Dogs, a man’s best friend, the most faithful and clever animal on the earth. Dogs are so attached to their human companion that they detect their owner’s mood better than a human partner can. These days a dog is considered to be better than humans, a dog loves his owner unconditionally and can even die for him.

A dog will keep you happy, healthy and active. It will welcome you home with enthusiasm and its wagging tail will make your world brighter. Dogs can understand humans just by their eyes and body language. Dogs have a strong sense of smell and hearing; thus, they make an excellent guard for protecting homes.

Dogs are highly intelligent and, so they are used in different sectors of life. Dogs are best friends. Because of their powerful smelling, they are used by police forces for sniffing criminals, explosives or drugs at various crime scenes, they are used by customs officers at the airport for smelling luggage. Dogs are also used in the rescue operation, for instance, if there is a rubble building, dogs can point out where a human is buried in the rubble. Dogs are attentive and can understand many things, and so they are used for rehab programs and also for those people who are on wheelchairs and cannot work on their own. The dog can answer doors for them, receive calls for them, pick their newspapers, open the fridge and do various other chores.

There are about more than a hundred breeds of dogs in the world, the best and the most common breeds kept by people are German Shepherd and Labrador. These breeds are excellent human companions and are very friendly and excellent guard dogs. Recently in Avignon, a German shepherd saved his woman owner. The woman was a French lady who tried to commit suicide by shooting herself in her chest. The woman fired several shots from her 22 caliber rifle in her garden and then she pointed the gun to her chest. The dog sensed the situation, as soon as, she pulled the trigger; the dog jumped on her and diverted her shot aimed. The women were injured with the gun wound, but it was not life threatening. The woman was 63 years old, and later her husband found her wounded and rushed to the hospital, the woman doesn’t have any life threatening condition. The German Shepherd saved the woman’s life and thus became a hero.

This is the quality of dogs. They are loyal and very good observers, and they love their human companion unconditionally and irrevocably. This is not the first case, there have been many other reported cases in which dogs saved their owners from committing suicide or they saved them from robbers, thieves, murderers and accidents.

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A thug spat at a woman in the street apparently because she was wearing an Islamic head scarf. Police have appealed for help tracing the man, who targeted the woman in Humberstone Road, near Leicester city centre.

The 20-year-old woman was walking near to the St Matthews service station when she noticed three young men approaching her. One of them spat on her as they passed by and the three began laughing as they walked away.

Officers have released a CCTV image of three people they want to trace. The incident happened shortly before 1pm on Monday, February 4.

Pc Dave Adams said: "The victim felt upset and frightened following the incident and feels that she was targeted because she was wearing a hijab.

"We will not tolerate people feeling intimidated and frightened on our streets and I would urge anyone with information to call us as soon as they can.

"The road was quite busy at the time of the incident so there is a possibility that passers-by and passing traffic may be able to help."

The three suspects are white, 18 or 19 and of slim build. One was wearing a peaked cap and another was wearing a black hooded top.

Contact Pc Adams on 101 or Crimestoppers, which is anonymous, on 0800 555 111.

This is Leicester, 15 February 2013

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A woman who launched a racist attack against a Muslim and pulled her hijab from her head as she robbed her of her phone has been jailed for more than two years.

Eileen Kennedy, 28, and her 16-year-old niece Paige Bain assaulted Umaimi Musa in Glasgow in September.
 The teenager also assaulted Ms Musa's friend, Mary Marandran, who was five months pregnant with her third child.

The victims were sitting in a playpark when they heard one of the accused make racist comments before they were attacked. The incident was captured on CCTV and the camera operator alerted the police as the incident happened.

Passing a sentence of two years and six days on Kennedy yesterday, Sheriff Kenneth Mitchell told her: "There is no place at all in a modern Scotland for this sort of behaviour. This is a very serious matter. Your conduct was wholly unacceptable, and conduct of this sort can only result in a custodial sentence. You joined in a sustained attack upon this lady and robbed her of her mobile phone."

