Furious debate as teachers at Islamic College of SA's West Croydon campus ordered to wear hijab or face sack

An Adelaide Islamic school wants its teachers to wear the hijab for school functions, or they could be sacked. Picture: ThinkstockSource: adelaidenow

Furious debate has erupted, with many respondents irate over what they perceive as double standards in the school's stance, claiming the ruling is religious discrimination. There were repeated calls for an end to any government funding to the school.

A WARNING from South Australia's biggest Islamic school that teachers - including many non-Muslims - will lose their jobs if they do not wear a hijab to school functions and outings has sparked outrage among News Ltd readers.

Up to 20 non-Muslim female teachers, who do not wish to be named, have been told they will be sacked from the Islamic College of South Australia's West Croydon campus after three warnings if they do not wear a headscarf to cover their hair.

"If a female Muslim teacher working at a non-Muslim school was ordered to stop wearing her hijab at school functions and outings then that school board and principal would be before the Anti-Discrimination Commission before you could say 'hypocrisy'," wrote "Sir Loin of Lamb".

Meg of the Hills said: "I have no problems with women wearing a hijab if they so wish. I also don't have any problems with covering my head if I go to a Muslim country. But I have problems with this school's attitude. What is it teaching the kids?"

Many readers asked whether it was appropriate for non-Muslims to wear the religious garb.

"That is blatant discrimination against a non-Muslim's beliefs to force them to wear an Islamic religious garment. I would have thought that it was also sacrilegious of the non-believer to do so," wrote Concerned Citizen of Aberfoyle Park.

JaneAd of Adelaide said: "The hijab is a highly visible outward sign of one's faith. What is the point of forcing non-Muslims to wear it? I would find the thought of anybody faking another's religion to keep their employment revolting and insulting. The children are so fragile that exposed hair confuses them? Really?"

 Mike of Australia of Brisbane added: "The wearing of scarves in Muslim countries differs from country to country. There is no standard. Why should the teachers be made to wear a scarf if they are not Muslim?"

Others argued that the school had the right to set its own dress rules.

"If you choose to work at this school, then you follow the rules set by your employer. If you don't like the rules, then leave and work elsewhere. Seems straight forward to me," said Peter the Observer of Norton Summit.

"I wonder what would happen if I showed up to job at Macca's wearing an HJ's t-shirt...," said Gary.

Many pointed out that church-run institutions often had rules based on religious values and said strict rules were not unique to Muslim schools.

"I don't see how this is any worse than what Christian schools do. Except Christian schools have won the right, through discrimination law exemptions, to only employ Christians in the first place. So those 20 women wouldn't have even found employment in a Christian establishment, if they are not Christian that is. At least the Islamic College isn't discriminating by only hiring Muslims," said Chad of Adelaide.

Wiseimp of Adelaide added: "How is this any different than a Christian School refusing gay kids or gay parents? There is no difference, just because you don't belong to the religion doesn't mean you should still have to fit in to get their service? See old aged homes refusing gay couples... people speak so harshly of Islam but then forget this is not different to Christianity."

 "Banging the racist anti-Muslim drum, is missing the point," said Wakey Wakey. "This is the problem with all private religious schools generally. Their primary focus is religion (and money), not childrens' education. Catholic/Anglican schools have on-ground chapels and churches, school masters may be priests and nuns. This is the nature of religion. If a school is founded on outdated or discriminatory principles then parents need to make REASONED decisions about where they send their kids to be educated. Let the Muslims be."

Earlier it was reported that the order, from the school's governing board and chairman Faruk Kahn, contradicts the policy of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils.

Mr Kahn yesterday referred The Advertiser to AFIC for comment on the matter. "I have no comment ... I think you better go to AFIC, they are the only ones that are to make comment," Mr Kahn said.

School principal Kadir Emniyet did not return calls.

AFIC assistant secretary Keysar Trad said the policy was at odds with the national federation, but it was powerless to intervene.

