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Canadian Muslim group calls for burka ban
A Canadian Muslim group is calling on Ottawa to ban the wearing of the burka in public, the group's founder told Al Arabiya on Thursday. Tarek Fatah, founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress (MCC), told Al Arabiya that there were many reasons to ask for this ban including security. "A bank was robbed by people wearing burqas. It is a real risk."The burka, Fatah added, stems from extremists and does not represent Islam's true meaning. "The Quran teaches modesty, however it does not have one word about covering the face. It is a tribal custom that is promoted by extremists such as al-Qaeda and the Taliban." Fatah added that surprisingly, it is women raised in Canada that are the majority of burka wearers. "They are mostly second generation Pakistani or Bangladeshi." Fatah, originally from Pakistan himself, added that the burka harms women by decreasing their chances of getting employment and encouraging a distorted practice of Islam where women's rights are undermined. In August of 2009 Muslim French minister Fadela Amara called for a ban on the burka calling it the "cancer" of radical Islam in an interview with the Financial Times newspaper. "Those who have struggled for women's rights back home in their own countries, I'm thinking particularly of Algeria, we know what it represents and what the obscurantist political project is that lies behind it, to confiscate the most fundamental of liberties," said Amara. On Tuesday, Egypt's top Islamic school al-Azhar's Sheikh Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi, banned women from wearing the burka or face veil inside all its affiliate schools inciting students to stage demonstrations. Controversy arose in Quebec in 2007, when an election official said veiled Muslim women would have to take off their veil if they wanted to vote. Posted by: Fred 2009-10-09 |
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