Social work reports had been requested by the sheriff before passing sentence, but Bain's was not ready. She will return to be sentenced next month.

Kennedy and her niece pled guilty at Glasgow Sheriff Court to racially assaulting 41-year-old Ms Musa to her injury. Kennedy also pled guilty to resisting arrest and claiming she had an infection before spitting on a police officer. Bain admitted the racially aggravated assault on Mrs Marandran, 40, by repeatedly punching her on the head and pushing her to her injury.

The Scotsman, 1 January 2013

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A 31-year old woman, Erica Menendez of the Bronx in the United States, will be charged with second-degree murder a in connection with the death of a Muslim man who was pushed onto the tracks of a Queens subway station and crushed by an oncoming train.  According to the New York Times article, Ms. Menendez pushed the man onto the tracks because of the September 11th terrorist.  A question that has shown up recently on the Muslim Academy website and the comments is: what exactly is a hate crime?  I would like to take the question one step further and ask: Are hate crimes meaningless?

The United States has had a long and checkered past when it comes to civil rights.  From the beginnings of the native American genocide, through Slavery and anti-Chinese exclusion acts, through Japanese internment camps and the civil rights struggles of the 1960′s, America has had to come to grips with her reality as a melting pot of different cultures and religions.  The result hasn’t always been pretty, with crimes committed against different races, genders, and religions.  In order to protect special classes of people, various states and the Federal Government have enacted hate crime legislation.

Hate crime legislation makes it a federal offense to commit an act against a protected group out of hate.  That is to say, burning a church down because you are crazy is a normal crime, but burning a church down because you hate Christians is a ‘hate crime’.  Killing a Muslim man in the course of a robbery is a normal crime, but what Ms. Menendez did, by killing him because he is Muslim, raises the bar to a hate crime, with additional penalties that come with the fact that it is, in fact, a hate crime.

It is my humble opinion that hate crime legislation is useless and should be abandoned.  It is not our place to legislate hate.  A crime is a crime.  If you kill someone because you don’t like his outfit, is that somehow ok?  But killing him because of reasons that society has deemed inappropriate raises the bar so that you should receive extra punishment?  If Ms. Menendez had pushed the man onto a train because she thought it was funny, she should receive less punishment?  No.  A woman who pushes a man in front of a train for fun or spite should be given the exact same punishment as a woman who pushes a man in front of a train because he is Muslim.

Hate crime legislation is nothing more than an attempt by legislators to let the populace know that they are trying to do something about crimes like this.  But the legislation is a mere facade, an illusion with no real substance.  You can’t change people and you can’t punish people for hating.  You can punish acts but you shouldn’t punish a person any differently because you want to placate a certain subset of society.  We live in a new world where America says all people are created equal.  Well then American should really treat people equally, and not judge whether one type of murder is better than another.

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A 31 year old woman was charged on Saturday 29th December of second-degree murder as a hate crime following the death of a man who was pushed onto the tracks of a subway station in Queens.

The New York Times reports:

"In a statement released by the district attorney's office, Mr. Brown quoted Ms. Menendez, 'in sum and substance,' as having told the police: 'I pushed a Muslim off the train tracks because I hate Hindus and Muslims ever since 2001 when they put down the twin towers I've been beating them up.' Ms. Menendez conflated the Muslim and Hindu faiths in her comments to the police and in her target for attack, officials said."

We have reported earlier on Pamela Geller's anti-Islam advertising campaign on the New York subway, a campaign that has deliberately attempted to generate racist fear and hatred.

Defending their right to be as offensive as possible to Muslims, Geller et al constantly claim the right to 'freedom of speech'.

Imraan Siddiqi of CAIR, who runs the Stop Islamophobia Now website, took this up on Twitter: "Since when did the subway become the existential battleground, which to fight ones' ideological battles?"

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A Muslim woman claims she's being booted off city buses because of the way she dresses.

