Jail hijab-strip subject to suit

A California woman forced to remove the headscarf she wore for religious reasons may pursue a civil damages suit against jail officials.
That's the unanimous ruling that an 11-member en banc panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit issued Wednesday in Khatib v. County of Orange.
The principal opinion, by 9th Circuit Judge M. Margaret McKeown (below left), related that when in public the plaintiff, Souhair Khatib, wears a hijab that covers her hair and neck, in accord with her Muslim beliefs. Her troubles began when she and her husband appeared in a court in Orange County, in southern California, to seek an extension on community service they were supposed to perform following their plea to misdemeanor violation of state welfare laws. Far from granting the request, authorities took the couple into custody and seized Khatib's hijab. Judge McKeown described what happened next:

Weeping, Khatib explained that her religious beliefs forbade her from taking off her headscarf and pleaded with the officers to allow her to keep it on. Khatib was warned that the male officers would remove the headscarf for her if she did not voluntarily do so. Wanting to avoid being touched by the male officers—another violation of her religious beliefs—Khatib reluctantly complied.
Khatib spent the majority of the day in a holding cell in view of male officers and inmates. Experiencing 'severe discomfort,' 'distress,' and 'humiliat[ion],' Khatib attempted to cover herself by pulling her knees into her chest and covering her head with a vest she was wearing. At a hearing that afternoon, the court reinstated Khatib’s probation and provided an extension of time to complete community service.

At issue before the 9th Circuit was the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000, which, as McKeown wrote,

prohibits state and local governments from imposing 'a substantial burden on the religious exercise of a person residing in or confined to an institution.'

Reversing an earlier 2-1 panel decision and rejecting an argument put forward by Orange County, California -- and siding with the U.S. Department of Justice, which entered the case on behalf of Khatib -- the 9th Circuit held that the county courthouse holding facility was an "institution" for purposes of the Act. Thus it remanded the case for determination of whether Khatib's religious freedom had been impermissibly burdened.
Save for the statement of facts quoted above, McKeown's opinion was dispassionate.
But a concurrence by 9th Circuit Judge Ronald Gould indicated the human considerations underlying the circuit's decision. "A Muslim woman who must appear before strange men she doesn’t know, with her hair and neck uncovered in a violationof her religious beliefs, may feel shame and distress," he wrote, adding: "A recognition of this very real harm helps inform our judgment on the scope of covered institutions."
The Khatib decision, when contrasted not only with U.S. incidents described in the final paragraph here, but also with actions in France and elsewhere abroad, about which we've written in posts available here, exposes the gulf in understandings of this issue.

Go, 'Grrl! Bennoune honored

Lovely to receive from a university chancellor this fancy invitation -- to a Distinguished Faculty Lecture by an IntLawGrrl!
In this case, the lecturer is Karima Bennoune, named the 2010/2011 Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Scholar at Rutgers University, Newark.

Karima (left) is Professor of Law, Arthur L. Dickson Scholar, and director of the Global Legal Studies Center at that university, where she teaches courses in public international law, terrorism and international law, international women’s human rights, and international protection of human rights. IntLawGrrls' posts by and about Karima may be found here.
She will receive the chancellor's award and give an address entitled "A More Courageous Politics: Muslims Confront Fundamentalism" at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, March 3, at the university's Paul Robeson Campus Center, 350 Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Newark, New Jersey. Details here.
Heartfelt congratulations!

On February 1

On this day in ...
... 2006 (5 years ago today), asserting the freedom of the press was at stake, 6 newspapers in 4 European countries "reprinted controversial cartoons of the prophet Muhammad which have provoked outrage, trade boycotts and threats of violence towards Danes." The 12 cartoons had been published in several months earlier in "a right-of-centre Danish broadsheet." The controversy has resurfaced at times since; for example, in 2009, when Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen was selected as NATO Secretary-General, and just last month, when trial began involving an alleged plot to attack the cartoonist.

(Prior February 1 posts are here, here, and here.)

