Manila to declare Feb. 1 as National Hijab Day

Congress unanimously approved House Bill No. 8249, which has yet to become a law, on Jan. 26, with all 203 lawmakers voting for the move. (Reuters)
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Updated 01 February 2021
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Manila to declare Feb. 1 as National Hijab Day

  • Approved bill seeks to promote tolerance of other faiths across the country

MANILA: In a “milestone” move, the Philippines House of Representatives has approved a bill declaring the first day of February as National Hijab Day every year to promote a “deeper understanding” of the Muslim practice, as well as tolerance for other faiths across the country.

Congress unanimously approved the bill, which has yet to become a law, on Tuesday, Jan. 26, with all 203 lawmakers voting for the move.

Anak Mindanao party-list Representative Amihilda Sangcopan, principal author and sponsor of House Bill No. 8249, thanked all lawmakers for passing the legislation and called on members of the Senate to espouse a counterpart measure.

The legislation seeks to promote a greater understanding among non-Muslims about the practice and “value of wearing the hijab as an act of modesty and dignity to Muslim women” and encourage Muslim and non-Muslim women “to experience the virtue of wearing it.”

The measure also aims to stop discrimination against hijabis and clear misconceptions about the sartorial choice, which has often been misinterpreted as a symbol of oppression, terrorism and lack of freedom.

The bill also seeks to protect the right to freedom of religion for Filipino Muslim women and “promote tolerance and acceptance of other faiths and lifestyles” across the country.

Sangcopan said that “hijabi women have been facing several challenges across the globe,” citing examples of “some universities in the Philippines who had banned Muslim students from wearing the hijab.”

“Some of these students are forced to remove their hijab to comply with the school’s rules and regulations, while some are forced to drop out and transfer to other institutions. These are clear violations of the student’s freedom of religion,” she said.

The passage of the bill, she added, would “contribute greatly to putting an end to discrimination against hijabis.”

“Wearing the hijab is every Muslim woman’s right. It’s not just a piece of cloth, but it is said to be their way of life. It has been explained in the Muslim holy book, the Qur’an, that it is obligatory for every Muslim woman to guard their chastity and modesty,” Sangcopan said.

Dr. Potre Dirampatan Diampuan, a trustee of the United Religions Initiative’s Global Council, welcomed the “milestone” legislation.

“It is an exercise in what we call inclusiveness. I think it’s a very welcome move in the eyes of the Muslim community,” Diampuan told Arab News.

“A woman wearing a hijab here always gets a second look. This bill will make it so that the sight is a common one. The hijab will become part of our wardrobe as Filipinos,” she added.

According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, there are more than 10 million Muslims in the Philippines out of a total population of 110,428,130 based on the latest UN data. Diampuan said that the bill was a “recognition of the Muslim population in the country” and rejected the idea that wearing a hijab was akin to oppression.

“Unless you have embraced the religion and understood it, you will not appreciate the culture,” she said, adding that the move could further encourage women’s empowerment in the country.

“Women must be appreciated not by their looks but what they know, what they do and what they contribute to society…Where secular society says that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I think Islam would say that beauty is in the heart of the person,” Diampuan said.

The bill mandates the National Commission on Muslim Filipinos to celebrate National Hijab Day by promoting and raising awareness about hijabis in the Philippines.

During the 17th Congress, a similar bill was introduced by Sitti Djalia “Dadah” Turabin-Hataman. It cleared a third and final reading in the House of Representatives. Sangcopan’s bill, which was recently approved, was filed in 2018.

The hijab is a veil that covers the head and chest and is mainly worn by Muslim women who have reached puberty, in the presence of adult males outside of their immediate family.

It also refers to any head, face, or body covering conforming to a certain standard of modesty for Muslim women, with those wearing it referred to as hijabis.

Islam is the Philippines’ second-largest religion, with most Muslims residing in the Mindanao island.

Within Mindanao is the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, comprising the Basilan, Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, Sulu Tawi-Tawi provinces, but excluding Isabela City in Basilan and Cotabato City in Maguindanao.


