We Should Defend Women’s Right to Wear The Hijab & Also to Take it Off

February 6, 2018 Article

As powers in Iran realise the futility in enforcing morality on women through the Hijab, a report just released shows how views have changed within the country with many Iranians believing that wearing the Hijab should be a personal choice and not state sanctioned or enforced. 

Indeed, such has been the courage of some women in standing without the Hijab in Iran that their simple actions have seemed to shake the foundations of the theocratic state. A simple action by some Iranian women has shown the futility of the state sanctioning of religion on the clothes and dress of citizens. It is those men in theocratic positions in Iran who feel fear now and not those women who risked their personal safety in taking off the Hijab.

So, just as we defend the right for women to take off religious clothing and symbolism, we understand that within different countries, women may also choose to put on the Hijab through choice. Choice is the fundamental word here. In the UK, many Muslim women have made the choice to wear the Hijab and that choice as to cover their bodies or not should be defended.

Much of the debate about the Hijab is polarising into the ‘for’ or ‘against’ camp, which is not helpful and misses the very fact that many Muslim women make that choice without parental pressure. In relation to children, this simple and straightforward rule becomes more difficult within public institutions such as schools. At the moment, there is a much heated debate about school uniforms and the Hijab, much of which is not bringing communities together or indeed, to a point of listening to each other. 

Just as we respect the choice of a woman to wear the Hijab in the UK, so we should respect the choice of a woman to take it off in countries like Iran. Taking off the Hijab does not make a Muslim woman less Muslim, nor does it entitle anyone to moralise about her body. Additionally, anyone who believes that taking off the Hijab makes a Muslim woman less Muslim, actually is part of the problem and not the solution. For in the end, the link with faith is a personal one and no state, nor any male dominated theocracy can change that simple fact.

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Categories: Hijab, Iran, Iranian, Muslim women, Opinions, theocracy

Israeli minister ‘honoured’ to be barred from Poland over Holocaust bill

February 6, 2018 Article

Israel’s education minister said on Monday he was “honoured” Poland had cancelled his visit to Warsaw this week because he refused to back off of condemnation of a bill that would outlaw suggesting Poland was complicit in the Holocaust.

Earlier on Monday, Naftali Bennett said he would travel to Poland to discuss the bill, which Israeli officials have said amounts to Holocaust denial. However Poland’s government spokeswoman said there would be no such visit.

“The blood of Polish Jews cries from the ground, and no law will silence it,” Bennett later said in a statement. “The government of Poland cancelled my visit, because I mentioned the crimes of its people. I am honoured.”

After Bennett’s statement, the government spokeswoman declined to comment further on the issue.

Israel has denounced the Polish Holocaust bill, which passed in parliament last week and is awaiting a decision by President Andrzej Duda over whether to sign it.

The Polish measure would impose prison sentences of up to three years for mentioning the term “Polish death camps” and for suggesting “publicly and against the facts” that the Polish nation or state was complicit in Nazi Germany’s crimes.

Poland’s rightwing nationalist government says the bill is necessary to protect the reputation of Poles as victims of Nazi aggression. Israel says the law would ban true statements about the role that some Poles played in Nazi crimes.

The bill has drawn criticism from the United States and condemnation from a number of international organisations as well as Polish minority groups.

Poland, which had Europe’s biggest Jewish population when it was invaded by both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union at the start of World War Two, became ground zero for the “final solution”, Hitler’s plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe.

More than three million of Poland’s 3.2 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, accounting for about half of the Jews killed in the Holocaust. Jews from across the continent were sent to be killed at death camps built and operated by Germans in Poland, including Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor.

According to figures from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Nazis also killed at least 1.9 million non-Jewish Polish civilians.

“The death camps in Poland were built and operated by the Germans, and we cannot allow them to evade responsibility for these actions,” Bennett said.

“However, many Polish people, all over the country, chased, informed or actively took part in the murder of over 200,000 Jews during, and after, the Holocaust. Only a few thousand people, Righteous Among the Nations, risked themselves to save Jews.”

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Categories: Bergen Belsen, Concentration camps, Education Minister, Israel, Naftali Bennett, News, Sobibor