Umme Kalsoom, Who Campaigns For Muslims To Wear Hijabs During Physical Education Hopes UK Schools Will Take Notice
New
Age Islam News Bureau
23
July 2023
• Umme Kalsoom, Who
Campaigns For Muslims To Wear Hijabs During Physical Education Hopes UK Schools Will Take Notice
• I’m A Trans Non-Binary Pakistani Muslim Woman – Who
Says All My Identities Can’t Co-Exist?
• Seventy Two Percent of Women In Pakistan Are
Smokers: Pakistan Tobacco Board
• Girl Expelled From UP School For Radicalising
Students Against Muslims
• Lucknow University Suspends Afghan Girl For
Harassing Former Roommate
Compiled
by New Age Islam News Bureau
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/umme-kalsoom-muslim-hijab-uk/d/130282
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Umme Kalsoom, Who Campaigns
For Muslims To Wear Hijabs During Physical Education Hopes UK Schools Will Take
Notice
Football
Beyond Borders
Umme
Kalsoom says she wants to "break down the barriers for girls"
------
By Melissa Major
22 JUL 2023
A Lancashire footballer who
campaigned to allow Muslim girls to wear sports hijabs during physical
education (PE) lessons is hoping the campaign will go nationwide.
Umme Kalsoom launched the
campaign alongside friends in 2021 because she felt “vulnerable” when expected
to take off her hijab during school sports sessions at Marsden Heights
Community College, in Nelson, and she wanted others to feel comfortable. After
successfully getting the rules changed at her school, Umme hopes other schools
will change their policy.
“I did it to bring comfort
to myself and the other girls, but I also felt vulnerable taking it off when I
didn’t want to”, the student who lives in Brierfield, near Burnley, told the PA
news agency.
The school's policy was
originally put in place for health and safety reasons, but it has now been
changed. The 16-year-old has played football for about four years as part of a
programme at Football Beyond Borders (FBB), a social inclusion charity that helped
her push for change at her school.
The girls and staff at FBB
led a presentation with the school’s senior leadership team and spoke about the
importance of wearing a hijab and how they feel when this is not allowed. Many
staff at the school were supportive of the campaign, in particular head of year
Tasneem Hussain, Umme said.
“I went to my head of year
and spoke to her about it and she is Muslim and she was very supportive and
understanding and she helped me to pursue the campaign further and gets my points
across”, Umme added.
In a short film directed by
Alina Akbar in partnership with creative agency Youth Beyond Borders (YBB),
Aurora Media and Fifa+, Ms Hussain said: “I wanted Umme and the girls to feel
like they were supported by the school.
“It’s something that’s quite
close to my heart as well, being a Muslim teacher and being someone that the
girls felt comfortable to approach to speak about it.”
Umme has held talks with
members of Lancashire County Council and said she was struck by the attention
her campaign has achieved, adding: “I didn’t know it would go this far.” She
said other young Muslim girls have since sought advice, which makes her feel
“great to be the leader of this campaign” and she hopes it has a nationwide
appeal since it aims to “break down the barriers for girls to play football
everywhere they exist”.
With England’s Lionesses
playing their first match at the Women’s World Cup against Haiti on Saturday
morning, Umme said: “I’m very excited, I can’t wait.
Source: Lancs.Live
Please click the following
URL to read the full text of the original story:
https://www.lancs.live/news/lancashire-news/burnley-teen-who-campaigns-muslims-27374569
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I’m A Trans Non-Binary
Pakistani Muslim Woman – Who Says All My Identities Can’t Co-Exist?
I
had no idea that the words ‘gay’ or ‘queer’ even existed until I was around 15
(Picture: Trans Portraits UK / Getty)
------
Jasmine Qureshi
23 Jul 2023
Traditional desi patterns
surrounded me, and the glowing tinge of purple, twinkling lights shone, while
words in Urdu, Arabic, Hindi and English fell on my ears.
It was last December and I
was in the MEHFIL – a London-based arts organisation that spotlights South
Asian artists, from poets and musicians to singers, authors, amateurs and
professionals. I’d been invited as a poet, and I was buzzing.