North African People Power

After more than 23 years in office, Tunisia’s President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, “Zinochet” as he was dubbed, was forced from power yesterday by popular protests.
These protests began after Mohamed Bou’aziz, an unemployed university graduate in the town of Sidi Bouzid, attempted to burn himself to death on December 17 when the produce he sold on the street to earn a living was confiscated. (He later died of his injuries.)
How could Mr. Bou’aziz know what the implications of his desperate act would be in just one month’s time? His sacrifice inspired huge demonstrations that spread across the North African country, organized in part through resourceful use of Twitter and Facebook. These were met with brutality by the security forces, a grim reality that simply provoked more protest. Unarmed demonstrators were regularly teargassed. Many were arrested. As many as 70-80 people were shot or beaten to death. But the protesters marched on.
This largely peaceful, democratic revolution (on the side of the opposition at least) was not led by or inspired by the fundamentalist movements that have tried to claim the oppositional space in many Arab and North African contexts in recent years. It was instead, by all accounts, a largely secular appeal for real political reform and for social justice. As reflected in today's front page of the Paris daily Liberation (above; credit), women, many unveiled, were increasingly visible in the protest marches.
One can hope that today’s initial victory of North African people power will serve as an example of what is possible in other countries in the region. This is what Noam Chomsky has called the threat of a good example. One dictator brought down by popular revolt – no dictator is safe now.
Hope is a powerful, incandescent force. Hope in the political realm has been a rare commodity of late in this part of the world. Bou’aziz’s revolution may have brought that back. But, just as the power of hope should not be underestimated, neither should the danger of hopes unfulfilled.
It is unclear exactly what the future holds for Tunisia now.
Mohammed al-Ghannouchi, the Prime Minister who has also been in power since 1999, has taken over as President since the departure of ousted President Ben Ali, whom Saudi Arabia "'welcomed.'" A state of emergency was declared, with soldiers guarding public buildings, tanks on the streets of Tunis, and prohibitions on public meetings.
The government must respond to the grievances that first provoked these events – creating jobs, meeting human needs, fostering equality of all kinds, enabling freedom of expression and association, institutionalizing real social democracy – rather than simply engaging in window dressing that preserves the Tunisian system with a different figurehead. The international community, and the U.S. government, should support this process.
The biggest external impact of events in Tunisia could come in neighboring Algeria, which I visited twice last fall, and which witnessed scattered, sporadic émeutes – riots – throughout 2010. The country has just experienced a week of widespread, intensive youth protests that seem to have been the result of a similar long-simmering anger over high unemployment, corruption, economic disparities and la hogra, the arrogance with which officials often treat ordinary people. (photo credit) However, the immediate catalyst was likely the sharp increase in the price of staples like cooking oil and sugar at the beginning of the year. See this useful discussion of the possible causes by journalist Chawki Amari writing in El Watan, one of Algeria’s leading daily newspapers.
Some have suggested that the initial disturbances may have been provoked – perhaps by private interests that control the sugar and oil markets and were unhappy over government regulatory action in this arena. It is hard to say. However, even if this were the case, legitimate popular anger clearly took over from there. Some - only some - of the recent protests turned violent with young rioters throwing stones at police and passing cars, burning tires and looting shops.
Unfortunately, the avenues for peaceful protest are stifled in Algeria due to the continuing imposition of a state of emergency since 1992.

For example, following the week’s protests, last Sunday, January 9, a civic group called the Intercommunal Association of Aïn Benian-Staoueli tried to hold a peaceful gathering in the coastal town of Staoueli about 20 kilometers outside of Algiers. Their efforts were forcefully thwarted by “preventive” arrests. Algerian writer and journalist Mustapha Benfodil, who was attempting to cover the event, was among those arrested. He later recounted his experiences in El Watan, offering an eyewitness account of la hogra in action. As he notes, those picked up by the police that day were suspected of the rather kafka-esque offense of “attempted peaceful gathering.” (They have since been released – though across the country many young protestors remain in jail.)
While the roots of Algeria’s emergency law admittedly lie in the terribly real struggle with armed fundamentalism that consumed the 1990s and claimed as many as 200,000 lives, and the fight against terrorism in Algeria remains a concern in light of the current activities of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, today’s emergency regulations are often used instead against peaceful government critics who have nothing whatsoever to do with such movements. (During the recent protests, attempts by fundamentalists to rally demonstrators to their banner failed resoundingly.)
In fact, the Algerian government now uses the state of emergency to justify the banning of public gatherings of all kinds.

For example, when I visited Algiers in late November to attend a meeting on a proposed draft law on violence against women, the meeting was declared officially non-authorized the day before it was to take place in the central Hotel Safir. Hence, it was held quietly instead in a small room at a more remote location, with many participants unable to attend. It is shocking that a meeting of women working to stop violence against women requires an official permit. Who exactly is being protected by “emergency” legislation in this scenario?

For Algeria’s democratic opposition, the current challenge is to find a way to translate this month’s explosion of youthful anger into positive political change, and to maximize the jolt of energy from events in next door Tunisia. According to Benfodil, the former task requires the mobilization of civil society, trade unions, academics, the middle class, NGOs and others, “if they truly want to transform this impetuous winter into a democratic spring…”

Some believe that it may be difficult to make a real political transformation as long as Algeria’s government possesses the significant material resources it uses to selectively placate sectors of the population. But attempts to publicly speak out for change continue, as witnessed by a peaceful youth demonstration today in Algiers. And it remains to be seen what the impact of the winds blowing from Tunisia now will be.
While in life Mr. Bou’aziz was given little opportunity to have an impact on society, in death he may have helped to change not only his own country, but the entire region.

(Part 1 of a series)

Read On! Zeitoun

(Read On! ... occasional posts on writing we're reading)

Feel a bit late to the table commenting on Zeitoun, the 2009 book by Dave Eggers. Blurbs on and in the paperback edition indicate that a host of reviews named it a best book of last year. Yet it's new to me, and worth a word or 2.

In Zeitoun Eggers writes at the overlap of fiction and nonfiction, novelizing the "true story" of persons whom he's interviewed extensively. It's a technique he also employed in What Is the What (2007), an epic biographical novel/autobiography of a man who'd been a Lost Boy during the war in Southern Sudan. Zeitoun is slimmer and makes no claim to autobiography; in this author's humble opinion, the newer book works less well, and perhaps that is one reason why.

(Eggers deserves much credit for his Voice of Witness efforts to publish stories of victims of human rights violations, and for his establishment of charities, like The Zeitoun Foundation, to continue his books' good works.)

The new book's principal characters are the Zeitouns, a Syrian-born husband of Arab heritage and his Louisiana-born wife of European heritage. Their home is New Orleans. Both are Muslims --he by birth, she by conversion shortly before meeting him -- and both suffered during and after Hurricana Katrina.