Maria Louis, of Hollis, Queens, says she has twice been kicked off buses by MTA and NYPD personnel – the agencies she's suing in Brookyn federal court – after people berated her for her religious garb. Her clothing, which she calls a "bolka," is a "long, flowing black garment that covers her completely – including a mesh section over her eyes that allows her to see," the suit says.

The first incident happened April 3 in Jamaica, when a passenger yelled at her and the driver refused to move until she got off, the suit says. The next month, she claims, a passenger hit her in the face after another lectured her, and police forced her to get off the bus.

New York Post, 27 December 2012

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ORLANDO — A woman is under arrest after carrying a sword onto a school campus.

Just before 10 a.m. Wednesday, Orange County deputies responded to the Leaders Preparatory School on North Goldenrod Road, which includes a mosque, school and day care. They found 47-year-old Dominique Eloi walking out of the mosque carrying the weapon.

A school employee said Eloi exited her vehicle with the 2-foot sword and did not respond to the employee when asked what business she had on the property. Leaders Preparatory was immediately placed on lockdown as the employee called deputies.

Eloi was arrested and charged with possession of a weapon on school grounds, disrupting a school function and aggravated assault with a weapon.

Central Florida News, 19 December 2012

See also "CAIR-FL urges stepped-up security after woman with sword arrested at mosque, Muslim school", CAIR press release, 19 December 2012

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Two women punched a pregnant woman and pulled her friend's hijab from her head in a racial attack. Eileen Kennedy, 28, and a 15-year-old female, assaulted Umaimi Musa at Royston Road, Glasgow, on September 3. The teenager also assaulted Ms Musa's friend Mary Marandran, then five months pregnant.

As the women were sitting in a park they heard the phrases "f****** black African" and "f****** brings you to this country?" from one of the two accused before they were assaulted.

The incident was captured on CCTV which was shown to the court and the camera operator alerted the police as the incident happened.

Kennedy and her co-accused pled guilty at Glasgow Sheriff Court on Tuesday to racially assaulting 41-year-old Ms Musa to her injury. Kennedy also admitted resisting arrest and claiming she had an infection before spitting on a police officer. The teenager admitted the racially aggravated assault on Mrs Marandran, 40, by repeatedly punching her on the head and pushing her to her injury.

The court heard the racist phrases were the precursor to the assaults.

Procurator fiscal depute Mark Allan, prosecuting, said: "The second named accused repeatedly punched the then pregnant Mrs Marandran on her head and pushed her." He told the court that both accused demanded Ms Musa's mobile phone and tried to grab it off her after she told them she was going to phone the police.

Mr Allan said she was punched on the head which caused her to fall to the ground. He added: "Once on the ground, she was repeatedly punched on her head and body, her hijab or headscarf as she can be seen wearing during the course of this incident was pulled from her head and she was robbed of her mobile telephone. Police officers were directed to the scene by those operating the CCTV."

Both Mrs Marandran and Ms Musa were taken to the Royal Infirmary in Glasgow to be checked. Ms Musa had a bruised left cheek which was tender and swollen, a grazed knee and a sore neck. Mrs Marandran suffered no damage to her unborn baby but had some muscular pain.

Sheriff Kenneth Mitchell deferred sentence on both accused until a later date. Kennedy was remanded in custody and her co-accused remained on bail.

STV, 11 December 2012

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In case of competing rights, a Toronto woman has lodged a complaint against a barber who refused to cut her hair because he's Muslim.

In June, Faith McGregor requested a man's haircut at the Terminal Barber Shop in downtown Toronto. Co-owner Omar Mahrouk told her that his Muslim faith prohibits him from touching a woman who is not a member of his family. All the other barbers in the shop said the same thing.

"For me it was just a haircut and started out about me being a woman," McGregor, 35, told the Toronto Star. "Now we're talking about religion versus gender versus human rights and businesses in Ontario."

She has filed a complaint with Ontario's Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario because the incident made her feel like a "second-class citizen." McGregor is not seeking monetary damages, but wants the tribunal to force the shop to offer men's haircuts to both genders.