‘I am a weapon,’ I read. ‘Or
so I have been told. The soft subtlety of my brown skin. The fine hair
shivering on the surface of my planet. The jingle jangle of my gold finery. I
am a weapon. Or so I have been told.’
I heard the affirmative
clicks, laughs and cheers from the audience. I could also see their watchful
brown eyes, while glints of earrings and nose studs fed me as the energy
reverberated from the crowd.
I was spinning tales of what
Islam means to me, with my queer, hairy, brown, trans woman body, all while
talking about my sciencey, nature-nut mind – and they loved me. Not despite it,
but because of it.
I felt content, empowered
and alive, but – most of all – safe. I was surrounded by brown skin, black
hair-adorned faces, all rich with smiles and tales of their communities,
struggles and lives. And I was one of them.
I grew up with a very
different Islam – Sunni (one of the sects of Islam), strictly religious, but
with a flavouring of ‘liberal-thinking’ is how I’d describe it.
As an AMAB (assigned male at
birth) person, I had rules ingrained into me – grow a beard, expect to marry,
pray in the mosque five times a day and learn the Quran.
The toxic masculinity I saw
and heteronormative roles in the community – loud angry men, submissive quiet
women, husbands as breadwinners, and wives as carers, mothers as emotional
punching bags – stunted my visions of a life. I’m not saying it was all bad,
but my identity was severely limited.
So coming out as gay at the
age of 18 was the first hurdle because it distanced me from the toxic
structures of my heteronormative youth. But that’s all it did, and I fell into
other stereotypes of societal gay-ness, like dressing like white gay men,
adopting their mannerisms, and the ‘campness’ of identities I’d seen
represented in mainstream media.
Being non-binary felt like I
could shed the heavy, ill-fitting armour made from the myriad of stereotypes
I’d grown up with. It felt like a space for me to distance myself from gender
norms, cultural bias and societal pressure and judgement – for just a second to
catch my breath – so I could begin to stand up again.
This developed to encompass
my trans womanhood about a year or two later, allowing me to keep from being
hidden in the folds of stereotypical femininity.
The friends I had around me
– my chosen family – provided much-needed and incredibly valuable support and
validation, allowing me to reach tentatively towards some sort of stability in
the confusion I had around myself.
However, the community (in
Portsmouth at this time) was largely white and could not understand the pain I
had of possibly losing family or community back home in London and my entire
previous reason for being alive (my religion and service to God), simply
because I expressed and identified differently than the norm.
My biological family,
although caring, would not hear about any of my journeys until much later, and
I kept my life hidden from them for years as I tried to live with the shame and
fear built up around queerness and self-reflection in the way I was exploring
myself.
These coming outs led to the
realisation that I am not fighting to change from one thing to another, but to
break the perception of binaries and bias. We should view identity, society,
and sexuality with a flexible mindset that allows people to question, express
and grow authentically via their own self-autonomy.
So why am I Muslim?
Honestly, for part of my life, I wasn’t. I hated ‘religion’. All organised
groups centring god-like entities could – ironically – go to hell.
But as I understood myself
more and realised that I could not exist without my past, I put out feelers for
an Islam that made more sense to me. I discovered that it had never really
left, just been shoved into the attic, hidden in a box of dusty decorations and
wrapping paper.
Just as we have differing
and ever-changing favourite foods, animals, objects or even moments in our
lives, so the parts of this cultural, spiritual thread I hold onto morphs every
day. For the moment, the feeling of connection to something so beautiful and
timeless – that I can have to myself and yet still belong to a larger
collective – is what I most embrace.
I wanted flexibility, but
also reclamation. An intersectional understanding was necessary for that so I
needed to delve into what made me truly myself to pull back the covers of who I
wanted to be.
My Islamic upbringing was
interwoven so closely to my cultural roots – the Pakistani food, the Arab
perfumes, the languages of Arabic and Urdu, the dressage and the decentralising
of Eurocentric standards of beauty, ideology, and western political agendas.