Eggers tries to present the story through the eyes of this couple, but the narrational voice remains his own. Thus at times certain passages, like that which attributes to the wife a reference to Islam, Judaism, and Christianity as "not-so-distantly related branches of the same monotheistic Abrahamic faith" (p. 66), lack an authentic ring.

Perhaps it's because of the Eggers' apparent outrage at how the couple were treated. That outrage is entirely appropriate, but his desire to explain the couple and their family, to contextualize their experience, occasionally gets in the way of their story. To name another example: even if it had been made far less overtly, caring contemporary readers would get the Guantánamo comparison that underlay the husband's travails and his wife's traumatic response to them.

That said, any caring reader will profit from pondering the story of the Zeitouns. It is, as Eggers recognizes, inevitably a story of contemporary policy and practice regarding human and national security.

On 9/11, Remembering the Other’s Others: International Law & Muslim Fundamentalism

The ninth anniversary of September 11, 2001, finds the international community still grappling with the consequences of that terrible day.
Armed conflicts which began in the wake of 9/11 continue in Afghanistan and Iraq, spilling over now into Pakistan and Yemen with often devastating consequences for civilians. Human rights abuses in the “war on terror” remain largely unpunished, but will never be forgotten around the world. Xenophobia directed against Muslims serves as a useful tool for right-wing politicians in the West. And you may have heard that an idiot in Florida has been trying to decide whether or not he will burn hundreds of Qur’ans today.
At the same time, Muslim fundamentalist armed movements akin to those that perpetrated 9/11, like the various permutations of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, or Al Shabab in Somalia or Boko Haram in Nigeria, just to name a few, continue to pose major challenges to human rights in Muslim majority societies and around the world. For a terrifying insight into the worldview of defenders of such movements, see here.
Muslim fundamentalist armed movements often kill civilians indiscriminately, as they did on 9/11, a day to which Al Qaeda chillingly refers as “Holy Tuesday.” They also target artists, writers and freethinkers for assassination, and purvey systematic discrimination against women and religious minorities and LGBT individuals. They seek to impose their version of the Sharia on all Muslims everywhere – this often means advocating practices like stoning women for adultery. (credit for logo at right of the Global Campaign to Stop Stoning) Hence, such movements pose particular threats to international law in the areas of human rights, humanitarian law and conflict prevention, inter alia.
My article “Remembering the Other’s Others: Theorizing the Approach of International Law to Muslim Fundamentalism,” published this summer in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review, challenges international lawyers to develop a critical analysis of Muslim fundamentalist movements and to support the many Muslim human rights defenders battling fundamentalism.
Faced with the current polarized environment, this enterprise is unquestionably a daunting task, and I see the already constricted space for my argument narrowing further. Muslim fundamentalists – and those confused with them – have also themselves been the targets of a range of grave violations of international law by states in recent years, like torture. Racialized discourses and policies directed against people of Muslim heritage have proliferated since September 11, 2001, and are currently experiencing a particularly disturbing revival – what might be called hatredofmuslims version 20.10.
All of this fuels more fundamentalism.
Despite these real difficulties, offering a critical perspective on the contemporary problem of Muslim fundamentalism remains an essential project for international lawyers. As a discipline we in international law have mostly engaged critically with the (admittedly problematic) responses to Muslim fundamentalism, rather than with the phenomenon itself.
► Can we offer an accurate or useful commentary on the responses to Muslim fundamentalist movements if we overlook their existence and impact in the first place?
► Of what use is our critique of the “war on terror” if we are largely silent about one side of that “war”?
In fact, the failure of learned discourse in the United States – including in the field of international law – to name and thoughtfully explain the problem of Muslim fundamentalism actually risks facilitating discrimination against Muslims in general. This omission obscures the fact that contemporary terrorism and the “war on terror” actually revolve around a very specific set of politics and political actors, not around broader religious denominations or religious claims.
Ordinary Muslims or the Muslim religion as a whole must not be confused with specific fundamentalist movements and their adherents, just as most American Christians would not want to be identified with Christian fundamentalist Terry Jones. Yet, the mere critique of Muslim fundamentalist movements themselves is not per se an expression of anti-Muslim bias, just as criticism of the pyromaniacally inclined Pastor Jones is not an attack on Christianity. This, I fear, is a fact that is likely to get lost in the current cacophony.
Actually, Muslim fundamentalist armed groups’ primary victims, as the 2006 U.S. National Strategy for Combating Terrorism acknowledged, are often other people of Muslim heritage. Hence, defending the human rights of Muslims means successfully defeating fundamentalism (and vice versa).
In the contemporary period, Western discourse, including in the field of international law, has sometimes seemed to offer only two choices: the openly discriminatory or flawed characterization (Islam is inherently fundamentalist, all Muslims are fundamentalists and so on), or the one that is too politically correct to even broach the topic of fundamentalism. Neither one is helpful or accurate. What we need is a principled, human rights based critique of Muslim fundamentalism, alongside a principled, human rights based critique of discrimination against Muslims. To paraphrase a brilliant Pakistani colleague, I reject the idea that my choices are limited to accepting either Glenn Beck or the Sharia, and I reserve my right to criticize both. I utterly reject both the would be suicide bombers and the would be Qur’an burners, and neither one can ever justify the actions of the other.
Returning to today’s sad anniversary, I honor the memory of all the 2,976 victims of September 11. They were women, men and children who came from more than 90 countries, from many religious, racial and ethnic backgrounds, and from all walks of life. All are mourned by family and friends. In the current moment, I think about Amenia Rasool (left), a Guyanan-American Muslim woman who worked on the 95th floor of the World Trade Center. (photo credit) I first read about her in The New York Times remembrance section.
I am humbled by the thought of such a terrible death at the hands of Muslim fundamentalists, and compelled by the beautiful complexity of Amenia Rasool’s existence, a life which challenged all simple narratives about what it means to be a Muslim woman in America. Though she had an arranged marriage, she and her husband reportedly shared domestic tasks. She worked as an accountant by day, but in the evening when her chores were done, she was said to enjoy watching taped soap operas and painting her fingernails. All of these things – women working outside the home, dramatic entertainment and use of cosmetics are often prohibited by fundamentalists – sometimes on penalty of death. Meanwhile, many American right-wing racists cannot conceive of a Muslim woman with such a life, nor do those who wave hateful signs in protest against the proposed Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan (“No Islamic Settlements in America”) remember her, even in death. She would have been “the other” to some of these Americans, but was also “the other” for Muslim fundamentalists. It is this complex, multidirectional dynamic that I am trying to name with the title of my article, “Remembering the Other’s Others.”
I am hoping that human rights advocates will remember Amenia Rasool when they conceive of what human rights means in relation to September 11th and its aftermath. This means taking violence by nonstate actors – as well as by states – seriously, as I underscored in my September 11, 2008, post,"Terror/Torture." This means being relentless in demanding accountability for those surviving persons involved in such terrorist atrocities and for the atrocities of response that have followed. This means that we must face up to the menace of Muslim fundamentalism, while (and as one means of) staunchly defending the human rights of Muslims in the United States and beyond. (credit for 2009 photo of protest against Sudanese prosecution of Lubna Hussein for wearing pants)
The task of human rights, it seems to me, must be to create an international community that recognizes the complexity of a life story like Rasool’s, and that protects the Amenia Rasools of the world from all of the kinds of discrimination and coercion and horror and violence they can face – as women, as Muslims, as immigrants, as Americans, as civilians, as people who live these categories as overlapping and intersecting rather than opposing. Rasool left behind four children when she was murdered by Al Qaeda. Let us hope we can make that better world in their lifetime.
A few nights ago, I walked along the Hudson River, transfixed by the beams of the Tribute in Light, streaming upward where the Twin Towers used to stand, in commemoration of the approaching anniversary. (credit for 2009 photo, top left) The powerful illumination filled the sky where the most extreme Muslim fundamentalists had blown a terrible empty hole nine years ago. Despite that grave international crime, and all that has followed, for me these beams of light still reflect the simple promise that we human beings can do better in how we treat one another.

