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Milk is an essential part of the human diet and is a nutrient‐rich food that improves nutrition and food security. The aim of this study was to determine the presence and concentration of aflatoxin M1 (AFM1), adulterants, microbial loads, and physicochemical properties of raw cow's milk (CM) in Nekemte City, Ethiopia. A total of 12 samples of fresh CM were purposefully collected from four kebeles in the city (Bake Jama, Burka Jato, Cheleleki, and Bakanisa Kese) based on the potential of each milk production and distributor site. The AFM1 concentration was determined by high‐performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with a Sigma‐Aldrich standard (St. Louis, MO, USA). The concentrations of AFM1 in Bake Jama, Burka Jato, Cheleleki, and Bakanisa Kese were found to be 0.01–0.03 g/L, 0.31–0.35 g/L, 0.19–0.21 g/L, and 0.04–0.07 g/L, respectively. The concentrations of AFM1 in the present study varied significantly (p < 0.05) and ranged from 0.01 g/L to 0.35 g/L. These results show that of the 12 samples tested, all were positive for AFM1 and contaminated to varying degrees. The results of this study also revealed that the concentration of AFM1 in 7 (58%) of the 12 milk samples was above the European Union's (EU) maximum tolerance limit (0.05 g/L). The present study also revealed that of the investigated adulterants, only the addition of water had positive effects on three milk samples, while the remaining adulterants were not detected in any of the milk samples. The total bacterial count (TBC) and total coliform count (TCC) were significantly (p < 0.05) different and ranged from 5.53 to 6.82 log10cfumL−1 and from 4.21 to 4.74 log10cfumL−1, respectively. The physicochemical properties of the milk samples in the present study were significantly (p < 0.05) different and ranged from 2.8% to 5.75% fat, 7.03% to 9.75% solid‐not‐fat (SNF), 2.35% to 3.61% protein, 3.33% to 5.15% lactose, 11.54% to 13.69% total solid, 0.16% to 0.18% titratable acid, 26.7 to 32.1°C, 6.35 to 6.55 pH, and 1.027 to 1.030 specific gravity. The physicochemical parameters of the raw milk in the study area met the required quality standards. Hence, further studies are required to determine the extent of the problem and the factors associated with high levels of AFM1 in raw milk in the study areas, including the detection of aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) in animal feed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is a list of names acknowledging the peer reviewers who reviewed manuscripts for the Annals of Pharmacotherapy between November 1, 2022, and October 1, 2023. It expresses gratitude for their time and effort in contributing to the journal. [Extracted from the article]

The Kabul Beauty School: The Art of Friendship and Freedom (2008) is a memoir written by the American beautician, Deborah Rodriguez. It recounts her individual story in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban and the work Western programs of "economic empowerment" and humanitarian agencies of "social emancipation" have done to "reconstruct" the war-torn nation. This involvement in the raw, however, does not exist in some kind of political vacuum. The leaders of these global programs of humanitarian action and "sustainable development" represent an array of neo-compradors: social enterprisers and partisan actors, selling "the burqa-clad woman" of Afghanistan the illusion of economic independence and "social emancipation" through local micro-projects and self-employment initiatives. The language of these agencies of social entrepreneurship and humanitarian service offers a wide-ranging discursive domain within which post-9/11 "counter-terroristic formations" (Boehmer and Morton 2010, 7) thrived in an explosion of distinct discursivities, taking form in pedagogy, morality, sexuality, medical care, philanthropy, beauty industry, women's emancipation, human rights activism and international security and safety measures. These regimes of knowledge and expertise provide important sites of critical inquiry through which counter-terror can be conceptually subverted and discursively deconstructed as part of a larger system of global control and management, within which neo-liberal politics operate at the interface between the metropolis and the postcolony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States and France each possess a liberal and a republican tradition stretching back to their origins as revolutionary regimes. However, as the epigraph from Justice Scalia suggests, it is widely believed that each polity gives rise to very different outcomes concerning the presence or absence of religion in the public sphere. This article cautions against perceiving too great a contrast between the United States and France in this respect by pointing to exceptions to this rule, and it explains these exceptions in terms of the ongoing contestation