Eideard

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Syria has banned the face-covering Islamic veil from the country’s universities.

The Education Ministry’s ban on the niqab comes as similar moves in Europe spark cries of discrimination against Muslims.

An official at the ministry says the ban affects public and private universities and aims to protect Syria’s secular identity…

Sunday’s ban does not affect the headscarf, which many Syrian women wear.

The niqab is not widespread in Syria, although it has become more common recently. It’s growing popularity has not gone unnoticed in a country governed by a secular, authoritarian regime.

Last month, hundreds of primary school teachers who wear the niqab were moved to administrative jobs, local media reported.

Probably less of an uproar in the Middle East than in Western democracies. For more reasons than the obvious.

It feels good to catch a little breeze in summertime

Iranian police have issued warnings to 62,000 women who were “badly veiled” in the Shiite holy province of Qom as part of a crackdown on dress and behaviour.

Colonel Mehdi Khorasani, the provincial police chief, said police had also confiscated around 100 cars for carrying improperly dressed women and said that “encouraging such relaxations are among the objectives of the enemy.”

The population of Qom is more than one million, with most of them concentrated in the city itself which is Shiite Iran’s clerical nerve-centre.

By law, women in the Islamic republic must be covered from head to foot, with their hair completely veiled and social interaction is banned between men and women who are not related.

Iran is known particularly for summertime crackdowns on improperly dressed women but the issue has sparked debate after the hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he “firmly” opposed the crackdown…

His remarks have drawn the wrath of fellow hardliners and several top clerics who have criticised him for opposing the police crackdown…

Meanwhile, like any theocracy, individual sects and their ideological pimps leaders joust to assume the mantle of living prophet.

A French Muslim threatened with being stripped of his passport for practicing polygamy on Monday denied the accusation, saying he had only one wife and several mistresses.

The case of Lies Hebbadj, an Algerian-born butcher who became a French citizen when he married a French woman in 1999, has flared into a major political row with opposition parties accusing the government of exploiting the situation.

Hebbadj’s story came to light on Friday, when his wife complained she had been fined for driving while wearing an Islamic veil on the grounds that it was dangerous.

Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux accused Hebbadj of having four wives, who between them were claiming single parent benefits for his 12 children…

Hebbadj said only one was his wife and the others were lovers.

“If one can be stripped of one’s French nationality for having mistresses, then many French could lose theirs,” he told reporters in the Western city of Nantes, where he lives…

Local authorities on Monday launched an official investigation into the polygamy and benefit fraud claims.

One of the few situations where a trite phrase like “Damned if you do – Damned if you don’t” – fits.

A French Muslim woman has been fined for wearing a full-face veil while driving a car.

Police in the western city of Nantes said the veil – which showed only her eyes – restricted her vision and could have caused an accident.

The woman’s lawyer says they will appeal against the decision, which he described as a breach of human rights…

After stopping the 31-year-old woman – who has not been named – police asked her to raise her veil to confirm her identity, which she did.

They then fined her 22 euros, saying her clothing posed a “safety risk“.

“This fine is not justified on road safety grounds and constitutes a breach of human and women’s rights,” her lawyer, Jean-Michel Pollono, told AFP news agency.

He said the woman’s field of vision was not obstructed and added that a veil was no different from a motorcycle helmet in terms of hindrance to vision…

“The ball is clearly in the authorities’ court,” he said. “Currently no law forbids the wearing of the niqab…”

Think about it. Reflect. Who has reason on their side?

The French government has refused to grant citizenship to a foreign national on the grounds that he forced his wife to wear the full Islamic veil.

The man, whose current nationality was not given, needed citizenship to settle in the country with his French wife.

But Immigration Minister Eric Besson said this was being refused because he was depriving his wife of the liberty to come and go with her face uncovered.

In a statement, Mr Besson said he had signed a decree on Tuesday rejecting a man’s citizenship application after it emerged that he had ordered his wife to cover herself with a head-to-toe veil.

“It became apparent during the regulation investigation and the prior interview that this person was compelling his wife to wear the all-covering veil, depriving her of the freedom to come and go with her face uncovered, and rejected the principles of secularism and equality between men and women,” he said.

Later, the minister stressed that French law required anyone seeking naturalisation to demonstrate their desire for integration.

The interior ministry says only 1,900 women wear full veils in France, home to Europe’s biggest Muslim minority.

France is serious about being a secular state. They don’t pick and choose among religions for acceptable and not-so-acceptable the way many nations do.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures

A judge has ordered a Toronto woman to testify without her niqab at a sexual assault trial – raising the thorny issue of whether Muslim women should be allowed to appear as witnesses wearing a veil that covers everything but the eyes.

The issue is a collision of two rights, pitting religious freedom against the right of a defendant to face an accuser in open court…

In October, Ontario Court Justice Norris Weisman reached his “admittedly difficult decision” to force the complainant to testify with her face bared after finding her “religious belief is not that strong … and that it is, as she says, a matter of comfort,” he wrote in his ruling…

In his judgment, Weisman wrote “at the 11th hour we learned … she has a driver’s licence with her unveiled facial impression upon it.” She told court she took comfort the picture was taken by a female and there was a screen between her and potential male onlookers.

But Weisman wrote the “driver’s licence can be required to be produced by all sorts of males,” such as police officers and border guards…

Debate about Muslim women and head coverings has surfaced in recent years over girls wearing the hijab to play sports and whether voters must show their faces.

Alia Hogben, executive director of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women, said, in court “the laws of the country should be acceptable,” and although it is important that “sensitivity be shown … showing the face is acceptable.”

Civil law takes precedence over religious custom. At least in a civilized secular democracy.