No hijab no service
And for more obnoxious offensive intrusion by busybody theocrats, there’s Turkey.
A report in Turkey has highlighted “very worrying” evidence of increased discrimination against secular Turks…It details widespread social pressure on non-devout Muslims to attend Friday prayers, fast during the month of Ramadan or wear a headscarf…It suggests that a government policy of making appointments to local administrations on the basis of political and religious beliefs, rather than competence, is forcing non-devout Turks to change their habits in order to protect their business or their jobs.
Ooh – that sounds familiar. What does that remind me of? It’s right on the tip of my tongue…
The report cites page upon page of examples: non-religious nurses put on permanent night shift; landlords refusing to take female student tenants unless they wear a headscarf; secular civil servants bypassed for promotion. It talks of increased social pressure to attend Friday prayers and fast during Ramadan, and documents the difficulty in many cities of obtaining licences to sell alcohol.
Even though the AK party always insists it’s not really Islamist any longer. Yeah it sounds like it, doesn’t it.
And they say that wearing the hijab is a choice! That’s always the argument when women wear them in Britain or Canada or the US. Is it really? I have my doubts.
“or wear a headscarf”
I read on Today’s Zaman that Associate Professor Osman Can, the Constitutional Court’s liberal democratic rapporteur, was dismissed from his position as lecturer at Çankaya University — obviously as punishment for his reports arguing against the headscarf ban at the universities.
Well that’s one objection I always have when people defend the ‘right’ to wear hijab in France, Canada, the UK, the US, etc. It seems a peculiar ‘right’ to defend when there are so many places where it’s not a right at all but an imposition.
Can you provide the link for that, Marie-Therese?
“Can the AK Party do it?- İHSAN YILMAZ”
http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/yazarDetay.do?haberno=154958
OB:- The columinist DOĞU ERGİL who writes
“What should Muslim democrats expect from the new US leadership?” in the same link, also makes for interesting reading indeed.