State-owned banks in India have been accused of discriminating against the country’s Muslim minority.

India’s minorities watchdog has received a record number of complaints from Muslims who say they have been prevented from opening bank accounts.

India’s Muslim community is among the poorest in the country.

Some bankers say it is not so much their religious background, but their economic status that makes it hard for Muslims to get banking facilities.

The National Commission of Minorities says that there has been a 100% increase in the number of complaints it has received over the past year from Muslims who say they are being prevented from opening accounts in state-run banks.    »»» BBC News

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Syria has forbidden the country’s students and teachers from wearing the niqab – the full Islamic veil that reveals only a woman’s eyes – taking aim at a garment many see as political.

The ban shows a rare point of agreement between Syria’s secular, authoritarian government and the democracies of Europe: Both view the niqab as a potentially destabilizing threat.

“We have given directives to all universities to ban niqab-wearing women from registering,” a government official in Damascus told The Associated Press on Monday.

The order affects both public and private universities and aims to protect Syria’s secular identity, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue. Hundreds of primary school teachers who were wearing the niqab at government-run schools were transferred last month to administrative jobs, he added.

The ban, issued Sunday by the Education Ministry, does not affect the hijab, or headscarf, which is far more common in Syria than the niqab’s billowing black robes.   »»» Asharq Alawsat Newspaper (English)

Western democracies join Middle East authoritarian regimes like Syria and Eygpt to force women to dress a certain way. That kind of restriction on personal freedom is exactly what the Taliban does in Aghanistan when it forces women to dress a certain way. What a strange and sad irony!

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US officials have reiterated Washington’s disagreement with a measure approved by the lower house of France’s National Assembly banning the use of face-covering Islamic veils in public.

“We do not think that you should legislate what people can wear or not wear associated with their religious beliefs,” said State Department spokesman Philip Crowley.

“Here in the United States, we would take a different step to balance security and to respect religious freedom and the symbols that go along with religious freedom,” he said.   »»» Asharq Alawsat Newspaper (English)

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Spanish lawmakers will debate barring burqas in public, joining other European countries considering similar moves on the grounds that the body-covering garments are degrading to women, the leading opposition party said Sunday.

Top officials of the ruling Socialist Party have indicated they will support the proposal by the opposition Popular Party, making a ban likely unless the country’s highest court rules it unconstitutional.   »»» The Associated Press

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Rather than enhancing secular democracy, a ban on the veil, or niqab, diminishes it. Instead of curbing “Islamic fundamentalism,” it fans it. Far from advancing the integration of veil wearers into the mainstream, it marginalizes them even more.

We end up with the opposite of what we want. That’s what overkill does.

We’ve learned that lesson in the war on terrorism, but we have yet to in the cultural war on Muslims, which is what niqab banning is all about, notwithstanding the phony rationalizations in France and, sadly, Quebec as well.

The decision by the French parliament to proscribe the niqab/burqa from all public spaces, even streets and markets, goes farther than the Quebec law introduced in March.

The latter bans those wearing the niqab from working for, or receiving services from, government. It denies these taxpayers all schooling, including French language instruction, and non-emergency health care, including regular checkups. But it does not bar them from wearing their face covering.

Yet there’s nothing redeeming about either law, or those contemplated in Belgium and Spain. They are anchored in prejudice — and on shaky legal foundations.    »»» thestar.com (Canada)

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There’s no doubt that the site of a planned Islamic community center and prayer space is close to the World Trade Center site, as it is two short blocks from the site of the terror attacks. While some see the proximity as offensive, others like Mayor Michael Bloomberg see it as a virtue, symbolic of America’s commitment to religious freedom.

“I happen to think this is a very appropriate place for somebody who wants to build a mosque, because it tells the world that America, and New York City, which is what I’m responsible for, really believes in what we preach,” said Bloomberg on Friday.

The mayor’s comments were perhaps his most forceful on the controversy, which in this election year has quickly become a political football.    »»» NY1.com (U.S.)

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In the words of Swiss journalist and author, Roger Du Pasquier “The West, whether Christian or dechristianised, has never really known Islam. Ever since they watched it appear on the world stage, Christians never ceased to insult and slander it in order to find justification for waging war on it.

It has been subjected to grotesque distortions the traces of which still endure in the European mind. Even today there are many Westerners for whom Islam can be reduced to three ideas: fanaticism, fatalism and polygamy.

Of course, there does exist a more cultivated public whose ideas about Islam are less deformed; there are still precious few who know that the word islam signifies nothing other than ‘submission to God’.

One symptom of this ignorance is the fact that in the imagination of most Europeans, Allah refers to the divinity of the Muslims, not the God of the Christians and Jews; they are all surprised to hear, when one takes the trouble to explain things to them, that ‘Allah’ means ‘God’, and that even Arab Christians know him by no other name. “   »»» NetMums.com (U.K.)

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Democratic regimes around the world love to talk about human rights, justice, progress, civilization. However, when it comes to Muslims, all the hypocritical rhetoric is thrown away and exposed the true face of the haters of Islam.

Only about 1.5 thousand Muslim are wearing niqab (a veil covering woman’s face) in whole France according to experts. However, the vigilant French democrats, strictly watching over their “values of freedom and progress”, which oblige woman to strip naked, turning her into a humanoid animal to gratify the passions and a reusable sex good, and protection of sodomites and sexual maniacs of all colors and genders, seem concerned about the protection of society against “obscurantism” of Islam.

The parliament of this country has enacted even a whole law prohibiting women on their own will, and because of their religious beliefs to wear veil.

However, apparently, Muslim women of France did not think to give up. After the ban of niqab Muslims devised other way to hide their face, in particular, to wear medical masks.    »»» Kavkazcenter.com (Chechnya)

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The lower house of the French parliament passed a law on Tuesday which, according to the interior ministry, would directly effect fewer than 2,000 people out of a population of 64 million. This alone is worth digesting before considering that the people concerned are Muslim women who wear a full-face veil, or niqab. The authors of the legislation banning the wearing of the niqab in public directed their grandiloquent claims at this tiny target group. The French justice minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, said on the eve of Bastille Day that the vote was a success for the Republic. France, she went on, is never so great, never so respected as when it is united around its values.

Set to one side legal doubts about whether this law is compatible with guarantees of religious freedom and equality, as interpreted by France’s constitutional council. In principle – and, indeed, in the forum of the European court of human rights – the twin test must be whether the measure, first, has a legitimate aim (public security or promotion of gender equality, perhaps) and, second, whether it shows proportionality. Is the measure proportionate to the aim being achieved? This, say legal experts, presents the sticking point.   »»» The Guardian (U.K.)

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Tural Koç is feeling rather pleased with himself. The administrative head of the Islamic University of Rotterdam (IUR) has just taken a major step towards gaining state approval for his university. Following close consideration of content and formal requirements, the Dutch accreditation authority has now granted official recognition to the first IUR course.

Students taking the Masters programme in “Islamic Spiritual Counselling” are now able to qualify with a state-recognised degree. This, Koç believes, shows that the university is well on its way to fulfilling its aim of creating a Muslim academic elite in the Netherlands.

It is a goal that the Islamic University has been pursuing since taking up residence in the centre of Rotterdam in 2003. Its close proximity to a Reformed church and a Catholic church is a reminder that educational, health and social institutions were traditionally organised according to confession in the Netherlands.

“We are working on integrating a Muslim element into the Dutch social structure,” explains Koç. The IUR is intended as part of this process. And whether or not the school can be part of the process in the long term depends very much on official recognition.    »»» altmuslim

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