"I'm aware there's a policy at that school with respect to the scarf," Mr Trad said.

"The AFIC policy is not to require any teacher to observe the hijab. In SA, the board itself has decided they want to operate in their way and we are not allowed to interfere in the matter.

"We maintain that staff should dress modestly but not be required by the nature of policy to wear the hijab."

Mr Trad said that matters of unfair dismissal resulting from teachers disobeying the school's hijab policy should be referred to Fair Work Australia.

"It's confusing for our children to see their teachers wearing the scarf in school and then they take it off when they are out shopping and the children see them there," he said.

"It is also a respect thing for our staff. If they are not Muslim they should not be forced to dress as Muslim."

One long-term teacher at the Islamic College of SA said a new school board was now "forcing teachers to put hijabs back on".

"There's no discussion ... you wear it or you're fired," the teacher said. "The teachers have always adhered to the policies and we are respectful of that.

"We are respectful of their religion but they are not going to respect us."

The college has about 800 students and 40 staff.

Guidelines from the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils to other Islamic schools do not require teachers to wear hijabs.

Glen Seidel, state secretary of the Independent Education Union, said the union was monitoring the policy.

"Essentially it means female staff have to wear a scarf covering most of their hair, and not have legs and arms exposed," he said.

"In 2012, the requirement was being managed moderately, but with a new principal in 2013 enacting the decisions of a very conservative school board, there is no room for compromise."

Mr Seidel said the union's view is staff should be free to decide whether to wear a scarf.

"The ultimate test would be in an unfair dismissal action to see if that requirement would be considered a `reasonable direction' and the termination therefore being reasonable.

"This is not a matter (in which) religious organisations are exempted from equal opportunity legislation in order to not cause offence to the `adherents of the faith'," Mr Seidel said.

"Non-Islamic staff are not being discriminated (against) in their employment as it is the same code for all.

"Non-Islamic staff can, however, feel rightly aggrieved that they are being coerced to adopt the dress code of a religion to which they do not belong."

Saudi Arabia - Cleric Shocks In Call For Baby Burkas

(Omar Sobhani/Reuters)

Saudi Arabia - A cleric has called for female babies to wear the full-body burka in order to prevent sexual molestation.

In an interview on Saudi Arabia’s Al-Majd station, Sheikh Abdullah Daoud explained that sexual molestation of babies was common in the country and cited unnamed medical and security sources, according to a report on the Al-Arabiya website.

The interview was originally posted on the Internet in April 2012, but recently started to get attention on social networks in the kingdom, where some have been criticizing the ruling. Al- Arabiya reported that another distinguished cleric, Sheikh Muhammad al-Jzlana, complained that it made Islam look bad, and that people should ignore unauthorized fatwas and only follow those sanctioned by Saudi authorities.

In a video clip of the interview, which was posted on the MEMRI website, Daoud says that the custom of wearing a hijab (head covering) has precedents in eastern Asia, where girls start wearing the hijab at the age of two

He goes on to say, “We want this too. We do not want to see revealing and shameful clothing, especially when girls start to develop and fill out, and show signs of beauty, and so on. You find that she is in a state of exposure and nudity. I think we know that there are fatwas that forbid this, even if they have not yet reached the stage of puberty. Whenever the girl is an object of desire, the parents have the duty to cover her up with a hijab.”

One of the scriptural roots of covering women comes from Koran 24:31, which states: “And tell the believing women to reduce [some] of their vision and guard their private parts and not expose their adornment, except that which [necessarily] appears thereof, and to wrap [a portion of] their headcovers over their chests and not expose their adornment.”

Islamist terrorism is the biggest threat in Europe

Islamist terrorism and the radicalization of young Muslims has taken center stage in Europe. With schools, universities and even sport clubs becoming hotbeds of Islamism, experts argue that some European countries have willingly allowed it.

Claude Monique, an expert on counterterrorism and extremism and the director of the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center, told RT that while European intelligence was engaged in battling a bigger threat – communism and the former Soviet Union – it ignored what has become a defining threat of the modern age. 