"In our faith, I can cut my mother's hair, I can cut my sister's hair, I can cut my wife's hair, my daughter's hair," shop co-owner Karim Saaden told The Star. "We are people who have values and we hold on to (them). I am not going to change what the faith has stated to us to do."

McGregor rejected an offer from the shop to find a barber to cut her hair. "It's the principle of the matter...This needs to be discussed and now it's bigger than what occurred with me that one day," she told the newspaper.

The case heads to mediation in February. If that fails, an adjudicator appointed by the Human Rights Tribunal will decide the outcome.

Religion News Service, 15 November 2012

You'll note that the shop did subsequently offer to provide a barber to cut McGregor's hair but she rejected this. Furthermore, as one columnist in The Star points out: "Not 50 metres away from the Terminal Barber Shop is a unisex salon that offers basic haircuts to both men and women for 15 bucks." Yet McGregor chose to ask for a haircut at a shop run by Muslims.

You can't help wondering whether this was, just possibly, a conscious attempt to provoke a confrontation with the aim of promoting the Islamophobic stereotype of Muslims as backward misogynists who present a threat to western civilisation.

If that was McGregor's intention, then she will be well satisfied with the result. The story, which originally appeared in the gay & lesbian magazine Xtra!, was splashed across the front page of the The Star (which then published an editorial dismissing the controversy as a storm in a teacup). No doubt it will be seized on by raving anti-Muslim bigots across the blogosphere.

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A German dental practice which refused to hire a young Muslim woman because she insisted on wearing a headscarf at work broke the law, it was reported on Thursday. The court ruling is the first of its kind for the country.

A young Berlin woman applied last summer for a traineeship to become a dental assistant. Despite being qualified and getting along with staff, she was told that she could not have the position unless she removed her headscarf, the Tagesspiegel newspaper said.

This was religious discrimination, the city's labour court ruled. A headscarf was not an "arbitrary piece of clothing" but an expression of her beliefs and wearing it was part of her right to religious freedom. Refusing to employ because of her headscarf was in breach of the Equal Treatment Act, the judge said.

The court also rejected the suggestion that headscarves could pose a hygiene risk to patients. There was no more chance of transferring bacteria with a scarf than there was via human hair, the judge said.

The Spandau-based dental surgery argued that they had a right to religious neutrality in the clinic. But the judge said that as "it was in no way a religious institution," this was not valid.

Other women who had appealed for the right to wear a headscarf at work have lost in the past, generally because they had taken church-related employers to court.

The woman applied for the position in the summer of 2011. When she was rejected she decided, with help from the Turkish Association of Berlin and Brandenburg, to take the practice to court.

The Local, 18 October 2012

See also "German court rules in favor of headscarf freedom", Today's Zaman, 18 October 2012

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A girl who posted offensive comments in response to a man's Facebook rant about dead soldiers, has been sentenced by a court and told she can't hide behind the "virtual world" of the internet.

Amy Wilby, 20, admitting posting grossly offensive messages on the social networking site, when she appeared at Kirklees Magistrates' Court in Huddersfield. Her comments were made in response to Azhar Ahmed's rant that "all soldiers should die and go to hell", made two days after the deaths of six British soldiers in Afghanistan.

Wilby's comments are too extreme to print in full in a family newspaper. But they saw her slapped with a community order after District Judge Marie Mallon told her that she could not hide behind a "virtual world" when airing her views.

Wilby, of Gladstone Court in Dewsbury, was a teenager when she made the comments on her personal profile page on March 9. Vanessa Schofield, prosecuting, said that following Ahmed's comments numerous other people posted angry responses on Facebook. Many were cautioned but police decided to charge Wilby.

Judge Mallon was told that she posted five comments on her profile page under Amy Jane Wilby. In one she made a vile sexual statement regarding Ahmed and his religion. One statement that can be printed read: "I wasn't racist until I read this." Judge Mallon was told that following these messages police tracked Wilby down and looked at her phone.