I went back to religion
because it felt comforting and familiar to me. My lack of conformity makes it
hard for me to access these communities, but it isn’t because I’m made wrong,
it’s because the world I was thrust into was made for singular identities – and
that’s wrong.
Source: Metro.Co.Uk
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Seventy Two Percent of Women
In Pakistan Are Smokers: Pakistan Tobacco Board
July 23, 2023
The Pakistan Tobacco Board
has recently revealed that the number of Pakistani women who smoke has surged
to a shocking 72%, Geo News reported.
This surge in women smokers
has caused medical experts to raise serious concerns about the grave health
implications of the habit, a survey shared by the tobacco board with a public
accounts subcommittee in the federal capital said.
Increased smoking was a
leading factor in increased anxiety and depression among women, health experts
say, adding that the habit doubles the risk of stroke and severely impacts
their reproductive health.
Experts further said the
risk of stillborns and the likelihood of fatal lung disease in newborns
increased by 20 times when women smoked, adding that the bone density of women
who smoke decreases, increasing the risk of hip fracture.
The tobacco board further
shared that already taxes, levies and excises comprise 85% of the price of each
box of cigarettes; however, the Social Policy and Development Centre (SPDC)
says this is insufficient.
Source: Geo.Tv
https://www.geo.tv/latest/500806-72-of-women-in-pakistan-are-smokers-ptb
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Girl Expelled From UP School
For Radicalising Students Against Muslims
July 23, 2023
A16-year-old student has
been expelled from a private school in Uttar Pradesh’s Meerut for “asking Hindu
students to distance themselves from Muslim pupils, citing examples from films
like ‘Kashmir Files’ and ‘The Kerala Story’,” police said.
The girl’s parents, however,
alleged that she was asked to leave the school by the authorities for “wearing
a Tilak on her forehead and a Rudraksha bead on her wrist inside the school
premises”.
Principal of the school,
Bhawna Chauhan, said, “The girl’s hardline approach was the reason for her
expulsion. Her behaviour was disruptive with her radicalised thinking. She was
creating a nuisance and spreading hatred against Muslim students.”
The girl, meanwhile, said,
“We are all aware of the instances revealed in films like ‘Kashmir Files’. So,
I used to warn my friends of the consequences of love jihad.”
Meerut Senior Superintendent
of Police, Rohit Singh Sajwan, said, “No complaint has been received by the
police, and therefore, no action has been taken in the matter.”
Source: The States Man
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Lucknow University Suspends
Afghan Girl For Harassing Former Roommate
Jul 23, 2023
Lucknow: The Lucknow
University authorities suspended a foreign girl student for alleged
indiscipline on the campus on Saturday.
LU proctor office issued the
suspension notice to the student from Afghanistan who is pursuing PhD in public
administration department. The student allegedly misused the government ID of
an Indian girl student to obtain a mobile number and used it to mentally harass
a BCA student, also from Afghanistan.
The duo had a dispute after
which the PhD scholar shot pictures and videos of the BCA student, created a
fake Instagram account of the victim and posted her pictures with inappropriate
messages in Persian. She also tagged the family members of the victim. “The
Indian student had given her government ID to the Afghan research scholar to
help her. She, however, used the ID to get a SIM card issued in her name and
used it to create a fake social media account of the victim on which she
uploaded explicit content,” a senior LU official said.
After the victim lodged a
complaint with the proctor’s office, allegations against the Afghan research
scholar were found to be true. She was suspended and issued a show cause
notice. LU officials said that the accused girl also used the SIM to harass
other girls too.
“The accused girl has been
suspended pending inquiry. Her hostel allotment and other facilities provided
by the university have been cancelled and her entry on the campus has been
barred,” chief proctor Rakesh Dwivedi said. “We have given three days to the
PhD student to give an explanation in writing. If she fails to submit her reply
timely, it will be assumed that she has nothing to say in her defence and
strict action will be taken against her,” he said.
Source: Times Of India
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URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/umme-kalsoom-muslim-hijab-uk/d/130282