27 October 2004
 A
New Zealand defence lawyer stated that his client would be disadvantaged
if a Muslim woman did not lift her face veil when she testified
against him in an Auckland court, in a case involving the alleged
theft of a car and alleged insurance fraud. The lawyer said that
it was important for a jury to see a witness's facial expressions.
He also said that it was against the rules of open justice to prevent
his client from facing his accusers in court.
The woman, Fouzya Salim is to be a Crown witness in the prosecution
against Abdul Razamjoo who is charged with insurance fraud and making
a false statement to the Police. Razamjoo's sister Feraiba Razamjoo
will also be called by the Crown as a witness. She too wants to
remain veiled while giving evidence. Fouzya Salim was an Afghan
refugee who settled in New Zealand nine years ago.
A representative of the local Islamic Association said it could
cause the woman a great deal of distress if she was made to remove
her face veil. He said that the wearing of the face veil was part
of a woman's duties as a Muslim, and fits with the philosophy of
modesty and not showing the body to other people.
Women attending the haj without
the face veil.
Photo: Li Kaijie |
Islamic
practice
The representative of the Islamic Association overlooked the fact
that during the haj pilgrimage in the Islamic holy city of Mecca,
women do not wear face veils. The ritual takes place with men and
women assembled in the same place without any physical segregation.
If a woman were to wear the face veil during the haj proceedings
it would render the rites void for her.
According to mainstream Islamic thought and practice, what constitutes
the female Muslim's áwrah or legal nakedness is
her body except the face and hands. According to the most reliable
Islamic sources, Muslim women were permitted to present themselves
before the prophet Mohamed with their faces
and hands uncovered.
Paramountcy of New Zealand
law
The arguement that a Muslim woman has a cultural right to wear a
face veil is not sound because Islam is not an apolitical culture
but a socio-political code. Islam does not permit the separation
of church and state. This means that Islam as a religion is different
from other religions practised in New Zealand in that it demands
allegiance to a sovereign entity other than the state when the state
is not Islamic.
New Zealanders are required by law to owe their allegiance to Her
Majesty the Queen. Those who are within New Zealand territory, including
aliens, are subject to the laws of New Zealand. Therefore within
this country's territory, New Zealand law must take precedence over
the Shariah or any other foreign legal code.
Civil
rights
New Zealand law allows freedom of religion as defined in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. That is why it is possible for Islamic
associations and mosques to function in this country. Most New Zealand
Muslims are first generation immigrants from Islamic countries.
Some of these countries do not extend such rights of free association
to their minorities.
There are responsibilities associated with any right in a democratic
society. The exercise of one's rights must not diminish anyone else's
rights. A Muslim New Zealander insisting on the covering of her
face may infringe on the right of another New Zealander for a fair
trial. If so that cannot be allowed.
Countries that enforce Islamic law insist on foreign female visitors
to cover themselves up like Muslim women for the sake of what they
term public decency. One would imagine that people who insist on
this to expect themselves to be subject to New Zealand law
when in New Zealand. .
Curious compromise
The Islamic Association's representative said that a compromise
could involve the woman giving videotaped evidence, without her
face veil. Muslim women are required to cover up what constitutes
the áwrah or legal nakedness both in person and
in media such as photographs and video recordings. (Otherwise there
could be legitimate grounds for an Islamic porn industry!) Agreeing
to appear on camera without the face veil amounts to conceding that
the face does not constitute a woman's áwrah.
Possible blackmail and
sin
Fouzya Salim told the judge that she would rather kill herself than
reveal her face while giving evidence. Her implied threat is seen
by many as bordering on an attempt to blackmail the New Zealand
judicial system.
Suicide is expressly forbidden in the Islamic holy book, the Koran.
In the chapter called Women verse 29 of the book it is
stated that "...And do not kill yourselves. Surely, Allah
[Islamic god] is Most Merciful to you". According to Hadith
(tradition of Mohamed) number 6485 in Sahih Muslim, "....none
amongst you should make a request for death, and do not call for
it before it comes, for when any of you dies, he ceases (to do good)
deeds and the life of a believer is not pronlonged but for goodness."