She sentenced her to a 12 month community order, including 15 days of activity and 100 hours of unpaid work. Judge Mallon told Wilby that she would also have to pay £85 court costs.

Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 12 October 2012

Evidently Wilby is the individual who was bailed back in June on suspicion of inciting racial hatred.

Without seeing the offending messages it is difficult to say for certain, but based on the description in the Examiner report, which indicates that Wilby's posts were far more extreme than the comments made by Azhar Ahmed, and given that she herself stated that she was a racist, it is difficult to see why she wasn't charged with that much more serious offence.

So, as things stand, the outcome of all the online hatred and death threats provoked by Azhar Ahmed's arrest would appear to be that four people have been cautioned and just one has been prosecuted. When a well-known EDL supporter like Lacette Brooks, for example, posted the comment "Fuckin die cunt!" on the EDL's Facebook page, why wasn't she charged with any offence?

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Florence CyrulnikThe Collectif contre l'Islamophobie en France reports that on Thursday 6 September a young Muslim couple, Saad and Myriam, arrived at the town hall at La Seyne-sur-Mer in southeastern France to get married.

However when Florence Cyrulnik, the Socialist Party deputy mayor who was to preside over their wedding, arrived she told Myriam abruptly that she would not proceed with the marriage unless the bride immediately removed her headscarf. Although Myriam was not wearing a face veil, which is of course illegal in France, she was informed that religious symbols were banned in public spaces according to a local secularist statute.

Attempts to reason with Cyrulnik and her equally aggressive assistant Marc Vuillemot failed and Saad and Myriam were forced to call off their wedding. "What should have been the happiest day of their lives turned into a humiliation coupled to an injustice", the CCIF writes.

The report adds: "The CCIF strongly condemns the municipality of La Seyne-sur-Mer and the actions of Florence Cyrulnik that violated the young couple's fundamental right to marriage, as well as their religious freedom." They support the couple's decision to mount a legal challenge to the municipality over their disgraceful treatment.

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There has been nonexistent importance to be shed on the issues relating to the rights of women. World kept growing and the pertaining issues regarding women rights had been denied regularly before Islam. World turned into a miserable piece for the existence of woman. She faced more downs centuries ago then the ups in the history of this world.  Every society had its share in victimization of this elegant living being that could not fight back and attain rights for her. There has been series of disasters linked to the existence of woman which broke her morally, socially and physically and victimized her completely.

Before the intrusion of Islam into the lives, people had been mercilessly insulting the existence of woman. Woman was treated like animals before Islam. Greeks believed about woman that she is as poisonous as any other poisonous thing. Moreover, woman was treated like a business tool which could be sold at any point.

Romans had a worst faith about woman, considering woman less privileged and a body without soul. There was no importance of woman’s sentiments near them. They would pour boiling oil to their bodies and drag them with running horses to torture them.

Chinese believed that a woman is a curse that vanishes the good deeds of a man. Chinese man had the right and authority to bury his wife alive. If a man dies his wife was also buried with him or considered a curse.

Indians believed that woman was the worst of all creatures. She’s like a death, fire and hell. She is to be cursed and killed when her husband dies. She wasn’t allowed to wear ornaments and gold or any color dress other than white once she is widowed and eventually she is cursed and killed.

In Persia, believe that circulated was that woman is ruled by her husband and he can make her die according to his own will.

Jews considered her evil and called her impure as she faces the cycles – she is blamed for all the temptations and permissible by her father to sell her.

Christians too had many wrong beliefs about her. Called her soul of an animal and if it’s the soul of a human being than it was believed to be much lesser than the man. She was considered lower and lesser than man and no rights were given to her.

Arabs before Islam used to bury their daughters alive or killed them at the time of birth.

It has been concluded that how woman was treated before Islam, she was considered curse, impure, soulless, victimized, lesser and evil by different societies of the world. Her emotions and sentiments were considered vague and blurry. She had no right to live and over the years the world became a man’s world to be dominated by one pillar of the society. Many series of incidents also shed light on the physical harassment of woman; she was tortured and mercilessly deprived of social, cultural, moral and economic privileges. Before Islam the world was a darker place where woman was its only victim.

