newswire

Report: Senior Saudi cleric OKs 10-year-old to marry

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) A pan-Arab newspaper quotes Saudi Arabia's most senior Muslim cleric as saying it is OK for 10-year-old girls to marry.The London-based Al-Hayat newspaper also quotes Sheik Abdul-Aziz bin Baz, the country's grand mufti, as saying that those who believe women should not marry before the age of 25 are following a "bad path."

His comments during a lecture Monday come as Saudi human rights groups are fighting to put an end to marriages involving the very young. The groups are pressing the government to define the minimum age for marriage.

On Sunday, the government-run National Human Rights Commission condemned marriages of minor girls, saying such marriages are an "inhumane violation."

Source: [MSNBC]

$240k awarded to man forced to cover Arabic T-shirt

NEW YORK (AFP) – An airline passenger forced to cover his T-shirt because it displayed Arabic script has been awarded 240,000 dollars in compensation, campaigners said Monday. Raed Jarrar received the pay out on Friday from two US Transportation Security Authority officials and from JetBlue Airways following the August 2006 incident at New York's JFK Airport, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced.

"The outcome of this case is a victory for free speech and a blow to the discriminatory practice of racial profiling," said Aden Fine, a lawyer with ACLU. Jarrar, a US resident, was apprehended as he waited to board a JetBlue flight from New York to Oakland, California, and told to remove his shirt, which had written on it in Arabic: "We will not be silent."

He was told other passengers felt uncomfortable because an Arabic-inscribed T-shirt in an airport was like "wearing a T-shirt at a bank stating, I am a robber,'" the ACLU said. Jarrar eventually agreed to cover his shirt with another provided by JetBlue. He was allowed aboard but his seat was changed from the front to the back of the aircraft.

Source: [Yahoo News]

Continue reading "$240k awarded to man forced to cover Arabic T-shirt"

Guerilla Street Artist Princess Hijab Hits Paris

I admit, the title put me off a little. Princess Hijab? But when I looked through her flicker albums, I was blown away. Princess Hijab is an anonymous 20-year-old guerilla street artist based in Paris, who began her “noble cause” of “hijab-ising” advertisements in 2006. She does this by using spray paint and a black marker to cover women’s faces and bodies in ads, or by pasting “hijab ad” posters everywhere she goes.

There’s no way of knowing if Princess Hijab is a hijabi. Or even a Muslim. And although I don’t really ‘get’ art, I find her work fascinating. According to her profile page on Art Review:

She takes the veil/ hijab/ chador, which a number of French citizens believe is incompatible with the main principles of French secularism and would prefer it to remain in the private sphere, and brings it firmly into the public sphere.

Source: [Muslimah Media Watch]

Escape to Dubai?

Business is booming right now! I mean, the place has what, double-digit GDP growth? Like, that’s crazy!” Brooke Butler tucks her silken hair behind her ears, flashes a wide smile, and digs into her dumplings. It’s Pan-Asian night at Entre Nous, the restaurant on the ground floor of Novotel Dubai, and Butler, a 24-year-old Texan with an exuberant demeanor and a slim volleyball player’s build, is taking a pause from a long day schmoozing real-estate executives.

She has just spent several hours working the lavish stalls and displays of Cityscape, a four-day conference billed by its promoters as “The World’s Largest Business-to-Business Real-Estate Event,” taking place in a cavernous conference hall next door. After dinner, Butler is due at Çin Çin, a swanky cigar-and-wine bar, to meet the CEO of a real-estate company. “I want to have a million dollars saved and then come home,” Butler says. In Dubai, it is a plausible target, even for a saleswoman only three years out of Dallas Baptist University; she is certain she’ll meet it. But how long will it take?

When she arrived, fresh from being laid off by the San Antonio office of Liberty Mutual, for whom she sold home, auto, and life insurance, she thought that she would be in and out in two years. “I know a girl who made $2 million U.S. in commissions last year,” she said then. “And that’s tax-free! Within a year, I’ll be a millionaire. It’s not that difficult over here.”

Source: [New York Magazine]

Continue reading "Escape to Dubai?"

Egyptian sexual harasser jailed

An Egyptian man has been jailed for three years with hard labour for sexual harassment of a woman in the street. Sharif Gommaa was also ordered to pay 5,001 Egyptian pounds ($895) damages to Noha Rushdi Saleh for the attack in Cairo's Heliopolis district.

Women's rights activists welcomed the ruling saying it was the first known case of prison for such an offence. The defendant was accused of repeatedly groping Noha Rushdi Saleh as he drove slowly alongside her in his car.

Although many Egyptian women and visiting foreigners complain of unwanted sexual advances in Egyptian streets, the subject is rarely addressed by the authorities or mainstream media. However, this attack in June became the focus of media coverage after the 27-year-old filmmaker, also known as Noha Ostadh, went public about her ordeal.

