop of Westminster – and I just wish more nations would follow our example.

Frankly, I’m tired of hearing religious bigots running down this country. For all its faults – crap public transport, Nick Clegg popping up everywhere and a national obsession with Simon Cowell – Britain is still one of the most civilised places in the world to live. It’s not Iran, where prisoners are subjected to rape and mock executions; it isn’t Saudi Arabia either, despite Mr Adamus’s downright peculiar belief that we’re more anti-Catholic than the Chinese or the Saudis. (Might I suggest he tries walking along a street in Riyadh carrying a crucifix and a Bible?) The Catholic Church has picked up this habit of dissing secular culture from hardline Muslims, who dislike pretty much the same things: gay relationships, equal rights for women and the freedom to mock religion.

Those of us who aren’t religious conservatives have had to fight every step of the way to create this modern, tolerant, secular Britain, and it’s easy to forget that many of the improvements are very recent. I can just remember the last hangings in British prisons, as well as a time when having an “illegitimate” baby brought shame on a woman and homosexuality was still illegal; even as recently as 10 years ago, when the current Foreign Secretary William Hague was Conservative leader, the party opposed the repeal of an iconic piece of anti-gay legislation known as Section 28.

So it’s good to have this wake-up from Mr Adamus, director of pastoral affairs at the diocese of Westminster, about the need to defend secular values.

Continues: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/joan-smith/joan-smith-in-defence-of-modern-britain-2067886.html

David Mitchell on offence, free speech, and taking liberties…

Governments and legislatures shouldn’t tell people what they can and can’t wear. By doing so, they would, in every sense, be taking a massive liberty. As long as people aren’t wearing crotchless jeans outside primary schools or deely boppers with attached sparklers on petrol station forecourts, we’ve all got the right to wear exactly what the hell we like and I can barely believe that we’re having this debate.

But we are. Stupid people are thinking about an issue that doesn’t need to be thought about and a YouGov survey says 67% of us want full-face veils outlawed. Just when I thought my estimation of humanity couldn’t fall any further, I discover that two-thirds of my fellow countrymen are, or at least were for the duration of taking a survey, morons. I’m so glad the Conservatives are committed to local referenda.

These idiots may not be proportionally represented but they do have a voice in parliament: Philip Hollobone MP. He’s tabled a private member’s bill that would make it illegal for anyone to cover their face in public. “Covering your face in public is strange, and to many people both intimidating and offensive,” he says. Take that, Batman.

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/25/david-mitchell-burqa-ban-tattoos

After France votes decisively against the permissibility of face veils, Britain’s new immigration minister responds by ruling out a similar move here.

Damian Green said such a move would be “rather un-British” and run contrary to the conventions of a “tolerant and mutually respectful society”.

He said it would be “undesirable” for Parliament to vote on a burka ban in Britain and that there was no prospect of the Coalition proposing it.

…

His firm decision to rule out a burka ban will disappoint some Right-of-centre Tory MPs, including Philip Hollobone, who has tabled a private member’s bill that would make it illegal for anyone to cover their face in public.

Mr Hollobone, the MP for Kettering, said this weekend that he would refuse to hold any constituency meetings with women wearing burkas.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/7896751/Burka-ban-ruled-out-by-immigration-minister.html

Nesrine Malik, initially appalled at being forced to wear a full veil in Saudia Arabia, grew to find it comfortable and freeing. Women’s clothes, either way, should not be so symbolic of national feelings.

On landing in Saudi Arabia, women – all of whom were wearing the veil – were channelled into a separate line for processing. My eyes stung with tears of rage and shame. Most of all, I felt infantilised, stripped of the right to dress how I pleased due simply to the fact that I was a woman, and hence, purely a sexual object to be concealed lest it should inflame desire. For the first few days, it felt almost comical, like some absurd game of macabre fancy dress.

