to stop shopping at M and S for selling hijabs for young girls

[worstmotherintheworld]

So M and S have started to sell hijabs as part of their school uniform range...aimed at primary school children. One reviewer helpfully suggests getting the small one for a 4 year old.

I have been shopping at Marks all my adult life and have remained a faithful customer despite some dodgy clothes of late and the uninspirational Sparks card, but I think this is going to be the last straw for me.

8 is the youngest marriageable age in Islam. The hijab can also be worn from puberty.

Work it out.

dawnmist

so because you dont experience it, it therefore doesnt happen?

Wauden

please do not lie.

untrue, the age is determined by ability to be mature enough to make a choice out of freewill .. no muslim country has age of consent less than 16yrs

in usa it is 12yrs depending on the state.

Spiteful so there are no terrorists, jihadis, extremists or hate preachers are there or have I read about them in that Britain First annual and it’s all nonsense. Remind me to let the security services know it’s all a figment if my imagination.

[She] was about 12 years of age when we married her off,” she says. “You know how it is in our villages. A girl hitting puberty is deemed fit for marriage.”
thewire.in/external-affairs/pakistans-child-brides

uk intel warned blair of blowback if he chose to invade iraq. 1 million dead in iraq and blowback was inevitable.

in that time since we've destroyed iraq, libya, yemen, syria, afghanistan and been responsible for an estimated 4 million deaths.

having said that europol have said the greatest number of terrorist attacks in uk have been from irish dissidents. they also say 98% of terrorism in europe is not by muslims.

Wauden

and it is illegal in pakistan , legal age of consent is 16yrs.

will you be now linking to the usa child brides? i guess not.

Oh no, terrorists, extremists and hate preachers exist in all countries and all faiths. But do we look at an Irishman and presume his pockets are full of Semtex? Do we consider the nice church-going lady down the street to be a Westboro sympathiser? That Catholic fella from the shop - will he abuse your children? What about that football team with a German manager? Best make sure he signs no Jews eh?

Of course not, after all, we don't judge individuals on the crimes that the extremists of their ilk have committed do we?

Those countries were all invaded by Blair and Bush for oil. Only Libya and Syria were independent and they too were attacked.

Who is responsible for 98% of terrorist attacks in Europe then? Having lived through the IRA bombing campaign I can agree it was relentless.

In some of these cases, the discrepancy between the ages of the bride and the bridegroom had been alarming. A 14-year-old girl, Salma Bibi, was married to a 76-year-old man in Dera Ghazi Khan. Similarly, a five-year-old child was married to an elderly man in Muzaffargarh district.

Rani Bibi, a 13-year-old girl, lives in Budhla Sant union council adjoining Multan city. On a cold November day, she is sitting in the courtyard of her mud house. “By the grace of Almighty Allah, I turned out to be lucky,” she says, looking at the sky. As she was being married to her 25-year-old maternal cousin Nadeem Ahmed in August this year, a local human rights activist heard about it and informed the police. The marriage was stopped. “All of my family was worried but I was relieved and thanked Allah who had saved me from an unwanted marriage,” she says.

Incidents like these are quite common across the poverty-ridden and tradition-bound southern and south-western parts of Punjab. There have been 16 reported cases of child marriages in just eight districts of this region between January and October 2017. For each of these cases, many more have gone unreported.

thewire.in/external-affairs/pakistans-child-brides

fredperry18 - If I can't speak from direct experience then who can? It's a discussion and this is a relevant comment, like it or not.

This is the experience of a women I know. They (the women) are educated and from a religious family. Some travel to mecca.

They act this was because they have no choice - they were brought up in a very religious family and don't believe that a scrap of cloth brings you one mm closer to the almighty.

They see the hypocracy of the politicians who say they speak for God while shitting on the people, talking nonsense and lining their own pockets.

And here's a piece on child marriage in the US - it's not ancient history: www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/inequality/2018/feb/06/it-put-an-end-to-my-childhood-the-hidden-scandal-of-us-child-marriage

(in the US) almost 250,000 children were married there between 2000 and 2010, some of them as young as 10. “Almost all were girls married to adult men,” says Fraidy Reiss, the director of campaigning organisation Unchained at Last.

fredperry19

its not political.

its about faith and identity. as muslims have been demonised and increasingly dehumanised .. they have asserted their religious identity. that is because of the hostility they face and have faced over the last 17 yrs to justify blairs/camerons/mays wars in the mid east

in times past immigrants did not feel the need to, despite being scapegoats, othered they were not as muslims but as being pakistani/indian/brown. that moved them towards identifying with their parents homeland as british society became increasingly unaccepting --

Great post fredperry

I don't understand how people can say that women wear the hijab purely through choice, and then say that little girls wear it to prepare for the transition when they're older. If you need years to "practise" wearing something, that suggests that it's a real chore/inconvenience. So unless they're under pressure, they won't wear it when they're older anyway! Simple as that. I'm not being sarcastic - I can't understand the contradiction here.