'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

I wait for the day — perhaps when my young grandchildren are adults? — that when an official of the United States government is “believed to be” or “accused of being” Muslim, the response will be: “And?”

-- one Susan Klee, in a letter to the editor published in yesterday's New York Times

Stripping (Women) of Veils, and (Men) of Citizenship

Almost a year ago, I posted on the Sarkozy government's plan to introduce a law prohibiting women from wearing the burqa (right, credit) in public. In February, the government did just that, but on reviewing it, the Conseil d'Etat found there was no "indisputable legal basis" for a comprehensive ban and advised limiting the ban to public buildings. President Sarkozy will nevertheless submit a bill to the council of ministers later this month that contains a blanket ban: "no one may wear in public clothing designed to hide the face," under penalty of a 150-euro fine and/or "citizenship training." The ban would therefore include bandannas and masks worn by protesters, as well as niqabs (left, credit) such as the one worn by a French woman arrested in late April in Nantes for "driving in uncomfortable conditions" (French Vehicle Code art. 412-6). Officers claimed her niqab obstructed her vision; others say motorcycle helmets obstruct vision just as much.
The arrest came shortly after President Sarkozy announced his support for a full ban and intent to try to get around the Conseil d'Etat. Heating up the debate, the Interior Minister announced he would seek to have the woman's companion stripped of his citizenship for possible polygamy and child-welfare benefits fraud, whereupon the Minister of Immigration and National Identity announced plans to provide for a new citizenship-stripping procedure. Such pronouncements have of course been ridiculed: the companion is married to only one of the 4 women with whom he lives and has children. In a land where adultery is not a crime and extramarital relationships, including those that produce children, abound, threatening to strip people of their citizenship for such behavior is comical to say the least. But coming at the same time as Joe Lieberman's plan to strip Americans who join terrorist organizations of their citizenship, you have to wonder if there isn't some kind of nationalist trend afoot: unAmerican, unFrench, un(fill in the nationality) criminal behavior warrants not a criminal penalty, but exclusion from the nationality--a penalty deemed so counter to human dignity that the US Supreme Court held it violated the 8th amendment, as it constituted "the total destruction of the individual's status in organized society" (Trop v Dulles, 1958).
Clearly, a more dignified solution must be found, as anti-Muslim laws stigmatizing women are spreading across Europe. Just last Monday, a veiled woman was stopped in a post office in Novara, in north-western Italy and fined 500 euros for violating Novara's new by-law prohibiting clothing that prevents immediate identification in public. While Italy has banned masks or clothing that makes identification impossible since 1975, the measure is designed to prevent terrorism and the exception for "justified causes" has generally been interpreted as allowing veils. Local governments have begun to introduce stricter measures, however, and the Northern League has submitted a bill to parliament to specifically prohibit Islamic face veils.
Belgium seems poised to win the race to ban veils, however: its law prohibiting masks and veils in public passed in the lower house and is waiting to go before the Senate. Meanwhile, a German Euro-deputy has suggested enforcing such a ban across Europe.
In France, one of the major arguments made against face veils is that they are "an outrage to the dignity of women." Robert Badinter, therefore says he is "entirely in favor" of criminally prosecuting anyone who "pressures a woman into wearing a burqa." This is at least consistent with the principle of protecting women's dignity. But what to do about women who choose to wear veils? And more particularly, women like the driver in Nantes, a French adult convert to Islam whose freedom of choice cannot be said to be compromised by family practices?