On a practical level, it was cumbersome, hot and uncomfortable. Eating or drinking in public became a chore, as food has to be manoeuvred gingerly under the veil or taken abruptly in small bites. In Saudi’s overwhelming heat, temperatures regularly reach 45C and any physical outdoor activity, even walking, is out of the question. I became anti-social, hardly able to wait until I got home before tearing off the ghastly garb.

The niqab and the burka are a particularly extreme interpretation of the Islamic requirement for modest dress, and were never part of my Muslim upbringing in London. Because of this, I did not feel particularly pious wearing them in Saudi. If anything, it seemed like a throwback to tribal, pre-Islamic times.

Over the next three years, however, my opposition gradually eroded. Initially an ugly burden, the abaya and niqab became a comfort and, eventually, a delight. It was a relief not to have to think about what to wear.

The burka can be the most versatile of capsule wardrobes. The uniform black costume has a charming egalitarianism about it, and is both a social and physical leveller. Once social status or physical beauty cannot be established, all sorts of hierarchies are flattened.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/7896536/Burka-ban-Why-must-I-cast-off-the-veil.html

The Guardian asks “Should Britain ban the burka?” Anastasia de Waal for Civitas says ‘Yes’  in the public sphere, “burqas impede the necessary interaction for learning and working”. However…

where public and private collide, say walking down the street, a ban would be wrong. France is indeed an open society but with that openness comes the thorn of unwanted “freedoms”.

Mary Warnock says she doesn’t love the burqa and that it reflects badly “on both men and women”, but…

I wouldn’t for that reason criminalise its use, any more than I would criminalise beachwear on the streets of London, much as I deplore it when I see it.

Donald Macleod of Free Church college, Edinburgh, is similarly reluctant to “ban”.

Let’s distinguish between what we deplore and what we criminalise. So that while we may deplore the refusal of some Muslims to integrate, the only alternative to multiculturalism is mono-culturalism, where only English may be spoken and only the state may be worshipped. As for banning the burqa from private space, let’s remember that every British family’s home is its castle, and it should say to the state what the African-American said to the Mississippi, “River, stay ‘way from my door!” We will best serve Muslim women by ensuring that their matrimonial rights as British citizens are never undermined by judicial recognition of sharia law.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/18/should-britain-ban-burqa-panel

Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan argues that banning the burqa because it is political or “undermines” Western values would be hypocritical unless we also want to ban Che Guevara t-shirts.

Doesn’t wearing the image of that squalid murderer glorify his violent and anti-democratic creed? Isn’t it an even more aggressive rejection of Western values?

Wearing a Che Guevara tee-shirt is in the same moral category as wearing an Adolf Hitler or Raoul Moat or Osama bin Laden tee-shirt. When we see someone see some oaf doing it, we should feel free to bollock him. But it is not a matter for the law.

Nor is wearing the burqa.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100047682/we-dont-ban-che-guevara-tee-shirts-so-why-should-be-ban-the-burqa/

Another Conservative, Philip Hollobone MP, takes a rather different approach.

A Conservative MP says he will refuse to hold meetings with Muslim women wearing full Islamic dress at his constituency surgery unless they lift their face veil.

Last night Muslim groups condemned Philip Hollobone and accused him of failing in his duty as an MP.

In an interview with The Independent, the Kettering MP said: “I would ask her to remove her veil. If she said: ‘No’, I would take the view that she could see my face, I could not see hers, I am not able to satisfy myself she is who she says she is. I would invite her to communicate with me in a different way, probably in the form of a letter.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/champion-of-uk-burka-ban-declares-war-on-veilwearing-constituents-2028669.html

The Daily Mail emphasises public support in Britain for a ban.

Mr Green said a ban would be ‘rather un-British’ and run contrary to the conventions of a ‘tolerant and mutually respectful society’.

This is despite a YouGov survey which found that 67 per cent of voters wanted the wearing of full-face veils to be outlawed. France’s lower house of parliament has overwhelmingly approved a ban on wearing burka-style Islamic veils, and Spain and Belgium have similar votes in the pipeline.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1295665/Banning-burkas-UK-British-says-Green.html

Meanwhile, in Tehran…

Iran’s prosecutor called on Sunday for tighter checks on women who fail to observe Islamic dress code in public, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported.