of the liberal and republican traditions within each polity. Indeed, contrary to Scalia, it points to instances of deep parallel between the United States and France on matters of religion in the public sphere, culminating in what I call the "American Headscarf Affair." In this respect we see how the presence or absence of religion within each polity, as manifest in the public sphere, is not inevitable but very much the product of ongoing contestation, centered on political and judicial activity. The "religion" within the public sphere to which the article refers, and upon which it focuses, concerns individual religious expression, manifest in matters of speech and dress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the multiliteracies framework proposed two decades ago has had a considerable effect on the field of second language (L2) teaching and learning, its successful implementation has been found challenging, both on the conceptual and practical levels. In this paper, we discuss the main hurdles of putting the approach into practice and argue for the use of the genre-based instruction in combination with key constructs of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) as a framework that can help address these challenges. Connecting the multiliteracies pedagogy with the genre-based approach, we delineate specifically how the literacy pedagogy moves and knowledge processes that constitute them can be implemented in content- and language-integrated L2 instruction. We illustrate the approach by reporting on the materials development project that focuses on a particular public discourse theme (banning the burka in Austria) and advanced literacy genre (Argumentative Discussion). The project serves as an example of formulating the advanced L2 learning goals and designing activity types that can be used for developing the multiliteracies curricula in other instructional and thematic contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, countries such as France, Belgium, Denmark, Austria, Latvia, and Bulgaria have banned face-coverings from public spaces. These bans are popularly known as 'burqa bans' as they seem to have been drafted with the aim of preventing people from wearing burqas and niqabs specifically. The scholarly response to these bans has been overwhelmingly negative, with several lawyers and philosophers arguing that they violate the human right to freedom of religion. While this article shares some of the concerns that have been raised, it argues that banning face-coverings in public is morally justified under certain conditions with the exception of facemasks that are necessary for the containment of infectious diseases, such as COVID-19. The reason for this is that those who publicly cover their face make it very difficult for other members of society to socially interact with them, especially for those who are deaf or hard-of-hearing, which is problematic in an age where many people are chronically lonely or at risk of becoming chronically lonely. As such, this article can be understood as a more elaborate, and arguably more sophisticated, defence of the justification that France offered for its face-covering ban before the European Court of Human Rights, namely that covering one's face undermines the conditions for 'living together'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of controversial aspects of the relationship between religion and the state are located in public space. Although burqa bans, the Swiss minaret ban, and duties to display crucifixes on public buildings are different in various ways, it is significant that they all take place in this particular type of location. However, when normative political theorists have addressed these issues, they have rarely paid sufficient attention to their spatial location, and, as a result, their analyses are lacking a vital dimension. This article shows what can go wrong when these normative analyses do not refer to an account of public space. It then indicates what part of a suitable account would look like by sketching four of its essential elements, referred to as the definition, distinctiveness, differentiation, and dynamism of public space. It is argued that normative political theorists should draw on aspects of such an account in order to achieve a more sophisticated understanding of issues concerning religion in public spaces, as well as to reach more securely grounded normative conclusions about them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ideas of gender equality and women's rights have come to play a crucial role in national politics of belonging and Othering, in Europe and beyond. Based on two case studies in Switzerland, we introduce the concept of gendernativism. We consider gendernativism as a particular configuration of boundary making between supposedly unfree migrant (descendant) and Muslim women and free Swiss/Europeans which is anchored in a nativist underpinning