RT: Terrorism in Europe: We’ve seen acts of terror from Breivik in Norway to Mohamed Merah in Toulouse, and we have also seen riots based on ideology. Based on what you’ve seen so far, where is the biggest threat coming from?

Claude Moniquet: I think that we have three different threats today in Europe. The biggest one clearly is still Islamist terrorism. Why it is the biggest? Because we have a large number, thousands of people involved – not in special interest actions but in extremist actions, and are able to become terrorists in the future. We don't have thousands of such people on the right wing, for instance. 

So we have thousands of people who have a very clear political and religious agenda. We have a radicalization process which is ongoing for years now, so I think clearly, Islamist terrorism is the biggest threat in Europe. 

After this, we have two different threats. The first one is right-wing terrorism like Breivik, but if we accept the Breivik case, we didn't have real large-scale act of terrorism from the right wing for 20 years. 

And the last threat would be the left-wing terrorism. Which for the moment doesn't exist in Europe, but it existed 20 years ago – we have clear signs that in Italy, in Greece, we have some anarcho-Marxist groups at work, but very small and on a very low scale 

RT: Different though their ideologies may be, these three groups are extremes. You mentioned the radicalization process, and how difficult it is to intercept. Where is the radicalization process actually happening? Are we talking about schools, universities, mosques, prisons? How do we identify it?

CM: Radicalization is going on through different channels. First of all, it is going on in areas, in the cities, in municipalities, in the sports facilities, in the gym clubs, in the football clubs, of course in schools. 

So that is the base. After this you have different ways or different places, like prison of course, and universities. 

Most of the radicalization is done at a young age and it's done in the streets, it's done in the municipalities, in some schools. When people come to university for instance, those who are radicalized are already radicalized, and the others will probably not be radicalized. It's a minority, we must understand that clearly, radicalization could be a concern of maybe ten to 15 percent of the young Muslims in Europe. 

RT: In terms of the demographic grouping, is there a specific group in a society that is more susceptible to such radicalization?

CM: It's difficult to say, because we would probably think that a poor young boy who feels excluded is more likely to be radicalized, because it's common sense. But we have also people who have university degrees. We have people who are fully integrated.

If you take for instance the perpetrators of the July 2005 terrorist attack in London, they were fully integrated. One of them was the son of a shop owner, he was working in education, he had a job, he was apparently fully integrated. And he was radicalized. 

And if you are in a personal crisis, this crisis being social, being cultural, being familial – a family crisis, a crisis with your girlfriend – you are weak, and you could be radicalized exactly as you could be radicalized in a Christian extremist sect. 

RT: Going back to the biggest threat you mentioned – the Islamic extremism here in Europe. The justice minister of Belgium said that she has been told by the state security that Saudi Arabia is funding around 10 schools in Belgium that are teaching radical Islam. How would you assess this threat?  

CM:  We must understand that in a part of Europe – in Belgium, in the Netherlands, in Germany – we have large Muslim communities today, but [those countries] didn’t have Muslim colonies in the past.

France had Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia. France has colonies, so most of the Muslims in France came from those ex-colonies 

Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany did not have those colonies, so the majority of Muslims came in the 60s and the 70s because most of Europe was in need of workforce to build new infrastructure.

Those people came but everybody at the time thought they would just stay for two years, three years, just for work; after, they will return to their countries. Of course, they didn't. 

The Belgians, as the Dutch, didn’t understand the problem very well, and they were looking desperately for someone who could help them

And the Saudis told the Belgian authorities: “No problem, we'll take care of it,” as they also said to the Netherlands. So they sent money, they sent people, and this was of course a hidden agenda. Their idea was of course to radicalize people. 

Islam seems to be a unique thing. It is not a unique thing. You have an Islam of Asia, you have Islam of North Africa, Islam of the Gulf, Sunni, Shiites and so on. And clearly the Wahhabi Islam from Saudi Arabia has nothing to do with the Islam of the Moroccans, of the Turkish. 

