Sara Jayyousi, now 15, was just 9 years old when her father, Kifah, was arrested in March 2005 and charged with providing material support to terrorists and with conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim in a foreign country. The charges against him were the result of charitable contributions he made to an organization in Bosnia in the 1990s. Prior to his arrest, Kifah had been chief facilities director for the Washington, D.C., public school system, and then an adjunct professor at Wayne State University. He had also served in the U.S. Navy. When he was convicted in 2007, the judge noted for the record that there was no evidence linking Sara’s dad to specific acts of violence anywhere. The judge also said that he was “the kind of neighbor that people would want in a community.” In June 2008, Kifah was transferred to the federal Communications Management Unit (CMU) in Terre Haute, Ind.

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The ruling from the Council of Senior Scholars explained, "It is necessary to keep away from places where men congregate. Women should look for decent work that does not make it possible for them to attract men or be attracted by men." Way to give women options! According to my calculations, that leaves three choices: 1.) Don't work, 2.) Work from home or 3.) Work at an all-female business. As for the final option, take into consideration that men are allowed to fill gigs at even the most lady-centric of stores -- like lingerie shops (although there is a female-led protest underway against male panty purveyors).

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The Orthodox Council is taking a stand on principle, but it's also fueled by fear that Jewish religious practices will be targeted next. It's a reasonable concern: If the government outlaws Quebecers from veiling in certain contexts, what's to stop it from forbidding any number of the sartorial symbols of Hasidim? Indeed, if the bill is passed with the intent of strictly maintaining secularism, one would expect other religious expressions to be outlawed as well.

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There is no actual anti-hijab clause in Turkey's Constitution, "but through a tricky piece of legal interpretation coined 'interpretative refusal,' the headscarf has always fallen into a gray area," explains the MinnPost. Some universities have taken to exploiting that gray area, but no more -- at least not at Istanbul University, for now.

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There is no getting around the reality that in some cases, particularly those involving trial by jury where a witness's credibility is central to the outcome, a judge will have a difficult decision to make. If, in the specific circumstances, the accused's fair trial right can be honoured only by requiring the witness to remove the niqab, the niqab must be removed if the witness is to testify.

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The Council on American-Islamic Relations said Monday that 22-year-old Noor Abdallah was told she couldn't wear the hijab while working as a vacation planner at a Disneyland Resort Esplanade ticket booth. She declined to take another job away from the public.

Disneyland spokeswoman Suzi Brown says the park worked with Abdallah to design a covering to match her costume and meet her religious needs. She's been wearing a blue scarf topped with a beret since early this month.

Brown says the case is separate from that of another Muslim Disney worker who refused to accept a costume headpiece and filed a federal discrimination complaint.

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[T]o use freedom of choice as a justification, then we are also accepting of women who undress out of this same freedom of choice, and we can never do this as Muslim women. We dress like this because it is the command of Allah, not any man.

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Sarkozy's anti-veil campaign just might succeed, but he won't be able to fine these burqa-clad models.

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What else could he choose, he says, after a summer remembered not for its reasoned debate, but for epithets, smears, even violence?

As he writes, Zulfiqar frets over the potential fallout and what he and other Muslim leaders can do about it. Will young Muslims conclude they are second-class citizens in the U.S. now and always?

"They're already struggling to balance, 'I'm American, I'm Muslim,' and their ethnic heritage. It's very disconcerting," said Zulfiqar, 32, who worked for former U.S. Sen. Max Cleland, a Georgia Democrat, and now serves Penn's campus ministry. "A controversy like this can make them radical or become more conservative in how they look at things or how they fit into the American picture."

Whatever the outcome, the uproar over a planned Islamic center near the former World Trade Center site is shaping up as a signal event in the story of American Islam.

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The answer is quite simple, it's because I'm a woman, it's because they think they can do anything to women in this country. It's because for them adultery is worse than murder -- but not all kinds of adultery: an adulterous man might not even be imprisoned but an adulterous women is the end of the world for them. It's because I'm in a country where it's women do not have the right to divorce their husbands and are deprived of their basic rights. 