of membership. We argue that this dichotomy (re)produces an illiberal state and is a powerful means of an intersectional, gendered, migranticized, and racialized exclusion based on nativist grounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Muslim women who are forcibly displaced from their homophobic parent culture are further oppressed within the structures of Islamophobia in the host culture. Discursive re-imaginations based on their Islamic authenticity have skewed them as either veiled or unveiled women from other homogeneous ethnic cultures. Such cursory representations have cemented perceptions about them as outsiders and so a source of constant threat. Therefore, the main objective of this article is to aid discursive reconfigurations of partial representations affecting transculturally or forcibly displaced Muslim women at the intersections of racial, gender or religious persecutions. Through a reading of the life-narratives by similarly displaced Muslim women in the anthology It's Not About the Burqa, this article examines two key questions: 1) How do these women negate discursive conceptions of single stories? 2) How do they reach a unique discourse that addresses such partial representations? The article proposes heterotopia and hypomnemata as two transversal possibilities. Heterotopias are worlds within worlds which mirror what is outside. They can contain differences and undesirable bodies. Whereas hypomnemata refers to personal notes used for later reading and meditation. There has been little work bringing together the transcultural and the transversal. While the transcultural is a system of thought that conceives of cultures as an ongoing flux of confluences, transversality endorses plural possibilities. It offers tools to deterritorialize closed logics.2 This article therefore calls for revisiting the collaborative dynamics of these concepts as contested through the life-narratives of displaced Muslim women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Apart from being commonly understood as a symbol of religious identity, full-face veils (burqa) are also a process through which women redefine their bodies and social status. This article investigates Indonesian women’s commitment to wearing burqa after their work migration in Taiwan and Hong Kong. It focuses on the signification and the redefinition of the body through hijrah (transformation). In-depth interviews conducted with nine Indonesian women migrant workers (WMWs) revealed that this hijrah process characterised by the wearing of the burqa is not always motivated by a religiously radical mindset but more likely by practical considerations aiming to create a sense of security and comfort while working overseas. The burqa is perceived as a symbolic shift in body definition: from being a source of harm, to piety and privilege, paving the way for women to join an emerging elite community, rendering them a new noble and influential social status through socio-religious activities. This study recommends that further research on WMWs in the Middle East needs to acquire a more comprehensive picture taking into account its complexity. Contribution: Beyond the symbolic religious identity, burqa wearing is also a form of political participation. It illustrates women’s agency and transformation in redefining their bodies, public space, authority and public recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I examine the linkages between the online activism and offline protests against the anti-Muslim, Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) passed in India in 2019. Muslim women initiated a 101-day sit-in protest at Shaheen Bagh in Delhi, India to challenge both the anti-Muslim rationality of CAA and the ruling party in India. I analyze how the experiences of Muslim women in physical sites of protests are tied with the presence of digital feminist networks which foster translocal connections and sustain the movement through online activism. I study both the corporeal street protests where the female body is physically deployed as an instrument of dissent and the virtual presence of cyberfeminists who use digital platforms to create and circulate discursive and everyday experiences challenging the surveillance of the precarious female body. In unpacking the connections between body-offline-online, I bring to the surface discussions on the pervasiveness of violence against Muslims, especially women, in India and how they are subjected to instances of discrimination manifest in the form of corporeal punishment as well as discursive vitriol and ridicule. I argue that a protest led by Muslim women in India challenges the majoritarian masculinist assumptions about public spaces, politics, and processes of meaning-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper studies the gendered impact of the pandemic in a war ravaged Afghanistan. For majority of Afghan women, the onslaught of Covid has