People do need to look at the bigger picture outside of 'I think it's oppressive and don't support it'. If these young girls are not able to attend school wearing a hijab, then they may not be allowed to attend school at all. I would much prefer a child AT school in a hijab getting an education where she may be able to make choices for herself in the future, than locked away at home with no education.

I think people are looking at the bigger picture, the fact that a piece of cloth on a female or male's head does not make them closer to 'god', or make them more modest, or cutting genitals in anyway does not make any one more pure. Its all stuff and nonsense, whatever religion we are talking about.

Midnitescribbler it is illegal to deny your child an education. Why are these children not protected by this legislation the way other children are? Your post sums up the racism of low expectations.

irishfeminist It seems so easy to say that they must be able to attend school. But a parent could say that they are homeschooling a child so that they don't attend formal schooling if that child is prevented from wearing the hijab. Children can fall through the cracks. Educate a student with a hijab, or let her be 'educated' at home because the school will not allow a student to attend whilst wearing a head covering? I have three girls in my class who wear the hijab (8-10 years old). Are they better off in my classroom, getting exposed to the curriculum, or should they be kept at home, excluded from education, because a school has decided to ban the hijab?

But midnitescribbler, what about areas qhere the majority population is Muslim and the non Muslim girls are made to feel marginalised in a christian/secular country? Or should we edge towards segregated schools and forget integration altogether?

When my dc went to primary school, a cofe school where 40% of DC were non practicing christians all families agreed to follow the Christian ethos of the school. Due to proximity to the mosque the proportion of that 40% became increasingly Muslim. There were secular schools nearby but they weren't high performing outstanding primaries. There were church families denied places at the school.

The Muslim children were excluded from the ethos of the school by because their parents withdrew them from things like end of term services that also showcased the achievements of the children.

If muslim parents ad strong views I don't understand why their children didn't attend the secular schools. I don't like the having their cake and eating it philosophy which seemed rather arrogant to me.

My school is 82% EAL, and with about 60% of students from Muslim or Islamic backgrounds. They attend our school, where they can 'have their cake and eat it' (disgusting phrase BTW). I have one girl in my class who has chosen to wear the hijab, and I can think of about 20 girls amongst the 800 in the school that have chosen to do so right now. It doesn't affect their schooling, and it doesn't affect the schooling of any other student in the school. Their religion is irrelevant, and the scarf they wear does not change the education that I will give them.

But have they signed an agreement supporting the school's ethos midnite? I don't think it's a disgusting phrase, rather a well used phrase to indicate that nobody can say x and do y instead. If a family cannot support and engage in the ethos of a cofe school they elect for their children to attend, and there are secular alternatives close by, I do not understand the level of disingenuousness. My dd attended a Catholic secondary school for three years. We knew the score and would not have dreamt of saying she could not attend mass or worship through Mary. For the simple fact that we chose to send her ther and in doing so accepted she woukd learn about catholicism and integrate into her school community. What happened at the cofe sxhool was a sort of apartheid and it wasn't driven by the christian families. Do you not see the danger of that?

In the back if this I did a quick Google and at least 2 primaries round here sold or had uniform hijab. In fact my local uniform supplier stocks one. And the other sold it from the school office.

I suggest if we are dictating to schools and shops that they shouldn't sell them for primary children and if we are boycotting where sells them alot if us will have nowhere to buy the uniform at all

What scares British people is the impact this has on the wider society. If Muslim men think their young girls should be covered then what are they going to think about young white British girls who are not covered.

There is consequences of turning the UK into a culturally segregated society with 2 massively different cultures. We have already seen some of the effects.

What scares British people is the impact this has on the wider society. If Muslim men think their young girls should be covered then what are they going to think about young white British girls who are not covered

You do know there are a great many British Muslims...?

You do know there are a great many British Muslims...?
Are they culturally British? Because completely covering young girls and women is not part of British culture.