What's the latest news on the Aishah Azmi case?

VEIL ROW APPEAL LOST

from: The Mirror

31/03/2007

THE Muslim teaching assistant who sparked a nationwide debate by wearing a veil in class yesterday lost her discrimination case appeal.
Aishah Azmi, 24, was suspended last year after refusing to remove the veil despite pupils finding it hard to understand her.
She was later sacked when an employment tribunal rejected claims of discrimination and harassment. Yesterday her appeal against the tribunal decision - which ruled asking to remove her veil in class was not discrimination - was dismissed.
Kirklees Council said: "We were disappointed Mrs Azmi decided to pursue an appeal but satisfied the original ruling was supported."
Mrs Azmi, of Dewsbury, West Yorks, was originally awarded £1,000 for "injury to feelings" after the row at Headfield CofE junior school.
Local MP Shahid Malik said: "I was confident the school was right. I hope she leaves this alone now."

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Ed: I'm wondering why do Muslim MPs and other Muslim 'spokespeople' come across as so patently unsympathetic to Muslim women's causes in the UK (read the local MP's statement above)?

Similar statements were issued in the Shabina Begum case, and in the sauna incident (below) that indicated discomfiture/embarrassment at Muslim women's insistence on dressing up in Islamically appropriate attire...what's up with that?

Is wearing a hijab to a sauna carrying political correctness too far?

Row over fully-dressed woman in sauna

from:Oxford Mail

A health club has been criticised for allowing a Muslim woman to go for a swim and sauna while wearing traditional head dress and robe.The woman was admitted to David Lloyd Leisure, in Garsington Road, Cowley, on Sunday in contravention of the company's own rules on dress.The decision has been condemned by club member Ian Caldwell, who was in the sauna when the woman walked in and by Muslim community leader Taj Hargey, who said it was "political correctness gone crazy."

Mr Caldwell said: "The woman walked in wearing her head dress and robe down to the floor and I said 'do you think it's appropriate to wear all that gear in the sauna'."There were other women in there who felt threatened because they were wearing swimsuits while she was fully dressed."She then left and got into the swimming pool. I asked the manager why she was allowed to break the rules and he said they had to observe her religious customs.

"They've got a dress code but they are effectively making exemptions for religious dress. I don't think they should put religious custom over and above health and hygiene. It is customary in this country to wear swim gear in the swimming pool."Liam Macgilp, general manager at David Lloyd Oxford, said: "Whereas we respect the religious beliefs and customs of all members, the health, hygiene and safety of members is always the first priority."

The rules are that all members in the sauna or the wet areas of the club should wear swimwear that is less voluminous for the health, safety and hygiene of all its staff and members."He would not comment on the incident on Sunday which he said he did not witness but said he understood Mr Caldwell's description of the sequence of events to be correct.

Mr Hargey, chairman of muslim group MECO, said: "If this woman wants to wear this garb it's not Islamic custom, it's a cultural tradition which has nothing to do with faith."This is political correctness gone crazy and there should be one set of rules and regulations for everyone, regardless of their culture or religion."Perhaps she should consider wearing a new Islamic swimsuit that has been designed called the Burqini which covers all the necessary parts."That would be one way around it if she wants to preserve her modesty."

Muslim community leader Muhammed Khan said: "Muslim women who choose to use a facility do so through their own free will and hence need to uphold both personal safety, relevant Islamic injunctions pertaining to the matter, as well as the health and safety of other users."It seems Muslim women are being permitted to wear clothing, not a swimsuit, that is concealing yet non-voluminous. It would be advisable to clarify what types of clothing would be classed as 'less voluminous'."

How Muslims are challenging the blond, blue-eyed sunbronzed lifesaver stereotype

Australian Muslims Go for Surf, Lifesaving and Burqinis

By RAYMOND BONNER, The New York Times (via SunniSister)