Those who commit suicide other than in terrorist operations against
Israel, the United States and those who are regarded as allies and
collaborators of these and other "infidel states" are
treated with the utmost disrespect by Muslim communities. Mullahs
would refuse to officiate in their burial. The corpses of Muslims,
other than terrorists, who kill themselves are unceremoniously dumped
into crudely dug holes in the ground without the usual rites of
burial. Surviving family members would be subjected to humiliation
for years.
Most devout Muslims probably will not contemplate killing themselves
unless they feel they are engaged in holy war against an enemy state.
Why
did they come to New Zealand?
Exposing flesh on the beach. Halal bikini? |
Ashraf Choudhary who is a practising Muslim and
member of the New Zealand Parliament told the Wellington newspaper
the Dominion Post and other media organs that irrespective of religious
or cultural backgrounds, migrants and refugees must integrate to
achieve their full potential. That does not mean denying their culture
or religion, but it does mean going some way to accommodate New
Zealand sensibilities.
Fouzya Salim told the judge that she had compromised to New Zealand
sensibilities by exposing part of her nakedness since her arrival
here. She had removed the mosquito netting that covered the eye-slit
in her burqa! New Zealand ought to be thankful for
small mercies!
A former deputy prime minister and currently the parliamentary leader
of the opposition New Zealand First party, the Right Honourable
Winston Peters goes further. He said that if New Zealand's openness
is too over-bearing for Fouzya Salim she must think of resettling
somewhere else where she would feel more comfortable. He is absolutely
right.
Application
of other Islamic law
It is not clear if the Muslim women before the Auckland court would
wish to ask the court to subject them to the Islamic law on legal
evidence. A woman's testimony before a court carries half the weight
of that of a man's under Islamic law.
What about inheritance? Will Muslim women petition New Zealand courts
to let their male siblings have twice their share of inherited estates?
Will they insist on settling for only an eighth of their deceased
husbands' estates? Will they insist on being one of four wives?
When they become fat and ugly will they insist that New Zealand
change our laws so that their 53 year-old husbands could marry 6
year-old girls? Or will they bask in New Zealand justice when
it suits them?
Where will it all end?
The Islamic Association representative's argument that the wearing
of a face veil is "part of a woman's duties as a Muslim"
is valid as long as the discharging of that duty does not set a
precedent for Muslims in New Zealand to insist on discharging other
more controversial Islamic duties.
The United Nations Economic and Social Council document numbered
E/CN.4/Sub.2/2004/NGO/27
of 26 July 2004 contains a submission on the coverage of Jihad
or holy war in the Egyptian school curriculum. The submission states
that it is every Muslim's "obligation to fight the infidels
with utmost vigour and power until they become weak, their state
disappears and they submit to the rule of the law of Islam".
Muslims insisting on exercising this obligation in New Zealand would
not merely undermine the rights of other New Zealanders. It would
result in the total disestablishment of Her Majesty's Realm of New
Zealand as we know it now. Practising Christian and Jewish New Zealanders
would be reduced to servitude subject to the payment of a debilitating
poll tax. The majority of New Zealanders such as agnostics,
atheists, Buddhists, Hindus and others who refuse to convert to
Islam would be executed according to Islamic law.
|  riana
Fallaci writes in her book The Rage and the Pride
that "Because our cultural identity has been well defined
for thousands of years we cannot bear a migratory wave of
people who have nothing to do with us … who are not
ready to become like us, to be absorbed by us….Who,
on the contrary, aim to absorb us. To change our principles,
our values, our identity, our way of life. And who in the
meantime molest us with their retrograde ignorance, their
retrograde bigotry, their retrograde religion. I am saying
that in our culture there is no room for the muezzins, for
the minarets, for the phony abstemious, for the humiliating
chador, for the degrading
burkah."
 adame
Bardot presents Muslims as barbaric and cruel invaders, responsible
for terrorist acts and eager to dominate the French to the
extent of wanting to exterminate them", a Paris court
said of former actor Brigitte Bardot's book A Scream in
the Silence in which she laments the "underground
and dangerous infiltration of Islam".
|
No more Barbie dolls after the "Liberation" It is
interesting that Farah doll doesn't cover her face! |
Imposition
of the veil in the Maldives
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