The Values of the Veil

(My thanks to IntLawGrrls for the opportunity to contribute this guest post)

On Jan 26th 2010, the widely anticipated Parliamentary Commission Report on the wearing of the voile intégral (face veil) in France was published. The 200 page report includes recommendations for legislative and policy initiatives to deter and limit the practice, which is described as a challenge to the French Republic and to republican values. Against those who question France’s preoccupation with the veil, the Report argues that the veil represents more than a piece of cloth; it reflects a system of values, a set of social and family constraints that weigh on the Muslim woman.
Debates on the wearing of the veil in France have coincided with a consultation on national identity, ‘Le grand débat sur l’identité nationale,’ which the Minister for Immigration, Eric Besson, has said will seek to redefine familiar concepts of citizenship and national belonging. Pre-empting the presentation of the Commission’s Report to Parliament, a leading figure in the governing UMP party, Jean Cope, presented proposals for a sweeping prohibition on the wearing of the face-veil in all public spaces. The Commission’s Report, however, recommends a limited prohibition, restricting the wearing of the face-veil in public services. This recommendation was met with a heated response from Parliament, with some representatives rejecting what they referred to as a ‘demi-loi’ (half-law). By restricting the scope of the proposed prohibition, the Commission hopes that the requirements of proportionality, key to ECHR protections on religious freedom and freedom of expression, will be met. The concern with proportionality, and effectiveness, is evident also in the discussion on enforcement. Rather than proposing the imposition of fines or other penalties for non-compliance, the Report proposes that wearing the face-veil will lead to a refusal of public services, though how this will be enforced in public transportation, for example, is unclear.
What is clear from the Report is that the possibility of a Muslim woman choosing to veil was problematic for the Commission. The Report briefly acknowledges that a multiplicity of motivations may lie behind the wearing of the veil, and that a diverse range of reasons were presented to explain the practice. Ultimately however, this plurality is erased, the wearing of the face-veil, the Report notes, represents: ‘une servitude volontaire, libertes alienées et situations de contraintes.’ Evident also in the Report is a questioning of the normativity of Muslim families. Like Antigone, the veiled Muslim woman represents a non-normative family and a set of kinship relations that do not conform to dominant cultural norms.
The continuing reach of colonial preoccupations is evident in the Commission’s report. In his foreword, the Rapporteur, Eric Raoult recounts a meeting in Damascus with ‘Farah’, a young (of course) veiled woman from Marseille. He concludes his ‘living testimony’ with an emotional appeal: it is ‘pour les yeux de Farah’ (for the eyes of Farah), that he and his fellow Commission members have worked, ‘Farah de Damas, du Koweit ou du Golfe, mais avant tout, Farah de Marseille!’ Not only is this a living testimony, it is a veritable call to arms.
The Report reflects a deep rooted suspicion of multiculturalism, including rights claims asserted by Muslim women to support the practice of veiling. Radical and fundamentalist religious groups stand accused of instrumentalising human rights norms to support their communitarian (non Republican) goals. The appeal to the House of Lords in the 2005 Begum case in the UK, is given as an example of one such communitarian challenge. This criticism falls within France’s broader contestation of minority rights claims, long a feature of its engagement with UN human rights bodies.
Less controversy has surrounded the Report’s proposals on immigration and citizenship laws, reflecting the seeming inevitability and greater legitimacy of coercive measures in this field. The Commission recommends changes to legislation governing immigration and asylum, to explicitly include equality between women and men, and secularism, amongst the values that applicants for family reunification or long-term residence should be familiar with. Drawing on the formula of the Conseil d’État, in its 2008 Silmi decision on naturalisation, the Commission recommends refusal of a residence permit for anyone manifesting a ‘radical religious practice’, incompatible with republican values, including in particular, gender equality. Such a refusal would be justified on grounds of the applicant’s failure to integrate. On citizenship laws, the Commission recommends amending the Civil Code to explicitly provide that a radical religious practice would be considered a failure of assimilation. These proposals build on existing trends in immigration and citizenship law in France, and at the EU level, where recent years have witnessed an expansion in integration testing.
The expansion of integration testing seeks to assess the newcomer’s commitment to liberal democratic ideals, including gender equality. This ‘gender turn’ in citizenship and immigration practices mark a challenging departure and raises questions as to what are the costs of such inclusion. These trends, of course, cannot be divorced from the broader politics, and bio-politics, of the post 9/11 world. With the increasingly aggressive focus on integration, Muslim women in Europe are being placed yet again at the center of the human rights versus Islamic world dialectic.