...Ms. Laalaa is a Muslim and has voluntarily worn the burqa, the traditional head-to-toe covering for Muslim women, since she was 14. It is hard to swim, she said, if your body is swathed in cotton, which is very heavy when wet.
Now, her clothing quandary solved by a novel fashion, the burqini, Ms. Laalaa, a vivacious 20-yearold, has become a Surf Life Saver, as volunteer lifeguards here are known, lured to the beach by a new outreach program for Australia’s Muslims.
The program, On the Same Wave, was started a year ago by the nonprofit group that organizes the volunteers, Surf Life Saving Australia, along with the federal Immigration Ministry and the local council.
The outreach was the response to an ugly episode on Cronulla Beach, about 20 miles south of downtown Sydney, in December 2005, when skinheads and neo-Nazis, many drunk and with racial epithets painted on their bodies and T-shirts, marauded through the area beating up Lebanese men.
Many here and abroad wondered if Australia was headed for a period of rising racial tension. The riots set off a round of soul-searching and left many Australians asking if the violence reflected an underlying racism in their society.
Among Australia’s population of roughly 20.2 million, fewer than half a million are Muslims, most of them in Sydney and Melbourne.
On the Same Wave was intended to promote cultural understanding, introduce people from minority groups — Chinese, Somalis, Sudanese — to beach culture and safety, and above all to increase and diversify the membership of Surf Life Saving, said Vanessa Brown, its membership director.
It has also challenged the public perception of a virtually sacred Australian icon, the Surf Life Saver, as someone who is always blond, blue-eyed and sun-bronzed. “It’s a stereotype, that’s accurate,” said Suzie Stollznow, diversity manager for Surf Life Saving New South Wales.
Under the program, 22 men and women, from 14 to 40 years old and including a woman with three small children, signed up to become Surf Life Savers. Most were ethnic Lebanese, but there was a Palestinian, a Syrian and a Libyan.
“But all proudly Australian,” said one, Suheil Damouny. “It’s important to mention that.”
Like most Muslim immigrants here, Mr. Damouny, 20, a sportswriter at The Torch, a weekly newspaper, does not like to be referred to by ethnicity. His grandparents fled Palestine in 1948 and moved to Lebanon, then to the United Arab Emirates, where he lived until moving to Australia seven years ago. He considers himself Australian.
Mr. Damouny said his friends could not understand why he wanted to be a Life Saver, especially in Cronulla. And they did not think he could pass the rigorous eight-week course. “But I did,” he said proudly. Seventeen finished; one woman dropped out after making the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, and coming back in a full burqa.
Nodding to where a yellow surfboard with the red letters “Surf Rescue” rested waiting to be paddled out in an emergency, Mr. Damouny, who is about 5 feet 7 and weighs 140 pounds, said: “The hardest was getting used to that big, ugly thing. It is quite heavy.”
One requirement was to be able to pull an unconscious swimmer on board, and then get him to shore, “through massive waves,” Mr. Damouny said.
Ms. Laalaa broke her nose when she was trying to paddle out through the crashing surf and the board reared up and kicked back into her. She also twisted both ankles, she said. “I have black-and-blue bruises all over my body,” she said. “But I’d do it all over again.”
She admits that she was an unlikely candidate. “I’m a girly-girl,” she said. “I like to walk on the street in high heels.”
But Ms. Laalaa said one reason she had joined the lifesaving program was to educate Australians about Muslims. “They don’t think Muslim women swim,” she said. “Or do anything,” she quickly added with an irrepressible laugh.
When people see women wearing the burqa, they think they are oppressed. “I am not oppressed,” she said. “I do have my own mouth. I am educated. I do make my own decisions.”
For her and other women, the biggest obstacle, she explained, was what they would wear. That was solved by a local fashion entrepreneur, Aheda Zanetti, who designs “dynamic swimwear and sportswear for today’s Muslim female.”
For Surf Life Savers, Ms. Zanetti, whose label is Ahiida, came up with a two-piece outfit made of spandex, form-fitting but fully covering, even the hair. Ms. Laalaa pulls her hair back into a bun and hides it under a bright red hood that is an extension of the long-sleeved yellow top.
Ms. Laalaa said her father, a welder, was completely supportive, as was her mother, a homemaker, and her three brothers and sister. She said her family was not that different from other Muslims in Australia. Most are moderate, she said. Experts here agree. It is the radicals who grab the headlines, they say.

Does the 'fashionable' hijab scream: "Look at us" or "Please, leave us alone?"

From: Comment is Free

Recently, I was strolling through Selfridge's in London when I saw something strange. At a make-up counter in the women's department, four young Muslim women dressed in the hijab, the veil that covers the head and hair but leaves the face on view, were trying on various shocking shades of lipstick and blusher, gaily chatting and giggling as they did so. "This shade makes my lips look fuller," said one, pouting in front of a mirror. Her friends agreed. "It's a must-buy," they chirped.

The hijab is meant to symbolise modesty and chastity. Yet here were four young veiled women, in their late teens or early twenties, painting their lips and reddening their cheeks, prettifying their faces for everyone to see. Even more strikingly, one of them had the word Fendi emblazoned in silver lettering across her black hijab - Fendi being the Italian fashion house best-known for its shoes, bags and furs, and which is beloved of those Sex and the City women. This was Muslim garb as high fashion. The girls' aim seemed to be to invite men's gaze, rather than repel it; they were screaming, "Look at us!", not "Please, leave us alone."

[...]
...Others discuss the veil in terms of fashion, saying how comfortable it makes them feel or how it compliments their body shape. And while they cover their hair and body, like the young women in Selfridge's, they often wear make-up, and even Calvin Klein sunglasses, on their faces. Forget the claims that these veiled women are covering up in order that people, especially men, don't stare at them; in fact, many of them are trying to look trendy and distinctive rather than bland and ignorable.
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This article is written by a non-Muslim man, but often Muslims make the same point about whether the 'fashionable hijaab' isn't a contradiction in terms.

Umm Yasmin has an insightful post on how the 'One Veil Fits All' concept isn't necessarily true.