But this Islam was imposed on those people by the Saudi with the help of the Belgian and Dutch authorities, and this was imposed for 20 years, 25 years. And for 25 years, 30 years, the Saudis were funding, were sending people. For instance, in the Netherlands, in 2003 after the murder of Theo van Gogh, Dutch security monitored all Muslim clerics in the Netherlands and they found that 60 to 70 percent of them were unable to understand, read or speak Dutch. 

So very clearly they cannot be a factor of integration. They cannot. They cannot understand the society in which they live, in which their followers live. They cannot help them with good advice, because they don't know. And most of them were coming from outside, from Saudi Arabia or Gulf States, with no knowledge of the language, no knowledge of the society. 

RT: You were in the French intelligence service. Did you or those in the authorities not see that was coming, the signs coming from the Saudi Arabia at the time?

CM: At the time – this was true for the French intelligence, for the US, for all the Western intelligence – we were not very interested in those cases. The big enemy was the Soviet Union and communism. So, we had no real interest in monitoring Saudi Arabia. It was something going on, but invisible. 

RT: Well, you have, for example, the State Security in Belgium warning against the threat that Saudi Arabia poses in terms of imposing extreme ideology on people in Europe. But on the other hand, Saudi Arabia is painted as an ally of the West. How do you reconcile this? 

CM: The ambiguity of the situation is that the Saudi Arabia is clearly an ally of the West because it was against communism, it was against the former Soviet Union and so on, against Iran today for obvious reasons. So it is an ally, and at the same time, it could be considered an enemy because they have this hidden agenda. 

But even inside Saudi society at the highest level, you have two tendencies. In the royal family in Saudi Arabia, you have people who are genuine and honest advocates of working with the West and modernizing Saudi Arabia, and we have other princes saying ‘No!,’ we must keep, stand firmly in our beliefs, and we are still the Saudi and Wahhabi. 

RT: Looking at what some governments in Europe are doing, for example imposing a ban on the burqa, or minarets or other such laws, do you think they actually work? Or do they just create a backlash from the general Muslim community, who are not extremists?

CM: Both, I think both. First of all, I think we must help and support the average Muslim guy or woman who is just trying to live a normal life and who wants to have a better future for his or her children. And clearly those people are demanding that we take a firm position against the extremists. 

They are worried for their children. When you are a Muslim parent in Belgium or France, and you see Muhammed Merah and you see that a young boy of 21, 22 had bad connections, went to an extremist mosque, or wanted to go to Pakistan, I suppose you're afraid and you want the help of the state. And the help of the state is to set some limits.

At the same time, very clearly, it is a way of radicalization for some people. But these people would be radicalized anyway. It's just an occasion, it's just a pretext, but if it is not the burqa, it will be the obligation of Halal food in the school; if it is not this, it will be the mixing of boys and girls in school, or another subject. But a part of this community is moving to radicalization, the ten to 15 percent. The question is how to protect the rest, and of course how to contain the extremists.

Racism charges against teacher dropped

Christian Wenande

October 19, 2012 - 09:40

An Odense headteacher has been reported to the police for racially abusing some of her Muslim students – Pia Kjærsgaard finds the situation ridiculous

Pia Kjærsgaard (DF) finds it ridiculous that the headteacher has been reported to the police and faces disciplinary action from Odense Council (Photo: Scanpix)

UPDATE, 19.10.12, 09:40: Shaib Mansoor, the father of one of the children racially rebuked by headteacher Birgitte Sonsby and the man who reported Sonsby to the police, has dropped his charges. Mansoor said that the media attention around the charges succeeded in creating a debate about the issue. And even though he has dropped the charges, he still expects that Sonsby get sacked from her job.

"I wanted to establish a debate and make people realise that there is a problem. It is the only way to get the attention of the politicians," Mansoor told Ritzau.