Under Iran’s Sharia law, imposed after the 1979 Islamic revolution, women are obliged to cover their hair and wear long, loose-fitting clothes. Violators can receive lashes, fines or imprisonment.

“Unfortunately the law … which considers violation of the Islamic dress code as a punishable crime, has not been implemented in the country in the past 15 years,” said general prosecutor Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei.

“Under the law, violators of public chastity should be punished by being sentenced to up to two months in jail or 74 lashes.”

Strict dress codes were enforced in the years after the revolution but in recent years clamp downs have tended to last just weeks or months in summer, when women wear lighter clothing such as calf-length trousers and colored scarves.

Young women in urban areas often defy the limitations by wearing tight clothing and colorful headscarves that barely cover their hair. The codes are less commonly flouted in rural regions.

Enforcement of codes governing women’s dress have become stricter since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office in 2005, promising a return to the values of the revolution.

http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCATRE66H12O20100718

An Iranian woman faces death after having been tortured for alleged adultery.

In 2006 [Sakineh] Ashtiani was convicted of having an ‘illicit relationship’ and received 99 lashes. Since this time the 43 year old has been in jail where she recanted the confession she made under the duress of the lashing.

Just recently she was dragged before a court and retried. Again she was convicted and this time, despite the punishment she has already endured, sentenced to be stoned to death. This barbaric practice involves wrapping a woman tightly from head to toe in white cloth, burying her up to her shoulders in sand, and pelting her to death with large stones.

Yesterday late in the afternoon Iran’s government denied reports that Ashtiani will be executed by stoning, though her death sentence may still be carried out by some other method, likely hanging.

Knowledgeable Iranian human rights activists, including Amnesty International, question the veracity of this statement and remain deeply concerned about Ashtiani’s fate.

WE must not let Ashtinai become another victim of the debasing, inhuman treatment of women that has become the daily reality in Iran. Make your voice count and encourage others to do the same.

Take action against the practice of stoning; take action against abuse of women, sign this petition.

http://freesakineh.org/

Rachel Reid,  Afghanistan researcher for Human Rights Watch, warns against selling out Afghan women by prematurely “reintegrating” Taliban men.

Beware Taliban revisionism. You’re going to hear much more of it in the coming months as policy makers from Kabul to Washington seeking to reintegrate Taliban fighters try to explain why the enemy isn’t so bad after all. Bombs that slaughter civilians, acid attacks that disfigure school girls, assassinations of women in public life-all of this will be swept under the carpet.

In its place, a new narrative will be trotted out, one in which most of the fighters are “ten-dollar Talibs”-just in it for the money-or modern-day Robin Hoods fighting the injustices of their local government. While money or politics may indeed be the motivation for many low-level fighters, that doesn’t change the fact that too many Afghan women are experiencing the same kind of oppression today they faced under Taliban rule.

“We as Taliban warn you to stop working . . . otherwise we will take your life away. We will kill you in such a harsh way that no woman has so far been killed in that manner. This would become a good lesson for women like you who are working.” When Fatima K. received this letter she was terrified and left her job. Such messages-called night letters, since they are delivered after dark-are a common means of intimidation used by the Taliban.

Continues: http://www.hrw.org/node/91647

Leni Gillman’s mother, Margaret O’Connell, lived through the London blitz to become a humanist and a peace activist. She would face bigotry and arrest as she strived to make the world a better place.

Margaret O'Connell

My mother was and remains my Humanist Hero. She was born and brought up in a protestant enclave in the small coalmining town of Castlecomer, Kilkenny in Ireland, then still part of the UK.

Her mother, Kate Williams, was as deeply religious as she was bigoted, and she loathed beyond reason everything to do with the Catholic church. Although some of Kate’s family members were Catholics, she never allowed them into her home. She also forbade her children from friendships with their Catholic relatives and neighbours. This was the model of Christian love that my mother absorbed as she grew up.