About the author

Momo Khan

Life has given you wings to fly, why to crawl through your life !!
Freelance writer and an agony aunt to my friends.
Dreamer, Love my family and is a peaceful creature !!

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If we talk about the word beauty we never forget the most stunning thing of this world who is a lady. Allah made men and women for each other and importance of both is equal for them. A family or home even the world never complete without both cooperation and help. Allah made us in couples not only human also the animals and other insects so the males and females both are necessary for running the system of this universe accurately. Let’s have a look on the life changes of woman of Islam and women’s life before Islam so if we go through the history we will find the awful condition of a woman before Islam.

We can see a woman of Islam is totally opposite from those days while only a malicious thinking was developed. People’s thought was the ladies are not respectful they thought that the ladies are not human being like them just come to entertained themselves. Sometimes they have crossed all the limits and treated them like an animal or more than it. They beaten them also easily lost their wives into gambling or killed them if she gave birth to a girl.

People know the value of woman of Islam after the teachings of Our Prophet Hazrat Muhammad P.B.U.H, Who Told us about the significance of relations. Islam gave highly respect to women and clearly mentioned the men’s responsibilities about their rights. It tighten up the males and females into gorgeous relations like sister & brother, daughter & father, mother & son, wife & husband, etc.

As a mother the woman of Islam got at the end of honor because Allah Defines about the levels of a mother like heaven is under the feet of our mothers. All human beings will be called by the name of their mothers at the Day of Judgment. Islam also fixed a right of women in inheritance and bound the relations into limits so that people don’t do wrong like previous nations.

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A young woman from Jewish origins, who was raised in the city of Eilat in the south of the country, and currently lives in Petah Tikva city, converted to Islam, in a court in front of the judge and chose Ellen to be her new name in Islam.

The young woman sent a message to her brothers and sisters in Islam and to all Muslims around the world saying: “I advise them to hold to the Qur’an and to read it on a permanent basis, because from the moment I read the Qur’an my life is constantly changing.”

Ellen added that she has chose this decision without any influence or pressure or coercion, noting that the decision was based on personal conviction, and that she did not find in any religion in the world what she found in Islam and that Islam has granted her high psychological comfort.

She said: “My friend Yasmin, which was Jewish and converted to Islam, encouraged me and helped me to convert to Islam, and has read the Quran to me, then I found myself in this religion, which delighted my heart and mind so I decided to convert and I wore the veil as required by the Islamic rules.

She added that she had to get to know the five pillars of Islam and to learn and start praying and to be keen on reading the Quran. Things are not new for her as she started since the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan. She also started to fast since the beginning of the holy month.

Mr. Amir Assi, a social activist and a consultant of Arab Affairs lectures, was the one who accompanied Ellen when she converted to Islam.

Mr. Assi said that he thinks this is his duty, and the duty of every Muslim on the face of this simple land. He explained that Ellen asked him to accompany her during her conversion to Islam and to help her out. He further mentioned that he was not expecting or waiting for any return from Ellen and it was Allah’s reward that he was waiting for in this holy month.

He finally added: “I was completely astonished and surprised when wanted to shake my hands with Ellen to congratulate her for converting to Islam and she replied that she was sorry and that she does not shake hands with Muslim men Ellen has been disowned by her Jewish family after she converted to Islam.

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Tahira B. El, a practicing Muslim, faced religious discrimination when she was fired by her employer, a security company providing guards to the Pennsylvania Convention Center, because she refused to remove a head scarf she wore for religious reasons, according to a federal lawsuit filed in Philadelphia on her behalf Wednesday by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The suit said that El, of Philadelphia, was hired by ABM Security Services, of California, to work at the center on Feb. 21, 2011. She was fired the next day, the suit said, when she showed up in uniform, wearing the khimar, which covers her hair and ears, but not her face.