The Ionesco Awards 2009

It's been two years since we've nominated any government officials for the Ionesco Awards, but this particular piece of news takes the cake of absurdity. Mara Carfagna, Italy's Equal Opportunities Minister, has called in her support of a bill that would ban the wearing of the burqa in Italy. Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi appointed Carfagna to her post in May 2008; her qualifications, beyond an undergraduate degree in law, include participation in the Miss Italia contest, acting, and topless modeling. A self-proclaimed "anti-feminist", Carfagna introduced last year a law criminalizing street prostitution, saying "I don't understand how someone can sell their body in the street for money." As the founder of the Italian Committee for the Rights of Prostitutes astutely noted, Carfagna's position was astounding given her history of earning money by posing nude.
(IntLawGrrl Diane Marie Amann's 2008 post on the appointment of Carfagna and other women to his Cabinet foreshadowed these developments.)
Ironically, in her position as Equal Opportunities Minister, Carfagna has also opposed gay pride marches, claiming that LGBT folks no longer suffer discrimination in Italy and noting her opposition to gay marriage. So it is particularly interesting now to see her using the language of equal rights to support a ban on the burqa and the niqab, which she claims are "symbols of the submission of women and obstacles to integration." Carfagna adds, "There is no room for traditions, mentalities and religions where women are treated as inferiors." In other words, Carfagna's vision of equality protects traditions and mentalities that ask women to show as much skin as possible, but not those that require women to show as little skin as possible. Eugene, we have a winner.

Women's activist prefers prison to fine

'If certain people are going to rely on shari'a law to flog women on account of what they where, they're going to have to show me the passages in the Qu'ran or the hadiths that so stipulate. I have not found them.'

So spoke, a while back, Lubna Hussein (right), who yesterday was convicted of wearing an "indecent outfit," in violation of a Sudanese national law, for having worn pants and a long blouse, along with her headscarf, at a public restaurant in Khartoum. (credit for Agence France-Presse photo) The court did not impose the allowed sentence of 40 lashes; rather, it fined her 500 Sudanese pounds -- a little more than $200. But Hussein refused to pay. She declared that she "preferred to go to prison," and so she did. Lawyers for the journalist and former U.N. consultant said she planned to appeal.
Hussein's statement bore echoes of those by women's activists from another time and place; an account of the 1905 trial of women's suffragists, accused of spitting on a British police officer, includes this passage:

[T]he magistrates returned and announced their decision, which was that for assaulting the police Miss Pankhurst must pay a fine of 10s.6d. and costs, or seven days, and for causing an obstruction in South-street each of the defendants must pay a fine of 5s., or three days.
The Clerk: Have you any goods which may be distrained upon? Both ladies answered in the negative [Christabel Pankhurst was aware of the value of the publicity of the two women being imprisoned, rather than simply paying a fine]. They were taken below. A little later they were taken in a cab to Strangeways Gaol’.

It would be another 2 decades before Pankhurst (above left) (credit) and her colleagues saw the vote extended to all women in Britain.

Taking on Islamophobia

I was pleased to see that Pankaj Mishra has addressed head-on fear mongers like Niall Ferguson and Christopher Caldwell who argue that the increase in Muslim immigration to Europe risks "Islamicization" and the decline of liberal Enlightenment values. In his recent book review, "A culture of fear", Mishra points out not only the statistical inaccuracies but also the political and philosophical flaws of such an approach. In Mishra's words:

Multi-ethnic Europe is an immutable fact, and needs, appropriately, a more inclusive, open-ended identity, one derived more from its pluralistic and relatively peaceful present, and supranational future, than its brutishly nationalist and imperialist past. Writing in 1937 about the minority then most despised in Europe, Joseph Roth predicted that "Jews will only attain complete equality, and the dignity of external freedom, once their 'host nations' have attained their own inner freedom, as well as the dignity conferred by sympathy for the plight of others". This proved to be too much to ask of Europe in 1937. But the moral challenge has not gone away - civilisation remains an ideal rather than an irreversible achievement - and the dangers of leaving it unmet are incalculable.

Well worth a read!

