[Gerry Whyte, a constitutional scholar who teaches at, and was recently dean of, the Trinity College, Dublin, Law School, thought that readers of this blog might be interested in the item below. mp]
'I could scream with happiness. I've given hope and strength to Muslim women'Schoolgirl tells Guardian of her battle to wear Islamic dress
Dilpazier Aslam
Thursday March 3, 2005
Guardian
A
schoolgirl who yesterday won the right to wear the Islamic
shoulder-to-toe dress in school said the landmark ruling would "give
hope and strength to other Muslim women".
In
an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Shabina Begum, 16, described
the court of appeal verdict against Denbigh high school in Luton as a
victory for all Muslims "who wish to preserve their identity and values
despite prejudice and bigotry".
After
a two-year campaign by Shabina, Lord Justice Brooke found her former
school had acted against her right to express her religion by excluding
her because she insisted on wearing the jilbab. The ruling, overturning
a high court decision which dismissed her application for a judicial
review last year, will affect every school in the country.
Almost
a year after the French government banned "conspicuous" religious
symbols, including the hijab, in schools, the judge called on the
Department for Education to give British schools more guidance on how
to comply with their obligations under the Human Rights Act. "I really
feel like screaming out of happiness," said Shabina, who was
represented at the court of appeal by Cherie Booth QC.
"I
don't regret wearing the jilbab at all. I'm happy that I did this. I
feel that I have given hope and strength to other Muslim women.
"I
also feel a bit sad when I think why couldn't this judgment have been
made two years ago? In the end it's my loss. No one else has lost
anything."
Shabina
had worn the shalwar kameez [trousers and tunic] from when she entered
the school at the age of 12 until September 2002, when she decided it
was against the tenets of her religion. When Denbigh refused her
request to wear the jilbab, she was excluded, becoming the reluctant
poster girl of a campaign that has been reported in 137 countries.
"I
thought it would be acceptable to wear because most people at the
school are Muslim," she said. "Then when I was refused I thought a
month maximum. Then it just carried on. I get recognised when I go out
and other people point to me. They say, 'Are you that girl?'"
Denbigh
high school, which has a 79% Muslim intake, said it had lost on a
technicality and the school was proud of its multi-faith policy. It
said in a statement that it takes into account the cultural and
religious sensitivities of pupils.
Girls
at the school were permitted to wear skirt, trousers or a shalwar
kameez and headscarves, which complied with school uniform
requirements. The statement said: "The policy was agreed by the
governing body following wide consultation with the DfES, pupils,
parents, schools and leading Muslim organisations."
The
local education authority, Luton borough council, said all schools
would now be advised to take pupils' religion into account when
imposing dress rules.
Shabina,
who was forced to switch to a school that did not prevent Muslim girls
from wearing the jilbab, said her campaign had taken its toll.
"I
can't be normal with friends if I do not go to school with them. I feel
like my social skills have really been lacking. I do not really have
many friends at my new school."
At
times, even some of her peers cast doubt on her case. "Some of my
friends said to me, 'It's not an obligation, why are you going to get
yourself excluded because of it?' I said that it is - look at verse
number 3.59," she said referring to the Qur'anic passage which she
believes obliges Muslim women to cover their bodies bar their hands and
face.
In
April last year Shabina's mother died, a month before she lost her case
at the high court. Excluded from school and fighting a daunting legal
battle, she said the 12 months leading up to her mother's death were
the worst of her life.
Her
initial defeat did not come as a complete surprise. "Our solicitors
told us we only had a 5% chance of winning the case because it's a
radical judgment. They would prefer the court of appeal to do that.
After I heard that I felt like I had nothing else to lose."
In
a statement after the judgment, Shabina added: "Today's decision is a
victory for all Muslims who wish to preserve their identity and values
despite prejudice and bigotry."
She
said the school's decision has been "a consequence of an atmosphere
that has been created in western societies post-9/11, an atmosphere in
which Islam has been made a target for vilification in the name of the
'war on terror'."
She
told the Guardian: "I hope in years to come policy-makers will take
note of a growing number of young Muslims who, like me, have turned
back to our faith after years of being taught that we needed to be
liberated from it.