First white South Africans board plane for US under Trump refugee plan

Updated 4 sec ago
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First white South Africans board plane for US under Trump refugee plan

  • Trump’s offer of asylum to white South Africans coincides with heightened racial tensions over land and jobs
  • Trump said descendants of mostly Dutch early settlers, the Afrikaners, were 'victims of unjust racial discrimination'

The first white South Africans granted refugee status under a program initiated by US President Donald Trump boarded a plane to leave from the country’s main international airport in Johannesburg on Sunday.
A queue of white citizens with airport trolleys full of luggage, much of it wrapped in theft-proof cellophane, waited to have their passports stamped, a Reuters reporter saw, before they entered the departure lounge for their charter flight.
“One of the conditions of the permit was to ensure that they were vetted in case one of them has a criminal issue pending,” South African transport department spokesperson Collen Msibi told Reuters, adding that 49 passengers had been cleared.
Journalists were not granted access to those headed to the US Msibi said they were due to fly to Dulles Airport just outside Washington, D.C., and then on to Texas. They had boarded the plane but not yet left as 18:30 GMT.
Trump’s offer of asylum to white South Africans, especially Afrikaners — the group with the longest history in South Africa and who make up the bulk of whites — has been divisive in both countries. In the United States, it comes as the Trump administration has blocked mostly non-white refugee admissions from the rest of the world. In South Africa, it coincides with heightened racial tensions over land and jobs that have dogged domestic politics since the end of white minority rule.
Despite a wider freeze on refugees, Trump called on the US to prioritize resettling Afrikaners, descendants of mostly Dutch early settlers, saying they were “victims of unjust racial discrimination.”
The granting of refugee status to white South Africans — who have remained by far the most privileged race since apartheid ended 30 years ago — has been met with a mixture of alarm and ridicule by South African authorities, who say the Trump administration has waded into a domestic political issue it does not understand.
Three decades since Nelson Mandela ushered democracy into South Africa, the white minority that ruled it has managed to retain most of the wealth that was amassed under colonialism and apartheid. Whites still own three quarters of private land and about 20 times the wealth of the Black majority, according to the Review of Political Economy, an international academic journal. Whites are also the race least affected by joblessness. Yet the claim that minority white South Africans face discrimination from the Black majority has been repeated so often in online chatrooms that is has become orthodoxy for the far right, and has been echoed by Trump’s white South African-born ally Elon Musk.


At least three die, including two children, in Libya-Italy crossing

Updated 29 min 10 sec ago
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At least three die, including two children, in Libya-Italy crossing

  • The migrants were intercepted on Saturday on a rubber boat floating adrift south of the Italian island of Lampedusa that had been spotted by a surveillance aircraft of the EU border agency Frontex

ROME: At least three people have died, including two children aged 3 and 4, in a Mediterranean sea crossing from Libya to Italy, a German sea rescue charity said on Sunday, adding that it had rescued 59 survivors.

The migrants were intercepted on Saturday on a rubber boat floating adrift south of the Italian island of Lampedusa that had been spotted by a surveillance aircraft of the EU border agency Frontex.

“By the time (we) reached the rubber boat at around 4.30pm (1430 GMT), it was too late to help some of the people,” the RESQSHIP charity said in a statement.

“Two bodies of infants aged 3 and 4 were handed over to us,” the charity quoted one of its paramedics identified only as Rania as saying. “They had died the day before, probably of thirst.”

A man was found unconscious and declared dead after attempts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful, RESQSHIP said, adding that it was told by survivors that another migrant had drowned on Friday after going overboard.

Many of the survivors, who were taken to Lampedusa, suffered chemical burns from salt water and fuel, the group said. Two children and four adults in critical condition were handed over to the Italian coast guard to be brought ashore more quickly.

The rubber boat had set off from the port of Zawiya in western Libya on Wednesday, but its engine failed after one day of navigation, leaving the migrants on board exposed to wind and weather, the NGO said.

Lampedusa lies between Tunisia, Malta and the larger Italian island of Sicily and is the first port of call for many migrants seeking to reach the EU from North Africa, in what has become one of the world’s deadliest sea crossings.

Almost 25,000 migrants have died or gone missing on this central Mediterranean route since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration, including around 1,700 last year and 378 so far this year.


Passenger bus skids off a cliff in Sri Lanka, killing 21

Updated 43 min 47 sec ago
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Passenger bus skids off a cliff in Sri Lanka, killing 21

  • Deadly bus accidents are common in Sri Lanka, especially in the mountainous regions

COLOMBO: A passenger bus skidded off a cliff in Sri Lanka’s tea-growing hill country on Sunday, killing 21 people and injuring at least 14 others, an official said.

The accident occurred in the early hours of Sunday near the town of Kotmale, about 140 kilometers (86 miles) east of Colombo, the capital, in a mountainous area of central Sri Lanka, police said.

Deputy Minister of Transport and Highways Prasanna Gunasena told the media that 21 people died in the accident and 14 others are being treated in hospitals.

Local television showed the bus lying overturned at the bottom of a precipice while workers and others helped remove injured people from the rubble.