exacerbated their already dire condition and adversely impacted their social, economical, physical and cultural aspects of life. The research also underlines that the imposition of lockdown has caused the reversal of war gains. The paper also highlights the notable works of various Afghan women carried out during the corona pandemic that has contributed to their emancipation and upliftment of the society at large. It brings forth strong and courageous women who are combatting terrorism, everyday conflicts, frequent bombings, societal restrictions and now the deadly coronavirus and yet contributing majorly in re-building the Afghan society. This paper is an attempt to dispel the dominant narrative of their state of helplessness and despondency around Afghan women before the withdrawal of American troops and Taliban takeover. Both primary and secondary sources have complemented this research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presumably guilty of an " increasing visibility", the ostentatious presence of Muslim women in the streets of France participates, in Michel Houellebecq's novel Soumission, in this fashionable jeremiad announcing the slow and painful decadence of France and the West. In burqa, veiled or naked, they are the actors of an insidious implementation of a new word in the old one which does not go without leaving scares. Arab women painted as both conquerors and submissive would be the translation of a French historical awareness marked by a surrender to a creeping islam. In the light of the sociological work of Gérald Bronner, this article proposes to think and evaluate the stereotypical representation of the Muslim woman as pernicious contribution to a cognitive market where the most risky beliefs are competing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a multimodal approach to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this research critically examines the 2017 "burqa stunt" of Australian far-right populist politician, Pauline Hanson. Adapting Scalmer's (2002) conceptualisation of the "political gimmick", this paper makes the following arguments: Firstly, that Hanson's "burqa stunt" must be understood as an articulation of Islamophobia and political performance. It was the interplay of Hanson's radical right and populist ideologies that informed the stunt. As such, this paper bridges the ideational and performative approaches to populism. Secondly, the stunt was the product of the mediatisation of politics and the logics that govern contemporary media in Australia. The aim of Hanson's stunt was clear: to generate controversy and media attention. In this, the "burqa stunt" was incredibly successful and was extensively covered both nationally and internationally. The stunt was the most overt expression of the anti-Muslim racism that has defined Hanson's contemporary political resurgence. This paper furthers our growing understanding of how far-right populist actors strategically employ performance strategies designed to generate controversy and media attention. It also highlights how racist far-right actors are able to articulate Islamophobia in novel ways that exploit the logics of the contemporary media environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Racism and "othering" of ethnicities is an enduring feature of Western politics. In Australia, Senator Pauline Hanson is well known for radical conservative political opinions, some of which are regarded by her critics as racist. One of her most notorious anti‐Muslim campaigns came in the form of her support for a burqa ban, with engagement in constant media commentary and a publicity stunt in 2017 in which she wore a burqa into the Federal Senate Chamber. This article analyses the public discourse surrounding Hanson's call for a burqa ban, focusing on Twitter as an online media forum for the sharing and dissemination of political beliefs. In analysing Twitter posts and responses linked to Hanson's Twitter handle referring to #burqaban and related terms between 1 January 2016 and 31 December 2018, clear themes depicting orientalism, dualism, and Islamophobia emerge. I argue that the propagation of these political discourses perpetuates a perception of the burqa as epitomising fear of dangerous and harmful mischaracterisations of Australian Muslims. The normalisation and continued utilisation of orientalist, dualist, and Islamophobic themes in political and public discourse, linked with the political profile and positional authority of Pauline Hanson, legitimises calls for impositions on Muslims' religious freedoms, manifesting in debates such as the "burqa ban". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented which discusses various reports within the issue on topics, including the use of the hashtag #AboriginalLivesMatter, a spinoff from the #BlackLivesMatterMovement, and Pauline Hanson's performance of Islamophobic populism in the Australian Parliament by wearing a Burqa.