Because the Convention Center did not employ El, it is not named in the suit, but "we would not prohibit anyone from expressing their religious beliefs," convention center director Ahmeenah Young said in a statement.

ABM said some clients require adherence to a strict uniform code. The company said in a statement that it was disappointed that EEOC filed the suit because El was given the opportunity to work elsewhere but declined.

Philadelphia Inquirer, 19 July 2012

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A portrait photographer to the stars shoved a pregnant Muslim woman to the floor and called her a terrorist during a row in Tesco, a court heard yesterday.

Cinnamon Heathcote-Drury also branded the hijab-wearing woman's family suicide bombers, it was alleged.

The 41-year-old, who has 11 portraits hanging in the National Portrait Gallery including exhibits of London mayor Boris Johnson and Newsnight's Jeremy Paxman, denies racially-aggravated assault.

She told a jury at Isleworth Crown Court that trouble began at the Tesco store in Kensington, West London, when she offered to help the woman, Mounia Hamoumi, and her husband unload their shopping trolley.

The court was told she had overheard the husband refusing to help his wife because he was too busy looking after their children. "I told him that is what feminism is all about, women helping women – and he told me to 'get lost'," claimed Heathcote-Drury.

But prosecutor Nermine Abdel Sayed said: "You took objection to that inequality didn't you? Coupled with the woman wearing Islamic dress, you waded in and instigated the whole incident.

"When your offer of help was rejected you became more confrontational and you very quickly lost control and were shouting at them.

"Your tone was aggressive and you used the words 'suicide bomber' and 'terrorist', and told them: 'I am a British citizen. I don't know where you are from.' You went to the woman and pushed her."

Mother-of-three Mrs Hamoumi was six months' pregnant at the time of the incident which happened on November 30 last year.

Heathcote-Drury is also accused of telling the family: "You're probably claiming jobseeker's [allowance]." She denied this and using any racist language, and said she was the true victim.

Daily Mail, 5 July 2012

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A prominent national Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization today called on Pentagon officials not to use a target depicting a Muslim woman wearing a religious head scarf (hijab) and verses from the Quran in combat scenarios for training Navy SEALs at the new close quarters combat range at Joint Base Fort Story in Virginia Beach, Va.

The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said that military facility, referred to as a "kill house," features a number of combat scenarios, including a mosque and a movable target of a Muslim woman wearing hijab and aiming a handgun. Verses from the Quran, Islam's revealed text, are also displayed behind the target.

"Using a Muslim woman wearing a religious head scarf with [verses from the] Quran behind her as a target for our nation's military personnel is offensive and sends a negative and counterproductive message to trainees and to the Muslim-majority nations to which they may be deployed," wrote CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad in a letter to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. "This is yet another example of why the Department of Defense needs to fix what appears to be an ongoing problem by consulting credible scholars and experts to review all training and training materials related to Islam or Muslims."

CAIR press release, 29 June 2012

See "Fort Story range creates combat scenarios for SEALs", Virginian-Pilot, 26 June 2012

And "Group criticizes image of Muslim woman on SEAL range", Virginian-Pilot, 29 June 2012

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Protesters hurled bins and metal barriers at a Brussels police station on Thursday night after a Muslim woman was arrested for refusing to remove a face veil, Belgian media reported.

"They tried to enter by force, but they were not able to," a spokesman for Brussels police told broadcaster RTL. "So instead they threw metal barriers and bins." Six protesters were arrested, according to state broadcaster VRT. The woman was released and expected to be questioned later.

Belgium and France both banned people from wearing full face veils in public last year.

Belgian state broadcaster VRT and newspapers said the woman had scuffled with officers trying to arrest her at a bus stop and that a policewoman was injured.

"Finally, the woman's veil was removed and she was taken to hospital with mild concussion," the police spokesman told Le Soir newspaper.

The woman's husband went to the police station later that day to complain, accompanied by about 20 others.

Reuters, 1 June 2012

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