"Our
belief in our faith is the one thing that makes sense of a world gone
mad, a world where Muslim women, from Uzbekistan to Turkey, are feeling
the brunt of policies guided by western governments. I feel I've made
people question the jilbab issue again.
"Both
France and Britain are calling for freedom and democracy, but something
as simple as the jilbab still takes two years to get okayed."
Monday, February 28, 2005
[Thought this item would be of interest to readers of this blog.]
Sightings 2/28/05
Conservative Hopes for Liberalism
-- Martin E. Marty
Sightings likes to
look both right and left. Few magazines in our library or mailbox are
liberal, but the sometimes somewhat liberal New Republic, which
celebrates its ninetieth anniversary this very day, is here with an issue
dedicated "To Liberalism! Embattled ... And Essential." The authors
of eight articles on the subject are very hard on what remains of liberalism,
and offer rather modest signals of hope for tomorrow. Religious language
and themes run through many of these articles.
Peter Beinart reminds us that "great causes and
missionary impulses that rouse citizens to engage with the world" -- old liberal
themes -- have largely passed to conservative mission-minders. Jonathan
Chait asks us to "imagine that God were to appear on Earth for the unlikely
purpose of settling, once and for all, our disputes over economic policy,"
presenting irrefutable empirical data that conservatives were correct.
"How would liberals respond?" Chait asks. They would bow down and
change. Suppose, on the other hand, that God's empirical data agreed with
the liberals' claims. Conservatives would be unmoved; they believe in
certain dogmas, no matter what the situation, claims liberal-chiding
Chait.
Martin Peretz joins so many others these days in wishing that "the
most penetrating thinker of the old liberalism, the Protestant theologian
Reinhold Niebuhr," could reappear -- though heirs of those to and for whom
Niebuhr spoke would not listen because he "held a gloomy view of human
nature." No spokesperson has succeeded him as philosopher-theologian for
liberals. Someone should come along and wake them up. Leon
Wieseltier speaks of his own "Augustinian heart," and criticizes another author
for "his sunniness about salvation" from economic problems -- a limiting factor
today.
E. J. Dionne, who for years has fused religious themes
with moderate liberal economic and political philosophy and concerns, anchors
the issue with a long altar call worth the price of the issue: " Faith Full:
When the Religious Right Was Left." He, too, wishes for a Reinhold Niebuhr
to infuse liberalism with now-neglected Augustinian views of original sin.
Dionne's historical sweep is impressive. Today's media has stood in awe of
evangelicalism as a phalanx devoted to anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-stem-cell
research, pro-school prayer, pro-gun, pro-death penalty, pro-war concerns.
Such portrayals present a distorted picture, and the many dimensions of
evangelicalisms also suggest other issues. And they have different,
usually unknown or overlooked, histories.
Dionne is concerned that the new assertiveness by
political evangelicals has helped drive liberals into secular(istic) positions,
postures, and camps. And he shows why, if that is the case, these are
futile situations to be in -- situations that also obscure the religious
ancestry of modern political liberalism. The "Social Gospel" was part of
the program of both William Jennings Bryan-type progressive-conservatism and
liberal Christian social activism. The same goes for Catholicism, whose
Bishop's Program of 1919 pioneered New Deal measures. And, of course,
liberal Protestantism was then in the vanguard.
Look to your roots, Dionne seems to be saying to
evangelicals, Catholics, and liberal Protestants alike. The current
growths and branches do not reflect those roots very well.
----------
OS
ANGELES - Aldous Huxley long ago warned of a future in which love was
beside the point and happiness a simple matter of consuming
mass-produced goods and plenty of soma, a drug engineered for pleasure.
More than 70 years later, Dr. Peter C. Whybrow, the director of the
Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of
California, Los Angeles, has seen the future, and the society he
describes isn't all that distant from Huxley's brave new world,
although the soma, it seems, is in ourselves.
abies
born into what is certain to be a brief life of grievous suffering
should have their lives ended by physicians under strict guidelines,
according to two doctors in the Netherlands.