The driver was injured and among those admitted to the hospital for treatment. At the time of the accident, nearly 50 people were traveling on the bus.

The bus was operated by a state-run bus company, police said.

Deadly bus accidents are common in Sri Lanka, especially in the mountainous regions, often due to reckless driving and poorly maintained and narrow roads.


Zelensky says he will meet Putin after Trump tells him not to await truce

Updated 11 May 2025
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Zelensky says he will meet Putin after Trump tells him not to await truce

  • Russian president proposed that Ukraine and Russia hold direct talks in Istanbul next Thursday, May 15

KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he would agree to meet Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin in Turkiye on Thursday after US President Donald Trump told him immediately to accept Putin’s proposal of direct talks.

The Ukrainian leader had responded guardedly earlier on Sunday after the Russian president, in a night-time televised statement that coincided with prime time in the US, proposed that Ukraine and Russia hold direct talks in Istanbul next Thursday, May 15.

It was not clear that Putin had proposed to attend in person, however.

“I will be waiting for Putin in Türkiye on Thursday. Personally. I hope that this time the Russians will not look for excuses,” Zelensky wrote on X.

Putin’s proposal came hours after major European powers demanded on Saturday in Kyiv that Putin agree to an unconditional 30-day ceasefire or face “massive” new sanctions, a position that Trump’s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg endorsed on Sunday.

Zelensky too had said Ukraine would be ready for talks with Russia, but only after Moscow agreed to the 30-day ceasefire.

But Trump, who has the power to continue or sever Washington’s crucial supply of arms to Ukraine, took a different line.

“President Putin of Russia doesn’t want to have a Cease Fire Agreement with Ukraine, but rather wants to meet on Thursday, in Turkiye, to negotiate a possible end to the BLOODBATH. Ukraine should agree to this, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“At least they will be able to determine whether or not a deal is possible, and if it is not, European leaders, and the US, will know where everything stands, and can proceed accordingly!“

Putin sent Russia’s armed forces into Ukraine in February 2022, unleashing a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers and triggered the gravest confrontation between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

With Russian forces grinding forward, the Kremlin chief has offered few, if any, concessions so far.

In his overnight address, he proposed what he said would be “direct negotiations without any preconditions.”

But almost immediately, senior Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters the talks must take into account both an abandoned 2022 draft peace deal and the current situation on the ground.

This language is shorthand for Kyiv agreeing to permanent neutrality in return for a security guarantee and accepting that Russia controls swathes of Ukraine.

Putin also dismissed what he said was an attempt to lay down “ultimatums” in the form of Western European and Ukrainian demands for a ceasefire starting on Monday. His foreign ministry spelled out that talks about the root causes of the conflict must precede discussions of a ceasefire.

Trump, who says he wants to be remembered as a peacemaker and has repeatedly promised to end the war, earlier responded to Putin’s address by saying that this could be “A potentially great day for Russia and Ukraine!.”


Taliban govt suspends chess in Afghanistan over gambling

Updated 11 May 2025
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Taliban govt suspends chess in Afghanistan over gambling

  • Gambling is illegal under the Taliban government’s morality law
  • An Afghani cafe owner said he would respect the suspension but that it would hurt his business and those who enjoyed the game

KABUL: Taliban authorities have barred chess across Afghanistan until further notice over concerns it is a source of gambling, which is illegal under the government’s morality law, a sports official said on Sunday.
The Taliban government has steadily imposed laws and regulations that reflect its austere vision of Islamic law since seizing power in 2021.
“Chess in sharia (Islamic law) is considered a means of gambling,” which is prohibited according to the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice law announced last year, sports directorate spokesperson Atal Mashwani told AFP.
“There are religious considerations regarding the sport of chess,” he said.
“Until these considerations are addressed, the sport of chess is suspended in Afghanistan,” he added.
Mashwani said the national chess federation had not held any official events for around two years and “had some issues on the leadership level.”
Azizullah Gulzada owns a cafe in Kabul that has hosted informal chess competitions in recent years, but denied any gambling took place and noted chess was played in other Muslim-majority countries.
“Many other Islamic countries have players on an international level,” he told AFP.
He said he would respect the suspension but that it would hurt his business and those who enjoyed the game.
“Young people don’t have a lot of activities these days, so many came here everyday,” he told AFP.
“They would have a cup of tea and challenge their friends to a game of chess.”
Afghanistan’s authorities have restricted other sports in recent years and women have been essentially barred from participating in sport altogether in the country.
Last year, the authorities banned free fighting such as mixed martial arts (MMA) in professional competition, saying it was too “violent” and “problematic with respect to sharia.”