Turkey: Despite New Law, Students in Hijab Still Being Denied Entrance into Some Universities

Sabiha Gimen, the student profiled in this article, tests whether or not she will be able to enter her university wearing her hijab that covers her neck and ears, rather than tying it under her chin in the “secular granny” manner. The guard at the university gate refused to let her enter, despite the new law permitting hijab in universities. Change comes slowly…

In Turkey, Students Test a New Policy on Head Scarves

Ellen Knickmeyer (Washington Post)

… Monday was the first day of classes since Turkey’s president, Abdullah Gul, a member of the Islamic-oriented Justice and Development Party, signed into law Friday a constitutional amendment lifting a ban on wearing head scarves at public universities. In a bow to the secular principles of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, Gul’s administration stipulated that women could wear onto campus only scarves that were tied in a bow under the chin.

Turks regard that style as traditional, in contrast to Islamic styles that cover a woman’s hair and neck completely, as some Muslims believe their religion prescribes…..

6 Things to Do Before You Turn 18

I’ve been tagged by homeyra to write about 6 things everyone should do before they turn 18.

Good topic!

Here are the rules of the game:

1. Post these rules before presenting your list.
2. List 6 actions or achievements you think every person should accomplish before turning 18.
3. There are no conditions on what can be included on the list.
4. At the end of your blog, choose 6, or fewer, people to get tagged and list their names.
5. People who are tagged write their own blog entry with their 6 suggestions.
6. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged.

Well, I haven’t decided whether or not I’ll tag anyone. But, here’s my list of Things to Do Before You Turn 18:

1. Read, read, read. Anything you can. As much as you can. History, literature, science — and read the newspaper.

2. This one is related to #1: Get to know your local librarian. He or she is your ally in the quest for knowledge.

3. Go to school. Stay in school. Learn as much as you can, even if in your ignorance, you think it is all “irrelevant.”

4. Travel as much as you are able. And when you travel, try to meet the “locals”. Stay off the beaten path.

5. Dabble in the arts. Try to learn how to play at least 1 musical instrument. Sing. Paint. Create something.

6. Be a diarist — the old fashioned “on paper” kind. Who knows? Today’s foolishness might be tomorrow’s history! (Well, probably not, but a habit of daily writing will benefit you in the long run. Plus you’ll have a nice legacy to leave your kids and grandkids, should you choose to do so.)

Afghanistan: Taliban Threatening to Bomb Cell Phone Companies

As part of their continuing effort to usher Afghanistan back to the stone age, the Taliban is now threatening to attack cell phone company offices and towers. Seems the Taliban discovered that their nocturnal movements can be tracked based on which towers their signals hit. (There’s an easy fix for that, of course: Turn off da phone!)

Taliban Threatens Afghan Cellphone Companies

Taimoor Shah (New York Times)

The Taliban has demanded that all four cellphone companies in Afghanistan cease operating during night hours or face attacks on their offices and communication towers, according to a statement released to journalists on Monday.

The statement, issued by a Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, complained that NATO and American forces in Afghanistan, which it called “occupying forces,” were tracking the whereabouts of militants through their mobile phones and conducting espionage through cellphones….

Indonesia: Mass Trances Among Women, Girls in Factories and Schools

Mass trance afflicts Indonesian women, factory workers

Sunanda Creagh (Reuters)

… Reports of schoolchildren, young women and factory workers going into mass trances or speaking in tongues are common across Indonesia’s vast archipelago of 226 million people.

The phenomenon may provide an outlet for stress, some experts say. In many cultures, it is part of a religious or spiritual experience, whether in the voodoo trances of Haiti, the mass hysteria of Europe’s witch trials, or Christianity’s exorcisms….

Pakistan: YouTube Blocked

Pakistan bans YouTube over anti-Islamic film clips
Sadaqat Jan (The Guardian)… The [Pakistan Telecommunications Authority] did not specify what the offensive material was, but a PTA official said the ban concerned a trailer for an forthcoming film by Dutch politician Geert Wilders. The film portrays Islam as a fascist religion prone to inciting violence against women and homosexuals….

… The PTA urged internet users to write to YouTube and request the removal of the films, saying that the authorities would stop blocking the video-sharing site once that had happened….

Even with YouTube blocked, those wanting to see the Geert Wilders video will have other sources. And I doubt that YouTube will remove the video regardless of how many requests they get.

*********

UPDATE: Turns out this censorship effort ended badly…

Pakistan Blamed for Worldwide YouTube Break

Mike Nizza (New York Times Blog)

If all had gone according to plan, Pakistan would have been the latest government taking part in an unsettling trend from Brazil to Thailand: YouTube blocking. Unlike its predecessors, though, Pakistan also affected thousands of people beyond its borders.