Margaret was an intelligent child and learned to read before she started school, having only the bible as her primer. She lost whatever faith might have been previously inculcated in her during the harsh early years at this Church of Ireland school. The teacher decided that, because she could already read, Margaret should be sent to her home adjoining the school, where she would have to sweep, clean and polish rather than sit in class and be educated.

Margaret’s father, George Williams, had little time for any church or religion, and kept his views mostly to himself, although he did discuss them with her. Through their close relationship Margaret gained a different perspective on religion and by the time she was 16, when she followed her older siblings in emigrating, she was a convinced atheist.

She felt that becoming a humanist followed naturally when she witnessed the horrors brought by the war a few years later. By then she had married and borne two daughters. She would recall the terror wrought by the blitz and later bombing campaigns of the V1s and V2s which devastated south London, where they lived. Her husband, Philip O’Connell, was also an atheist, a refugee from the Catholic church, who had become a socialist as an extension of his own humanist views.

This humanism informed every aspect of their relationship. Together they forged a collective ideal and belief in the essential goodness of human potential. Today this seems a naively optimistic view of humanity, but she always said this was what she believed. It motivated the political and peace activism which dominated their lives over the next twenty years. After they had three more children together, Margaret became the activist while Phil managed the domestic support system.

Margaret’s political initiation was when she became one of the first women elected to Lambeth Council in 1945.

The local press reported this important development in local democracy with a shocked commentary on the fact that she appeared in the council chamber wearing slacks rather than the customary skirt. Plus ça change!

The post-war settlement established nuclear weapons in international relations. Margaret and Phil were aghast that all the human suffering of the recent conflict resulted in a senseless stalemate where each side in the Cold War seemed belligerently ready to bomb the other to oblivion.

Margaret’s instinctive compassion compelled her to join the peace movement against nuclear weapons. She saw this as the most important challenge to the posturing that could finally annihilate humanity.

She took her family on the first and many subsequent Aldermaston Marches; when Polaris submarines were installed in Scotland, she led a peace protest march from London to Holy Loch. She walked the entire route, which took seven weeks. She endured the pain of blistered feet with her customary stoicism and amused resignation.

When the government ignored the peace protests, Margaret joined the Committee of 100 which formed to take non-violent direct action against the government’s nuclear weapons policy. This group included many well known intellectuals, writers and leaders of the protests. They included the eminent philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell, another Humanist Hero, then in his eighties.

Margaret was arrested for her part in their activities and was convicted on conspiracy charges. She spent a month in Holloway prison, alongside other members of the Committee of 100. This experience made her even more determined to challenge the nuclear threat. Margaret worked with protesters who adopted some novel methods of subversion which included illegal radio broadcasts of peace propaganda across London, moving the equipment from one safe house to another each night.

Later she supported other causes including the anti-apartheid campaign in this country. She went with a group in a minibus to Greece to protest against the oppression and brutalities committed by the fascist colonels’ regime. She fasted for several weeks in a public vigil outside the Greek Embassy in London to raise awareness of the cruelty of the regime.

Margaret had a parallel professional life which reflected her humanism. After the war she became a teacher, and soon discerned the needs of the poorest and most disadvantaged children, who, in the 1950s and 60s had very little dedicated provision in our education system. She studied to gain expertise in understanding and teaching these youngsters, and eventually became a headteacher in her own school, Moatbridge. This was one of the crowning achievements of her life, about which she was typically modest and self-effacing.

She had moved from small-town religious prejudice which had given her just three years of formal education, to intellectual freedom and self-determination. Through sheer dedication she turned her idealism into a practical endeavour, a school where young people had the chance of moving from failure to personal achievement.

Margaret’s rejection of the petty bigotry, hypocrisy and oppression she had experienced in religion led her to embrace Humanism. This became her moral compass, the prism through which she judged herself and her fellow humans. For her, one had to live one’s humanism: it defined how one should behave.

Once she perceived a wrong that should be put right, her humanism drove her to action. She set some tough standards for those who followed, while she never lost her sense of humour, or her affection for those she loved and the wider family of the human race.