Burqa and niqab are currently the two most challenging manifestations of face veil in the West. Developed based on an interpretive method, the present research is an attempt to study and analyze semantic implications of face veil among 24 Muslim Iranian women in Baluchestan Province and Qeshm Island in Iran. Semi-structured interviews and field observations were employed. The findings indicated that the connotation of niqab for the ethnic-religious minority women in Baluchestan was different from that of burqa for the religious minority women living on Qeshm Island. The Baluch women wear niqab as a sign of their collective identity and differentiation as well as maximal religious commitment vis-à-vis Shia-Persian majority; whereas burqa more than representing religious or ethnic identity, is an expressive language for native women to differentiate their personal identity. Burqa, produced in different colors and forms, is rich enough to show the marital status, social class, economic wellbeing and the age of women wearing it in a traditional patriarchal society; whereas all-black niqab prevents the identification and differentiation of the users. Burqa and niqab trade in both regions under study has led to the women-only employment in its manufacturing market, sewing and sales, although applying gold threads on some brands of burqa has turned them into capital goods, playing a more decisive role in socio-economic empowerment of women in Qeshm. Given the findings of this study, it may be concluded that various types of face veils in the world of Islam represent certain signs and symbols within ethnic-religious structures that need further deliberation before enactment of any law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The visibility of women and their freedoms in the French public sphere is envisaged in this article on the basis of laïcité and gender equality. Within the debate about the rights and limitations of Muslim women, French feminist ideology seems to be torn between two totally contradictory positions. Anti-veil and anti-burqa laws are on the one hand defended in the name of laïcité and the emancipation of women. On the other hand, the laws are severely criticized because they marginalize Muslim women from the majority of French society. The main aim of this research is to analyze anti-veil and anti-burqa laws in France by focusing on their historical and social foundations from a feminist perspective. Next, this study argues that the visibility of Muslim women in the French public space, which is banned in the name of republican and laic values, is actually valued by some feminist groups who cast an exclusionary and othering glance at the clothing of Muslim women, such as the headscarf or the burqa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I illuminate the affective and economic factors that drive anti-Muslim sentiment. By lowering the bar of what is sayable, the German New Right creates more acceptance of Islamophobia. Conservative-voting states have held more negative views of Muslims, with the South of Germany being more wary than the North. However, local factors like economic insecurity in de-industrialized regions and high incidence of far-right activities further determine how Germans feel about Islam. Scapegoating Muslims mainstreams 'group-focused enmity' and legitimates violence against minorities and socially weak groups. Currently, populist and far right groups like Pegida and the Alternative for Germany have revived a critique of global economic processes as benefitting only social elites: they dismiss all print journalism as a pack of lies, take a virulent anti-government stance, and create a backlash against career politicians and experts. The fear of refugees gaining access to economic support has provided a convenient scapegoat for processes of devolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers a structure analysis of the American infiltration of Afghanistan, particularly the former's instrumentalization of feminist discourse. Topics discussed include how the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks generated an anti-religious political discourse, how religion was contested through the native woman, and the burqa controversy in Afghanistan.

Between February 2002 and November 2018, Swedish politicians from the Centre, Christian Democrat, Moderate, Liberal and Sweden Democrat parties proposed policies to ban clothing variously referred to as the "burka," "full-covering veil," "face veil" and "niqab" (Arabic for face veil) at least 38 times, six at the national level and thirty-two at the municipal. Research suggests that circa 100 women in Sweden wear a "burka"; clearly these policy proposals have little to do with the burka's prevalence. What, then, do these policy proposals attempt to govern? In this text we adopt feminist political scientist Carol Bacchi's "what is the problem represented to be?" approach to analyse Swedish bills to regulate the burka. These policy proposals, we contend, have more to do with conceptualizing Swedishness than addressing an existing "problem" of women who wear burka. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why has the face veil become the centre of political debates about Islam in urban contexts? What kinds of experiences and ideas have animated its framing as a practice in need of regulation? Focusing on Spain, we argue that space and emotion are the key categories for explaining the micro-politics of face veil conflicts and that constitute face veiling as an object of contention "on the ground". We suggest the notion of regimes of public space and highlight three central components: (1) understandings of ideal public space; (2) regimes of urban visibility; (3) emotional regimes. Taken together, these dimensions filter forms of inclusion and exclusion that emerge from regulatory practices and feed into graduated forms of urban citizenship and frame people's sensibilities. The article also illustrates how the spatial analysis complicates the secular-religious dichotomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mahesh Dattani's Play Where Did I Leave My Purdah? is a journey of a women who tries to cope up with her haunting past. Nazia Sahiba is a gang rape victim, and has seen her sister Zarine being killed in front of her eyes. The scar of partition and the trauma associated with it can be overtly seen in Dattani's characters. The 'burqa' plays an important role and becomes a metaphor for different identities and their manifestations. The paper traces the journey of selfidentification of its three main women characters and draws a parallel between Henrik Ibsen's Nora and Dattani's Nazia. The quest of Nazia is a quest of a postmodern woman trying to gain a foothold in the ever slipping sand of identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Identity Theory proposed by Akerlof and Kranton (2000), we conceptualize the interactions between conservative outlook and female wellbeing through influencing gender norms. Conservative households often prefer women to stay home, which correlates to female employment and decision-making autonomy, affecting female physical mobility and female nutrition. Finding a suitable indicator for conservative outlook is difficult as we typically lack household-level ‘value survey’. In the fast modernizing context of rural Bangladesh, wearing burqa (veil) is often perceived as an indicator of socially conservative outlook. Using this insight, we process the data from the second wave of the Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey (BIHS) for 2015 to test the statistically robust association between household-level conservative outlook and gender-sensitive wellbeing indicators such as female employment, body mass index, and decision-making autonomy for the population of ever-married females aged 15–49 years old. After controlling for individual, household, and regional characteristics, and using sub-regional fixed effects, our findings suggest that living in conservative households is associated with lower probability of female employment. Females from conservative households are less likely to be in wage work or salaried jobs. The probability of being overweight is also higher for the females in conservative households as compared to non-conservative households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2010, France banned the wearing of face-veils in public. Anglo-liberal scholars criticized the move vehemently. France succeeded in confusing the European Court of Human Rights into accepting the proposition that the visibility of the face is key to the so-called vivre ensemble. However, such arguments steer our attention toward the material implication of the practice of veiling while obscuring the genuine driver behind the prohibition, i.e. the metaphysical harm caused by publicly displaying an ideology supporting a competing vision of the good. This is corroborated by those attempts to ban the burkini in the summer of 2016 in some French municipalities. The surge of face-veil bans and condemnations of the practice of face-veiling across Europe underscore the existence of a common sensitive nerve: the face-veil appears to defy the minimal amount of cohesiveness necessary for the preservation of collective identity within European culture. In turn, this article provides a legal articulation for the ban that does not need the tenets of French republicanism as support. Drawing from anthropology, sociology, and political philosophy, I elucidate how, in this haphazard concept of vivre ensemble, one must read in a legitimate injunction to abide by the tacit, unbending rules of membership inherent to a national community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study attempts to describe the components, characteristics, and implications of burqa in Qeshm Island, Iran, through an ethnographic method. The sample of the study is composed of twelve burqa-wearing women who were selected by applying a purposive sampling method. The process of data collection took 1 year, and the researchers conducted observations, note-takings, photography, and interviews with the participants on the field. The findings indicated that unlike niqab in the Arab countries, burqa is not surrounded by ideology. It is a cultural product which needs to be understood based on six main themes. In this cultural context, burqa is considered to be a social construction through which women reconstruct and moderate their social status, distance themselves from imposed roles and stereotypes, distinguish themselves from others with their creativity and innovation in designing burqas, and occasionally benefit from burqas’ financial value. Considering the various implications of burqa in the Muslim world and in Iran, it is proposed that the laws pertaining to this region be legislated based on the recognized indication of burqa by ethnic and religious groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers global news brief on Church-State Affairs as of July 2018. Topics discussed include amendment to Bolivia's penal code provoked protests against its limitation of religious liberty, Danish government has proposed a ban on full-face coverings niqab and burqa in public places and European Court of Justice ruled that courts could consider cases of hiring discrimination by faith-based organizations despite historic exemptions for church.