In case you were wondering on Sunday why you couldn’t watch the video clip of the moment — President Nicolas Sarkozy telling a man to “get lost” — YouTube’s answer was simple: Pakistan. Here is what the company had to say, via CNet:

“For about two hours, traffic to YouTube was routed according to erroneous Internet Protocols,” said YouTube spokesperson Ricardo Reyes in a statement. “Many users around the world could not access our site. We have determined that the source of these events was a network in Pakistan. We are investigating and working with others in the Internet community to prevent this from happening again….”

Pakistan: “Peshawar Spring” Follows Ouster of Conservative Parties

Pakistanis dream of a peaceful life as hardliners routed in Peshawar

Music and dancing are back as a poll landslide for secular parties brings a vibrant change to the North-West Frontier

Jason Burke (The Observer)

… The landslide triggered what some are now calling the ‘Peshawar Spring’. The term may be a little exaggerated, but, for a troubled town pivotal to the ‘war on terror’, the normally dour and dusty provincial capital of NWFP certainly wears an unusually cheerful face this weekend. ‘You can see it in the way people are walking and talking, even smiling,’ said Iqbal Khattak, the editor of a local newspaper. Outside his office, unseasonable warm weather has tricked fruit trees into blossoming early. ‘We are having two early springs here: one is the climate, the other the politics.’

In the bazaars and on the streets, change is already visible – and audible. Though the Islamic law bill that the hardliners passed in the provincial parliament was blocked at national level, the clerics were able to ban music in public places or on public transport. Now the sounds of local Pashtun folk music and Punjabi Bhangra are back – first in the street celebrations every evening last week, and then as the province’s thousands of bus drivers once again slipped a cassette or CD into the stereos of their overloaded and over-decorated vehicles. ‘Now I have music, I love my job again,’ said Ashraf Mohmandi, one of the local drivers. ‘I can breathe once more….’

Muslim Leaders to Issue A Call for Positive and Constructive Action to Improve Muslim/Jewish Relations

Muslim leaders issue letter to improve relations with Jewish community

Ruth Gledhill (The London Times)

Muslim leaders from around the world will tomorrow issue a statement to the world’s Jewish Community in “a call for positive and constructive action that aims to improve Muslim – Jewish relations.”

In the letter, which has emerged from the Muslim-Jewish study centre at the Woolf Institute of Abrahamic Faiths in Cambridge, Muslim scholars admit: “Many Jews and Muslims today stand apart from each other due to feelings of anger, which in some parts of the world, translate into violence.

“It is our contention that we are faced today not with ‘a clash of civilizations’ but with ‘a clash of ill-informed misunderstandings’….”

UAE: Human Trafficking Difficult to Eradicate

Trafficking tough to tame in rich Gulf states

Lin Noueihed (Reuters)

Aysha sold her wedding gold to pay traffickers $200 to find her and a cousin jobs in Dubai. A world away from her village in Uzbekistan, she was forced to work in a disco and expected to offer sex.

Beaten by her Uzbek boss when she shooed prospective clients away, she and her cousin fled and hid in airport toilets for two days, surviving on tap water.

Aysha’s story reveals the dark underbelly of glitzy, fast-paced Dubai, the Gulf Arab trade and tourism hub. It also highlights a problem that bedevils many states in the region and is a bone of contention with their close ally the United States.

USA, UT: Muslim Airport Cabbies Denied Access to “Quiet Space” for Prayers

Fallout over airport prayer space exposes deep tensions

Jessica Ravitz (The Salt Lake Tribune)

In the aftermath of 9/11, Pete Dixon’s job changed. The then-new airport express shuttle driver said he found himself, with other Christians, standing as a human wall between praying Muslim cabbies and the traffic that sped by them.

Between the racial slurs and thrown bottles, it was the least Dixon, now 63, could do for his new friends, who as Muslims pray five times a day.

“They need to get back inside,” he recently called out from his van, where take-out Somali food sat beside him. “This [building] has been a model of good relations, and that’s been spoiled…”

Compare the actions of Pete Dixon, a decent man, with those of Jeffrey Brueningsen (described later in the article): a prejudiced, uncivil man offended by the sight of prayer rugs and of those who pray.

UK: Radio Salaam Shalom Celebrates First Year on the Air

UK’s first Muslim/Jewish radio station celebrates year of success

* (Asian News) *

More than 50 volunteers are celebrating dialogue and programme-making as Radio Salaam Shalom marks its first year as the UK’s only Muslim and Jewish radio station.