Source: [BBC]

Continue reading " Egyptian sexual harasser jailed"

Dubai Deals With Expat Debauchery

DUBAI: Dubai may be the playground of the Middle East, but for expats and tourists, play time here can get out of hand. In one famous case of expat debauchery this summer, Britons Vince Acors, a tourist, and Michelle Palmer, a resident, were arrested for having sex on a Dubai beach. Also accused of hurling racial slurs and a shoe at the approaching police officer, the couple now faces up to six years in prison.

The Palmer-Acors case highlights a growing frustration with the behavior of Western visitors, not only among Emiratis -- who comprise only 20 percent of the population in their own country -- but also among expats. Roughly a week after the beach arrest, Dubai police announced they had recently detained 79 people for violations of public decency.

Such crackdowns and incidents have fueled a stereotype of the vacationing foreigner, with the British leading in disrepute. "In the Arab world, being an English girl now means you can't hold down your drink, you're an alcoholic and you're a slut," said one longtime resident of the UAE, who knows Michelle Palmer and spoke to ABC News anonymously. "I look down on it ... the blatant disrespect because she thought she was above the law."

Source: [ABC News]

Continue reading "Dubai Deals With Expat Debauchery"

Falafel: Israel attempts to appropriate Arab food

BEIRUT – In one of Lebanon's most famous falafel stands, owner Fouad Moustafa Sahyoun only needed to utter the word Israel to set off a heated political discussion among his customers.

Sahyoun, whose shop is named after his family, was discussing a recent threat by the Association of Lebanese Industrialists (ALI) to sue Israel for appropriating what many consider to be traditional Lebanese foods, among them falafel, tabbouleh and hummus.

Fali Abboud, ALI's president, says Lebanon is losing "tens of millions of dollars" because Israel is claiming traditional Lebanese dishes as its own on the world market. Yet, Abboud says, "These dishes existed long before the existence of Israel."

Source: [Menassat]

Continue reading "Falafel: Israel attempts to appropriate Arab food"

Fiction meets fact in Hebron film

By Tim Franks

It is an ordinary story, in an extraordinary setting. Hebron is the site for what its Israeli makers claim is the first fictional feature film ever to be shot in the city. The city has become a byword for some of the sharpest tensions on the West Bank. It is the only West Bank city where Jewish settlers live in the midst of Palestinians.

The plot of Graduation is slender: it tells the story of a young Palestinian woman called Ayat, who is played by 23-year-old actress Yousra Barakat. Ayat is attempting to reach her college graduation on the night of the Jewish festival of Purim. The Palestinians in the centre of the city are under curfew, so that the Jewish settlers can hold their Purim parade - a wild whirligig of coloured lights, loud music, fancy dress and feverish dancing.

Ayat decides, along with her younger brother, to break the curfew. Theirs is an attempted journey past roadblocks, sealed entrances and checkpoints, and past soldiers and settlers. The film's director is Yaelle Kayam, a 28-year-old from Tel Aviv and graduate of the Sam Spiegel Film School in Jerusalem.

Source: [BBC]

Continue reading "Fiction meets fact in Hebron film"

Saudi cleric favours one-eye veil

Two-eyed look remains too seductive for Sheikh Habadan

A Muslim cleric in Saudi Arabia has called on women to wear a full veil, or niqab, that reveals only one eye.
Sheikh Muhammad al-Habadan said showing both eyes encouraged women to use eye make-up to look seductive.

The question of how much of her face a woman should cover is a controversial topic in many Muslim societies. The niqab is more common in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, but women in much of the Muslim Middle East wear a headscarf which covers only their hair.

Sheikh Habadan, an ultra-conservative cleric who is said to have wide influence among religious Saudis, was answering questions on the Muslim satellite channel al-Majd.

Source: [BBC]

Rachael Ray ad pulled as pundit sees terror link

Dunkin’ Donuts has pulled an online advertisement featuring Rachael Ray after complaints that a fringed black-and-white scarf that the celebrity chef wore in the ad offers symbolic support for Muslim extremism and terrorism.

The coffee and baked goods chain said the ad that began appearing online May 7 was pulled over the past weekend because “the possibility of misperception detracted from its original intention to promote our iced coffee.” In the spot, Ray holds an iced coffee while standing in front of trees with pink blossoms.

Critics, including conservative commentator Michelle Malkin, complained that the scarf wrapped around her looked like a kaffiyeh, the traditional Arab headdress. Critics who fueled online complaints about the ad in blogs say such scarves have come to symbolize Muslim extremism and terrorism.

Source: [MSNBC]

Continue reading "Rachael Ray ad pulled as pundit sees terror link"