Alliances are a political opportunity that reinforce the claims made by different players in the political sphere. However, the literature on the political participation of immigrants pays little attention to the formation of alliances and their effects on the interaction between immigrants and institutional actors, especially under circumstances of politicization. This article aims to explain the emergence of alliances between political parties and immigrant organizations when immigration is politicized locally. I argue that the need to legitimize the political parties’ position on the politicization guide their alliances with immigrants. Using qualitative methods, I analyse the emergence of alliances in the anti-Romanian-Roma campaign in Badalona and the burka ban in Lleida, both in Catalonia, Spain. The findings portray these relationships as the outcome of strategic interactions that respond to the balance of power between institutional and non-institutional actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the use of the full-face veil in the public sphere, discussing the standpoint adopted by some local authorities in Spain and Italy and the content of different proposals that have been submitted to Parliament in both countries, aimed at restricting the use of this garment in public places. The doctrine of the ECtHR in S.A.S. v. France will be taken as a benchmark for a comparative study of this issue in both Mediterranean countries. It is assumed that from a legal approach the wearing of burqa is a very complex question that requires a detailed analysis of the different elements involved, including its social implications before giving it an enduring solution. A general ban can be detrimental for the goal of integration, and give way to new forms of discrimination. Therefore, prior to enacting any legislation that could affect fundamental rights, it should be considered what public interests are in real need of protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Essay recounts how feminist theorists and activists managed to write their ideals into the fabric of French law and culture, and how nonfeminists began to appropriate those ideals. Parite, the 2000 law that requires half of all candidates for public office be women, saw French feminists first engineer a change in French universalism to respect sex difference; although not wholly successful, Parite advanced women's political inclusion. Then, like a dmp of water in a pond, these feminist ideas disappeared in plain sight: they became intrinsic to French state norms and public values. As they became woven into such norms, however, politicians began to use them to promote exclusions: first excluding Muslims from full participation in the Republic with veil and burqa bans, then supporting exclusions of sex and class with a corporate board quota (CBQ). Most recently, feminist ideas have been called upon to exclude French Muslims with proposed burkini bans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to analyse the legislative processes leading to forbidding the wearing of burqas and the building of minarets in Switzerland by a postcolonial approach. In 2009, a federal popular initiative amended the Swiss constitution by forbidding the construction of minarets across the Helvetic territory. At the same time, several right-wing parties have attempted to pass a general prohibition of the burqa in public spaces since 2006. As a consequence, in 2013, the canton of Tessin has adopted an article prohibiting the face covering in public spaces and, in 2016, a popular initiative for the ban of the burqa in the whole country was launched. Starting from the content analysis of parliamentary debates and legislative documents concerning these bans, hegemonic and Eurocentric narratives excluding Muslims from the national community will be examined. The article also aims at casting a new light on the interlinkages between Swiss direct democracy, populism and Islamophobia. Furthermore, the exploitation of gender aimed at reinforcing Islamophobic narratives will be analysed. In both the minarets and the burqa ban cases, the image of women has played a crucial role in justifying the right-wing discourse on Muslims and Islam in Switzerland. On the one hand, the minarets ban has occupied the Swiss public space by a propaganda poster showing a woman wearing a burqa in front of minarets erected like missiles on top of a Swiss flag. On the other hand, the burqa ban articulated its campaign around the defence of freedom and women's right as Swiss traditional values. By deconstructing political and legislative arguments against burqa and minarets, the article shows how they have encouraged the legitimacy of public Islamophobic discourses and fostered a crystallised and undifferentiated representation of the Muslims' presence in Switzerland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers news briefs related to church and state worldwide as of July 2017. Topics include the arrests of messanic sect Ahmadis in Algeria, the Austrian coalition government's plans to ban the full-face or face-and-body coverings worn by Muslim women, and the enactment of a legislation in Xinjiang, China that ban religious weddings and use of the term Halal.

Courts from around the common law world have been required to decide whether a witness may give evidence while wearing a burqa or niqab. In the majority of documented cases the court has determined that the witness must remove her face covering. In coming to this conclusion the court has in many instances also considered alternative arrangements which may be put in place to minimise the witness’s discomfort and respect her religious beliefs as far as possible. This article analyses the existing case law to determine which practical solutions considered by the courts are the most effective both in terms of respecting the witness’s religious beliefs and in facilitating the administration of justice. It concludes that the removal of non-essential men and/or the screening of the witness along with ancillary orders, offers the best compromise for all concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]