After its launch in February 2007, the Bristol-based internet station – http://www.salaamshalom.org.uk – has become the broadcast platform for discussion, debate and new ideas between the UK Jewish and Muslim communities, but has also gained a global following. In the past 12 months, listeners from the USA, Middle and Far East, and Australia have joined Radio Salaam Shalom’s UK audience….

USA: Macedonian Muslim to Teach Course on Contemporary Islam at Hebrew Union College

Hebrew Union College funds Muslim scholar’s rescue

Brad A. Greenberg (Jewish Journal)

Students at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) were surprised to learn last month that for the first time their professor for a course in contemporary Islam was, in fact, a Muslim.

Ismail Bardhi had arrived as a refugee a few weeks before through the college’s Scholar Rescue Fund. The former dean of the faculty of Islamic Studies in Skopje, Macedonia, Bardhi was beaten and stripped of his title because he refused to cede to the vision of Kosovar nationalists, who in rising to power were marginalizing secular Muslims and “Islamic humanists” like Bardhi…

USA: Muslim Student Association Encompasses Increasingly Diverse Membership

For Muslim Students, a Debate on Inclusion

Neil MacFarquhar (New York Times)

… The intense debate over whether organizations for Muslim students should be inclusive or strict is playing out on college campuses across the United States, where there are now more than 200 Muslim Students Association chapters.

Gender issues, specifically the extent to which men and women should mingle, are the most fraught topic as Muslim students wrestle with the yawning gap between American college traditions and those of Islam.

“There is this constant tension between becoming a mainstream student organization versus appealing to students who have a more conservative or stricter interpretation of Islam,” said Hadia Mubarak, the first woman to serve as president of the national association, from 2004 to 2005.

Each chapter enjoys relative autonomy in setting its rules. Broadly, those at private colleges tend to be more liberal because they draw from a more geographically dispersed population, and the smaller numbers prompt Muslim students to play down their differences….

Iraq: Strangers in Their Own Land

Though nominally part of Iraq, Kurdistan treats Iraqi Arab refugees as aliens, requiring them to register and report to the authorities every 3 months.

Iraqi Arabs face restrictions when they move to Kurdistan

Leila Fadel (McClatchy Newspapers)

Every three months, Munawer Fayeq Rashid goes to the Asayech, an intelligence security agency in Irbil , and hands over his identification. The Shiite Muslim Arab never goes alone. He has to bring a Kurdish sponsor to vouch for him.

Although Irbil is part of Iraq , Iraqi Arabs who move here or elsewhere in Iraqi Kurdistan have learned that they’re not considered fellow Iraqis.

“They treat us like foreigners,” Rashid said.

When he moved to Irbil from Baghdad , worried about the safety of his Kurdish wife and his children, Rashid had to find a Kurd who’d swear that he was a good man. Then Kurdish authorities questioned him intensely before issuing him a residency permit that’s good for only three months. He must carry it with him everywhere….

Saudi Arabia: First Offically Sanctioned Film Festival Slated for May 2008

Saudi ‘to hold first official film contest in May’

(Agence France Presse)

Ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia, where movie theatres are banned, will hold its first official film festival in May, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

There have been smaller and informal movie screenings in recent years but the contest, to be underwritten by the government, will mark the first time film critics from the region will be invited to take part, the Arab News said…

Saudi Arabia: Burn the Witch (or Chop Her Head Off)

Witch hunts are a contemporary phenomenon in Saudi Arabia. I wonder how this fits into the King’s modernization plans.

Any Magic Solution for Saudi Justice?

Scott MacLeod (Time Magazine News Blog)

… You don’t know whether to laugh or cry as you read the Arab News report about Saudi Finance Minister Ibrahim al-Assaf’s testimony in the Shura Council yesterday. Peppered with complaints about rising inflation in the Kingdom, al-Assaf explained, with a straight face, that “there is no magic solution.”

A good thing, too, because if al-Assaf used some magic potion to bring down the price of goods, he might find himself in an Islamic court being charged with sorcery. And if he was convicted, he could have his head chopped off by a sword in a public square, the punishment for witchcraft.

Al-Assaf, a fine public servant, by the way, better be more careful with his choice of metaphors nowadays. There is an illiterate woman named Fawza Falih on death row in Saudi Arabia right now, facing execution for witchcraft. Among the charges is that she used magic to make a man go suddenly impotent….

BBC News notes that when Fawza Falih’s death sentence was overturned by an appeals court, a law court reinstated the sentence “arguing that it would be in the public interest.”