This week, insurgents in Thailand recruiting through football, couture abayas in a Paris fashion show (sorry, Sarkozy), and a Turkey court case over a football referee who outed himself on television.
In a report released by the International Crisis Group, separatist Muslim teachers in Thailand are secretly recruiting young male secondary school students into insurgency under the guise of football training.
“The Stoning of Soroya M.” is the first movie since “The Passion of Christ,” to graphically depict a prolonged public execution. The movie, which opens on Friday in select theaters, is a true story of the stoning of a wife accused by her husband of adultery in an Iranian village.
Designers from John Galliano to Alberta Feretti tried their hand at designing couture abayas for a Parisian fashion show held, coincidentally, four days apart from France’s announcement regarding a potential burqa ban. Show’s organizer and general manager of Saks Fifth Avenue in Saudi Arabia says she “realized that most of the Saudi clients are wearing designer brands, but they’re covered by a black abaya… it is an obligation to wear the abaya there, but let them feel good about it.”
A fashion journalist writes of her experience observing a young woman in hijab play basketball, and contrasts her “chic” attire with the “scary” burqa. She goes on to say that the French government would fair better with sensitivity courses on why Muslim women wear hijab.
Turkey’s football federation is taken to court for firing a referee, Halil Ibrahim Dincdag, of 13 years for revealing his homosexuality on television.
Shazia Riaz is Associate Editor of Altmuslimah
