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Muslims Protest Ban on Head Scarves
deenb4dunya
12/22/03 at 11:25:23
Assalamu Alaikum,

Alhamdulillaah they did something... but gimme a break.... 3000 Muslims ONLY!!!.... There are 3-5 million in France :(

Let's keep them in our duaas

Wassalamu Alaikum,
Mujahada



Muslims Protest Ban on Head Scarves



Paris -- About 3,000 people, mainly Muslim women, marched through Paris Sunday to protest a presidential proposal to ban Islamic head scarves from public schools.

The protest was the first in Paris against President Jacques Chirac's announcement Wednesday that head scarves and other conspicuous religious symbols, including Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses, should be banned from schools to protect French secularism.


Chirac urged parliament to pass the law before the upcoming school year starts in September. He also proposed giving company bosses the right to decide whether religious symbols can be worn at work.

Paris police put the number of marchers at 3,000. More than half were women, girls and young children wearing head scarves.

They marched in a boisterous, flag-waving column hundreds of yards long through rain to the Place de la Bastille, where the prison that was stormed at the start of the French Revolution in 1789 once stood.

Protesters said Chirac's proposed measures stigmatized France's estimated 5 million Muslims, the largest Muslim community in Western Europe, and made a mockery of cherished French values.

"Liberty, equality, fraternity -- apart from women who wear the veil," said Fatima Boicha, a housewife and mother of two from a town west of Paris whose head and neck were covered with a brown scarf.

"The French state wants us to submit, to tell us what to wear and what not to wear," she added.

Protesters chanted, "My veil, my choice;" sang "La Marseillaise," the French national anthem; and waved the French flag.

Protesters said it was the first time Muslim women had marched en masse in the French capital.

Marchers said they were furious that a report commissioned by Chirac and released this month suggested that some Muslim women are forced to wear head scarves by male relatives or to avoid being insulted by men in public.

"Ni frere, ni mari, le foulard on l'a choisi," the demonstrators shouted in a rhyming slogan that means: "I chose the head scarf, not my brother or husband."

Some women said they would move their children from public to private schools where the ban would not be implemented if the law is passed.
Re: Muslims Protest Ban on Head Scarves
sakura
12/25/03 at 23:10:19
Assalaamu alaikum Mujahada,

3000 Muslims seems like very little, but considering the situation it's pretty good actually.  

The major Muslim organisations here (I am in France) are hesitant to endorse a demonstration like that, they can suffer because of it, or be blamed for provoking civil disorder.  

The 3000 showed up because of only *three* sisters that got motivated, and called and e-mailed everyone they knew, who contacted their friends, and so on and so on...a totally home-made, grassroots movement, mach'allah.  

Unfortunately we are 5 million-ish, but the majority don't practise Islam in an authentic way, and they are taken as the "model" that the government expects the rest of us to follow.

Jazak'allah khayrin, please keep the du'as coming!  :-)

Fi amanillah
Sakura


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