Iran's inexorable sexual revolution

Since the revolution in 1979, when I've thought of Iran, I've thought of the color black: the black of oil, of religious garb, of violent repression. We've all read of Islamic women's "under cover" rebellion: under their veils, many wear sexy underwear or Western clothing, but the movie Persepolis (image at right) and my contact with Iranian friends and colleagues in Paris tended to confirm the black image, This report in Friday's Herald Tribune, by Nazila Fathi, provides a bright and heartening contrast. Fathi writes that the religious revolution led to an information revolution that is leading, slowly yet "inexorably," in the words of Janet Afary (below left) author of Sexual Politics in Modern Iran (2009) and professor of Middle East and women's studies at Purdue University, to a sexual revolution.
Remember that Iranian law provides for male supremacy: while men may be polygamous, forbid their wives from working and divorce them whenever their wish and take custody of any children older than 7, girls as young as 13 can be forced to marry, women inherit from their parents only half what their brothers' do, their word in court counts only half as much as a man's, refusal to cover one's hair can result in a jail term and 80 lashes and stoning is still the legally prescribed punishment for adultery. Despite these obstacles, women are uncovering their rebellion. For example, 1 in 5 marriages now ends in divorce as women from all socio-economic levels refuse to accept their unequal status, which often results in unabated domestic violence. After 1979, somewhat like the draft dodgers of the 1960s, women went to university to postpone, if not avoid, the restrictions of marriage, motherhood and low social status forced upon them by the religious revolution. And religious women who had previously shunned mixed university classrooms came to study once classes were segregated. Thus, in 1982, slightly more than 30% of students were women. Today, even though classrooms are no longer segregated, women make up over 60% of university students. And for those who cannot go to university, satellite TV and the internet have given Iranian women a glimpse of life as men's equals. And seeing is believing: being able to imagine a different reality is the first step to realizing it, and Iranian women and men are now openly questioning sex discrimination. In contrast to a popular movie about a woman denied a divorce despite her husband's adultery, Mehrdad Oskouei (left) has won wide international acclaim for his documentary The Other Side of the Burka, which reveals the plight of women from poor, traditional families on the Iranian island of Qeshm, for whom divorce is no option: rather than go from bad with their husbands to worse with their fathers, these women are committing suicide in increasing numbers.
Yet the 1979 revolution instituted programs to improve literacy, health and infrastructure that have benefited women: sexual segregation meant building schools and universities just for girls and women; improved infrastructure and transportation brought rural and/or poor women to school and big cities, where they gained exposure to different ideas and lifestyles. Then in 1993, to control population growth, the state began requiring engaged couples to attend premarital sex education classes, which included information on birth control. Delayed pregnancies helped shift views about marriage: young people very quickly began to seek compatible partners with whom they could be intimate. Today, they are seeking equality. In 2005, inspired by a similar movement against misogynist laws in Morocco, the Campaign for One Million Signatures began circulating a petition calling for greater equality in the areas of marriage, divorce, adultery and polygamy. Almost 50 of the groups members have been jailed, 6 cannot leave the country and their Iranian website has been blocked 18 times.
Perhaps a sign that, as women's rights advocates claim, differences are less pronounced between religious and secular women, the granddaughter of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Zahra Eshraghi (left, photo credit), signed the Campaign's petition. As both secular and religious Iranian women have become more educated and traveled more -- even attending women's rights conferences -- they've found common ground in their desire for equality. Such news is certainly encouraging, as is the success of a group called Meydaan, whose web reports and videos on stonings embarrassed the government enough for the head of the judiciary to urge judges not to order stonings. Though the number of stonings has thus been reduced, Parliament has not outlawed them and they continue. And due to government backlash against the Campaign for a Million Signatures, collection of those signatures has slowed and is now conducted mostly on the web, as women avoid being seen with campaigners and signing this or any other petition.
Still, Sussan Tahmasebi (left) says she and other women's rights activists have made great strides. One of the Campaign's founding members and one of the 6 subject to a travel ban, Tahmaseb and other members of her group are facing security charges. For her, this is a great achievement: "No one is accusing us of talking against Islam. No one is afraid to talk about more rights for women anymore."

FWB

"FWB" may become a familiar acronym for "Flying While Brown," an outgrowth of the DWB/Driving While Black (or Brown) of previous decades.

The full name's also the title of an op-ed in Britain's Guardian of London regarding the refusal of AirTran airlines to permit a Muslim-American family to fly with them. Author of the op-ed is Wajahat Ali, a former student who, since earning his J.D. at California-Davis, has taken up a successful writing career. (hat tip)

Check it out.

Sabar: The Forbidden Dance

Senegal is a country with two vibrant traditions: Located on Africa's west coast, Senegal's population is ninety-five percent Muslim. But the traditions of the ancestors are an integral part of society. One way such traditions are kept alive is through art and culture. Sabar, a traditional dance and drumming technique, holds pride of place with Senegalese both as a form of expression and as a method of connecting with Senegal's rich past. It is played at weddings, christenings, as well as large family gatherings.

Not every segment of society views Sabar with pride. Since independence in 1960, some of Sabar's dance steps have been banned by various governments for being too sexually explicit. Muslim leaders have repeatedly denounced Sabar, and in the more fundamentalist regions of Senegal, the dance is simply forbidden. Sabar is under siege, but it persists.

The ban on Sabar also has gendered implications. Whenever the explosive combination of sex and religion meet, women always seem to find themselves in harms way. Recently, a famous female traditional dancer was tried and condemned for dancing the Sabar (the presiding judge was also a woman.)

Thankfully, with the advent of 21st century technology--and yes, globalization--the Senegalese are able to share the rich cultural heritage of Sabar with the world. Attached below is a short YouTube clip detailing the dance steps (for the prurient among us, the "objectionable" steps begin at 2:39!)]. The second clip is a short and excellent documentary exploring gender issues, Islam, and the Sabar in Senegal.


The Forbidden Steps of the Sabar:




Sabar and Women: A Documentary






Heart felt thank you to IntLawGrrl guest/alumna Fatou Kiné Camara for information on this important issue!

Sharia Courts in the UK

According to this week's Sunday Times, the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal has set up five Sharia courts throughout the United Kingdom. These courts hear solely civil cases, including divorce, domestic violence, and inheritance cases. The Sharia courts have been classified as arbitration tribunals under the same provision of the 1996 Arbitration Act used by Jewish Beth Din courts, which have resolved civil cases in Britain for over 100 years. As long as "both parties in the dispute agree to give it the power to rule on their case", the decision of an arbitration tribunal is legally binding and enforceable through British county courts or the High Court.
While Muslim women who choose to use these Sharia courts for family law disputes are surely capable adults entitled to make their own decisions, the track record of the courts on women's rights thus far is concerning. For example, in a recent inheritance case, the court divided a man's estate by giving twice as much to his two sons as it did to his three daughters. And in six recent domestic violence cases, the court ordered the husbands to take anger management classes and participate in mentoring with community elders; the women withdrew their complaints from the police, who stopped investigations.
Can these courts be reconciled with British and European laws protecting gender equality? Given that participation requires consent of both parties, it may be difficult to find a plaintiff to challenge the courts' unequal treatment of women. Perhaps a more fruitful course is suggested by Zareen Roohi Ahmed, the chief executive of the British Muslim Forum, an umbrella organization for mosques in the UK. Noting that sharia courts in Britain are still poorly organised, she proposes that the government support professionalization of the courts, including "female involvement . . . on the decision-making panels . . . and a wider range of scholars and academics involved to put more thought into making the rules and regulations applicable to today's society." It's a thorny problem, to be sure, but by engaging with these courts rather than shutting them down, the British government might, in the end, protect the rights of more women.

