This week, a hijab-based lawsuit against a judge, Mali’s president refuses a law that requires mutual respect between spouses, Uzbeks unofficially ban hijab, and harassment charges against a man who attempted murder of two Muslim women.
In Michigan Raneen Albaghdady, a 32-year-old Iraqi Muslim woman, filed a federal lawsuit against a Wayne County judge claiming that he forced her to remove her hijab during a June court appearance. Albaghdady was in court to change her name and stated that she felt “very discriminated and humiliated” by the judge’s request.
Without signing it, Mali’s president sent a law stating that husbands and wives owe each other “loyalty, protection, help and assistance” back to parliament for MPs to reconsider. The law came under scrutiny in the majority Muslim country on accounts that it directly contradicts existing law stipulating that wives have to obey their husbands. Hadja Safiatou Dembele, president of the National Union of Muslim Women’s Association in Mali agrees that the law should not be changed. “It’s a tiny minority of woman here who want this new law; the intellectuals. The poor and illiterate of this country, the real Muslims, are against it,” she said.
In anticipation of Uzbekistan’s September 1st Independence Day, Uzbek authorities have unofficially banned Muslim women from wearing the hijab. Officials believe that the prohibition is an effective way to fight terrorism as explosives and identities may be hidden by the hijab.
Also this week, Joseph Balance was charged with second-degree aggravated harassment for threatening to kill a Muslim woman and her daughter and trying to run them over in his car at a gas station in New York. The two women were dressed in full abayas and were wearing face coverings. Muslims groups have stated that the conviction is too light a punishment for the attempted murder.
Rabea Chaudhry is Associate Editor of Altmuslimah