ORIGINAL, 17.10.12, 13:42: Birgitte Sonsby, a headteacher from Funen, has been reported to the police and faces disciplinary action from the council after verbally abusing a group of young immigrant boys who had behaved badly in class.

The situation, which occurred about a fortnight ago, took place in the headteacher’s office at Ejerslykkeskolen School in Odense.

“I’m so bloody tired of you Muslims ruining the teaching lessons,” Sonsby said to a group of immigrant boys who had found themselves in her office after being unruly in class, according to Fyens Stiftstidende newspaper.

Sonsby later apologised to the families for her choice of words, but said that she didn’t believe that her outburst was racist.

“A situation arose in the classroom and some children needed to be reprimanded. They started laughing at me and I lost control. I said some things that I deeply regret and I apologise,” Sonsby told Fyens Stiftstidende.

But the apology apparently wasn’t enough for Shaib Mansoor, the father of one of the kids, who has reported Sonsby to the police for racism.

“This is way over the line. Of course, my son should be punished when he behaves poorly. But what she said was racist,” Mansoor told Fyens Stiftstidende.

Odense Council's school inspector, Poul Anthoniussen, described Sonsby’s words as ”completely unacceptable” and has summoned her to a meeting at the council next week.

Pia Kjærsgaard (Dansk Folkeparti), who stepped down as DF’s leader in the summer, showed that she was still very much alive politically, saying that the debacle had become “ridiculous”.

“It’s crazy that the police have to get involved in such a case. I am so affronted on the headteacher’s behalf that she has to meet at the council, and whatever else might happen, because of this nonsense,” Kjærsgaard told Fyens Stiftstidende. “She apologised already. Anyone can say something wrong without thinking sometimes.”

Veiled acid attack on Victoria's Secret worker

A Victoria's Secret worker who had acid thrown at her by a veiled woman has revealed her horror after seeing her terrible burns for first time.

According to the Daily Mail this morning, the 20-year-old said she no longer wanted to live after seeing her facial injuries.

Naomi Oni was walking home from her job at a Victoria's Secret lingerie shop when the woman, whose face was covered by the veil, hurled the liquid.

She had surgery after the assault but her head "had swollen to 10 times its normal size and her face had turned black".

Her eyes were swollen and she was in great pain, she told BBC London.

"I've never been so scared in my life. I just knew it was acid," Miss Oni said. "The first time I looked I was shocked. I didn't want to live after I saw my face."

According to the Daily Mail, doctors initially feared that Miss Oni had been blinded. But after a month's treatment she recovered sight in her left eye and partial vision in her right.

Miss Oni has only recently been discharged from hospital but has decided to speak out to help police catch her attacker.

She told the Mail that she was determined to stay positive despite her injuries.

The incident, on December 30, happened about 12.40am in Dagenham, East London, after Miss Oni finished her late shift at Victoria's Secret in the Westfield shopping centre in nearby Stratford.

According to the Daily Mail, she was just five minutes from the council flat she shares with her disabled mother, when she became aware of someone standing behind her and decided to turn around and look back.

She then saw the woman, who was wearing a niqab - which reveals only the eyes - staring at her and felt a "splash" on her face.

It is not known whether the attack had been motivated by Miss Oni's work for the American underwear chain, the Mail reports.

"I got to my door and was shouting acid, acid, acid. Before I could feel it burning, I just knew it was acid, I thought OK someone is out to... kill me," she said.

"I still ask myself the same question every day, Why me? What have I done? I didn't understand.

"I look in the mirror and it just isn't me. I'll never look the same again.

"I've always been outgoing and confident - used to getting attention for the way I dress or my hair - but now I don't want anyone looking at me.

"I don't want people to see me in public. I don't want to get the Tube or the bus. If I have to go to the hospital I take a taxi.

"I don't know if I'll ever be able to go back to my job.

"I was planning to go to college in September to study media and fashion, but I don't even know if I'll be able to do that."

A Scotland Yard spokesman said an investigation was still underway.