This post is part of a series written by members, friends and Distinguished Supporters of the British Humanist Association about their own “humanist heroes”.

You can find out more at www.humanism.org.uk/humanism/humanist-tradition/heroes

Leni Gillman is a writer and journalist, a BHA member, and was also very involved in the peace movement when she was younger.  She feels strongly about the malign influence of religion in our society and culture. She has four grandchildren, three of whom are old enough to have shown an interest in these issues and they often have discussions about them.

On two occasions last week my dog was barred from London buses, not because she’s particularly fierce or big, but on religious grounds. A friend and I had taken her to the park, and as I went across to the grocer, my friend took Daisy, a Manchester terrier, to the bus stop.

As they tried to board the bus, the driver stopped her and told her that there was a Muslim lady on the bus who “might be upset by the dog”. As she attempted to remonstrate, the doors closed and the bus drew away.

Continues: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/7847571/Is-a-religious-bus-ban-on-my-dog-right.html

Roy Brown, Main Representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), spoke to the UN Human Rights Council yesterday, protesting against slavery in states like Mauretania, and laws against “apostasy” in states like the Maldives.

We are deeply concerned by the continuation, with apparent impunity, of traditional forms of slavery in several States, despite laws prohibiting the practice. In particular, we urge the government of Mauretania, now that it has become a member of this Council, to ensure that its recently enacted laws against slavery are actually given effect and used to release the estimated 600,000 slaves still being held in bondage in that country.

We also continue to be dismayed by the state-sponsored, institutionalized hatred of non-believers in certain States. We note that at least three member States of this Council have laws in place that prescribe the death penalty for those who declare themselves to be non-believers. Those countries, sadly, include the Maldives, newly elected to this Council.

Two weeks ago, Mr Mohammed Nazim, a Maldivian, said in a public meeting that “although he had been taught about Islam he was unable to believe”. He is now in custody and facing calls for his death[ footnote: http://www.realcourage.org/2010/05/mohamed-nazim/ ]. We call on the government of the Maldives to release him immediately, and to allow him to seek asylum elsewhere, because his life is now definitely at risk.

http://www.iheu.org/slavery-and-non-belief

Mr Brown also spoke yesterday on the rights of women, including reproductive rights and maternal mortality.

http://www.iheu.org/women’s-right-life

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is not normally associated with radical moves but the 85-year-old monarch is making waves with signals encouraging greater tolerance of women’s rights.

In recent days Abdullah’s appearance in an unusual group photograph has become a talking point across his realm and the wider Arab world. The king and his brother Crown Prince Sultan were flanked by 40 women dressed in modest abayas but mostly with their faces bare, a novelty that is seen as evidence of rare liberalism at the top.

The king’s pose, at a conference in the southern city of Najran last month, is big news because it appears to challenge the norm in a country where unrelated men and women are kept strictly apart, women are covered from head to toe and alcohol and women’s driving are banned. Under Saudi law a woman must not leave home without a male “guardian” (her father, husband or brother) to whom she is legally subordinated.

“I think this is a great picture and everyone is talking about it,” said Dr Maha Muneef, a prominent physician and government adviser. “This is a picture that sent a message that it is OK to work with women … and that there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Continues: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/06/saudi-king-abdullah-women-photo

It became a symbol of women’s rights and generational change — and, for a time, the focus of a debate over whether it led to declining morals.

The pill was groundbreaking in other ways: Women today have a wide range of effective contraceptive choices, virtually all of them variations on the pill. Concerns about adverse effects linked to the early, high-dose oral contraceptives galvanized feminists and gave rise to the consumer health movement. Americans no longer assume doctors, regulators and drug companies know what’s best for them.

“It’s not that a technology changes everything,” says McGill University historian Andrea Tone, author of Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America. “It’s how people reacted to the technology.” Other forces — political, cultural, religious and medical — shaped how the pill was perceived and used, she says.

Full article: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-05-07-1Apill07_CV_N.htm