"It's because I'm a woman" -- now, that's just all there is to say about that.

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If all is truly as it seems, then the agents didn't follow the airline's usual practice of ID'ing all passengers at the final checkpoint before boarding a flight. In the case of veiled women, Air Canada trains employees to conduct a screening in a private area. That said, an airline spokesperson told the Vancouver Sun: "In Canada, airline passenger screening is the responsibility of [Canadian Air Transport Security Authority] and passengers have already undergone multiple security checks before arriving at the gate." But Federal Transport Minister John Baird was quick to voice strong disapproval: "If the reports are true, the situation is deeply disturbing and poses a serious threat to the security of the air traveling public."

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Critics, including some American evangelicals, complain that the document carves out too many exceptions for the country's Muslim minority and could create tensions between Muslims and Christians.

Creating a new constitution was a key part of a power-sharing deal that ended weeks of bloody riots 2 1/2 years ago. More than 1,000 people were killed in the violence after a disputed presidential election.

But the inclusion of the publicly funded Muslim courts has galvanized opposition among some Christians ahead of next Wednesday's vote. A clause in the bill -- which polls show is likely to pass -- grants equality to women, as long as it doesn't interfere with the application of Muslim law.

"All Kenyans should have the same rights regardless of ethnicity, religion or gender," said Oliver Kisaka, the deputy general secretary of the National Council of Churches in Kenya. "This is the unfair creation of a system within a system. And why should taxpayers pay for a judicial system that doesn't include them?"

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Sheikh Ayedh al-Garni spoke out against the proposed ban, calling it "illogical and unreasonable," but conceded: "In case a ban is enforced against a Muslim woman there -- and as a consequence there is a reaction or negative implications or harassment or harm -- it is better for the Muslim woman to reveal her face." It isn't the most generous fatwa, considering that if the French law passes, they won't have much of a choice, regardless.

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It all began last month when Sheikh Mohamed Sayed Tantawi, head of Al Azhar University, visited a secondary school and ordered a female student to take off her full face veil. The niqab, he said, "is a tradition, it has no connection with religion.” Later, to drive home his point, he issued a fatwa against the niqab. Now, conservatives are speaking out against what they call a violation of their religious freedom. Rokaya Mohamed, a teacher at a state-run elementary school, wears the full face veil and told Reuters she would "rather die than take it off." She added: "I know what makes God and his prophet love me, and no sheikh is going to convince me otherwise."

She, and others like her, are especially uninterested in following the guidance of a state-supported cleric like Tantawi, who is part and parcel to the government's attempt to fight the growing influence of Islamism, particularly from Gulf states. The majority of Egyptian women choose to cover their hair, according to Reuters, but more and more women are opting for the severe niqab. As they do, more and more attempts are made to stamp out the practice. And so it goes -- round and round, where it stops nobody knows.

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Atheer Jassem al-Othman, an 18-year-old law student, tells the Times' Katherine Zoepf that two female classmates recently brought in photos of themselves disguised as boys. Zoepf writes:

In the pictures, the girls wore thobes, the ankle-length white garments traditionally worn by Saudi men, and had covered their hair with the male headdresses called shmaghs. One of the girls had used an eyeliner pencil to give herself a grayish, stubble-like mist along her jaw line.

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Emadi spoke to Broadsheet by phone from his Los Angeles home about the burqa, feminist art and receiving death threats.

I saw your "Islamic Erotica" series mentioned in an online discussion of "veil fetish art." Does your work belong in that category?

© Makan Emadi

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OK, Muslim women aren't exactly boxing in burqas, but they are knocking each other out in the ring while wearing hijabs. The Age reports that women's boxing has emerged in certain Middle Eastern countries -- like Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Syria and Tunisia. Keep in mind, though, that women's boxing in the Middle East hasn't arisen because of changing attitudes toward women but because of changing sporting standards -- a country cannot enter male boxers into Olympic competitions unless it has a women's team in the same sport.

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I'm sure this isn't the last we'll hear from Aziz, who previously suggested that Malaysian women only wear lipstick or perfume if they felt like getting raped. Shine on, you crazy cleric, shine on.

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