Cross-posted on Concurring Opinions

Terror/Torture

In the face of terrorism, human rights law’s requirement that states “respect and ensure” rights necessitates that states take active steps to safeguard their populations from violent attack, but in so doing do not violate rights. Security experts usually emphasize the aspect of ensuring rights while human rights advocates largely focus on respecting rights. The trick, which neither side in the debate has adequately referenced, is that states have to do both at the same time. Hence, both our contemporary human rights and security discourses on terrorism need to be broadened and renewed. This renewal should be informed by the understanding that international human rights law protects the individual both from terrorism and the excesses of counterterrorism, like torture. To develop this thesis, my article Terror/Torture, 26 Berkeley Journal of International Law 1 (2008), explored the philosophical overlap between both terrorism and torture and their normative prohibitions. As I explain in this, my 1st IntLawGrrls post, the article aims to spark the development of a new human rights approach to terrorism by suggesting new discourses around the paradigm of terror/torture.
The seventh anniversary of the atrocities of September 11, 2001 (above right), is perhaps an appropriate time to stress that, in addition to continuing their work to criticize state practices in the context of the “war on terror,” international human rights lawyers need to develop an analysis of and specific response to the phenomenon of Muslim fundamentalism and affiliated transnational jihadist movements. The response to Muslim fundamentalism needs to be developed in the context of assessing other fundamentalisms – Christian, Jewish, Hindu – as well. (For an example, see the website of Women Living Under Muslim Laws/Femmes sous les lois musulmanes.)
Moreover, any such analysis and response need to be free from discrimination against Muslims – but not by pretending that the particular and grave challenge to international law from these fundamentalist and jihadist movements does not exist. Their primary victims, as the U.S. National Strategy for Combating Terrorism acknowledges, are other Muslims and people of Muslim heritage or those who live in the Muslim world. However, as that Strategy fails to acknowledge – but as Robert Dreyfuss explains in his 2005 book, Devil's Game – Western policies in the region have historically contributed to the rise of these movements. The social project of these movements also poses a particular threat to women’s human rights, as is evident from even a cursory glance at the website entitled Secularism is a Women's Issue.
Today’s somber anniversary is a good time to remember the importance of human rights support for those in the Muslim world and Diaspora Muslim populations who have exposed and opposed Muslim fundamentalist terrorism and whose human rights have been imperiled as a result. One example is Cherifa Kheddar (above left), the president of Djazairouna, an association of Algerian victims of Islamist terrorism. Kheddar’s brother and sister were both murdered by Algeria’s fundamentalist armed groups during the terrible 1990s. Since then, she has worked tirelessly in one of the most dangerous parts of the country to support victims of terrorism – and to demand justice for them. In addition to enduring the ongoing threat posed by the resurgent terrorism of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which seeks to rekindle the horrors of the 1990s in Algeria, Kheddar has also been penalized by the Algerian government for her opposition to an amnesty that was given to both non-state and government perpetrators. As is detailed here and here, she was demoted in her government job, and may lose her government housing (a very difficult sanction in Algeria’s impossible housing situation).
Another imperiled and important opponent of jihadist terrorism is the Algerian journalist Mohamed Sifaoui (left), who is known for his infiltration of Al Qaeda in Europe, which produced a celebrated exposé. Sifaoui is also an outspoken advocate of women’s rights. He was reportedly attacked by two men with links to Algerian armed groups on the streets of Paris in June. A civil society campaign currently seeks to have his French police protection reinstated. (See here and here.)
The real struggle against terrorism – as opposed to the “war on terror” which has so challenged international law – is a human rights struggle carried out in part by people like these with their voices and pens and organizing efforts. The only way such efforts can succeed is with sustained and thoughtful support from human rights advocates. Counterterrorist policies that violate international law clearly undermine the endeavors of people like Sifaoui and Kheddar. But a human rights response that focuses solely on the impact of counterterrorism, and not of terrorism itself, hinders their work as well. Instead, international lawyers need to develop what Gita Sahgal has called a “human rights account” of terrorism. Perhaps that could be our best contribution to commemorating the terrible events of September 11, 2001.

"Me without my hijab"

"Me without my hijab." That's the title of a fascinating op-ed in yesterday's Los Angeles Times. In it Iraq-born author Zainab Mineeia tells of her decision to begin studies at the University of California, Davis, sans cover. Her parents supported her decision; indeed, Mineeia's father advised:

'My daughter, when you arrive at the Jordanian airport, take your hijab off and fold it in your bag. There is no need to wear it anymore.'

Yet the move came with consequences -- self-doubt, disapproval from another Iranian abroad.

Well worth a read as the issues of Islamic tradition remain controversial, as evident, to cite 2 examples, in Naomi Norberg's post yesterday and in news that Turkey's Constitutional Court's thwarted "a government move to lift a ban on Muslim headscarves in universities."