The decision [at one university] includes the entire female academic staff, in addition to the medical staff and nurses who… teach classes and… lecture.

The decision was taken “based on a recent court ruling by Egypt’s Supreme Administrative Court and following reports presented by managers of the university’s teaching hospitals and deans of faculties who claimed they frequently received complaints from students against having to deal with fully veiled female members of staff or workers at the university,” Ain Shams University President Mahmoud al-Metiny said in a statement.

He stressed that the decision was also made to ensure the rights of patients, and for the best interest of university work.

Let’s unswaddle that highlighted bit, okay? Frequent complaints from students about “having to deal with fully veiled…”

Naughty Islamophobes. Boo.

Okay, let’s move on and try to understand what possible objection people trying to learn things might have to invisible professors inside fanatics’ clothing. Or to doctors and nurses they can’t see. Hm… hm…

Dershowitz’s l’etat, c’est moi argument in front of the nation has sent the country’s defense apparatus into a spin. The Pentagon’s first act: Banning him from the well of the Senate and letting the tabloids take over as his sudden flight to Miami (“the Harvard professor surfaced in Florida”) becomes a diverting sideshow. Operation Send Out the Clown smuggles the 81-year-old to the retirement capital of the world and keeps him there under supervision, allowing him out for media appearances so demented as to make the president look normal. Long-range goal: With Thomas Markle as their model, intelligence strategists will allow Alan Dershowitz’s gibbering self-regard to reduce him to an innocuous joke.

The darkness that engulfed the region … was described by the Egyptian film director Youssef Chahine as a black wave that had come from the Gulf and swept the region, shrouding women in black as the use of the Saudi-style abaya and niqab, previously unknown in countries like Egypt, began to spread. Dozens of Egypt’s beloved and famed actresses gave up low-cut dresses and big hairdos to don the niqab, with encouragement and alleged payment from rich Saudis. In 1985, a small minority of books published in Egypt were of a religious nature. By 1995, 85 percent of books on show at the Cairo book fair were religious.

In Lebanon, the black wave came from Tehran, as Iran began to export its revolution. The chador, the all-enveloping black cloth, spread in Shia villages and in the southern suburbs of Beirut. It had been previously worn only by deeply conservative women, mostly wives of clerics. Liquor shops were closed, music disappeared, the black flags of mourning for Imam Hussein, one of the most revered religious figures in Shia Islam, fluttered from lampposts, and the slogan “We are all Khomeini” was scribbled on the walls of posh Beirut shopping streets. The flags, the chador, the niqab, the sectarian hatred, and the threats of apostasy all shaped a new collective consciousness that is only now being challenged by the younger generation.

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Burqa/niqab bans in Western countries are a crucial form of support for this challenge.

Eventually the forces of fanaticism will recede. The swaddled masses yearning to breathe free will breathe.

I guess ISIS – what’s left of it – can claim this as a major victory. The seasoned terrorist Norway now harbors – a person who refused to give medical authorities her dying child until she brokered a deal to get her own ass out of al-Hol camp – is so dangerous and degenerate and expensive and awful that Norway’s crucial governing partners pulled out of that country’s coalition in protest against the decision to let her in, and the government has collapsed.

Don’t hold your breath for the in-solidarity-with-this-poor-mother march through the streets of Oslo.

So, let’s review.

Point One: All women in al-Hol camp are, like this woman, innocent.

She continues to claim she’s innocent of the terrorism charges against her, while setting off the threat of a government crisis that was more real than ever Monday morning…

The 29-year-old woman at the center of the conflict, meanwhile, continues to claim that she had nothing to do with actual terrorist activities over the past several years. Newspaper Aftenposten has reported that she’s charged with traveling to the Middle East in 2013 and being involved first with the Al-Qaida-linked terror group Jabhat al-Nusra and later the Islamic State (IS).

She has told Aftenposten, however, that she merely was looking for a way to avoid being forced by her family in Oslo to marry a Pakistani cousin. She was born in Pakistan…

Born in Pakistan. Is she a citizen of Pakistan? Can she apply for Pakistani citizenship? And how plausible that in order to avoid a forced marriage she decided her best move was to join a terrorist organization that matched her with serial sperm depositors! For seven years. The women in al-Hol are the last holdouts of ISIS – she fought to the bitter end.

Point Two: ‘[H]er defense attorney has argued that it will be difficult to prove any actual terrorist activity.’ Uh, yeah. Why do you think countries don’t want terrorists back? I mean, aside from the obvious, which is that they’re terrorists. Because it will be difficult to prove any actual terrorist activity. I mean, haha, define your terms! One man’s ISIS fanatic is another man’s Aunt Bee! Plus listen – turns out things get pretty chaotic in seventh-century cults/war zones… Turns out people don’t keep records! I mean, maybe this woman kept a diary, like Earnest’s Gwendolyn, to have something sensational to read in the train! Today I whipped my Yazidi slave until she bled. The weather still continues charming. Let’s check it out during her custody hearing!

Point Three: ‘Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Søreide reported that claims would be lodged against the woman to pay for her own travel expenses back to Norway.’ Travel expenses, security expenses, medical expenses, housing expenses, child care, court costs – we’re right on it! Her work as the camp IT specialist earned her massive bucks, some of which will go toward a villa in Palo Alto, but a portion of which will come right to us, the government of Norway. Don’t worry that your tax dollars are paying for your country to fly back, surveil, and house a Pakistani-born, veteran ISIS fanatic.

They’ve endorsed two candidates this time around: Elizabeth Warren (my pick) and Amy Klobuchar (about whom Mr UD is enthusiastic).

Not that Iran cares about so many of its women – including a high-profile Olympics champ, who has defected to the Netherlands – very militantly casting off compulsory veiling. Put them in jail if they’re here; ignore them if they’re there… But swaddled masses yearning to breathe free can prove quite pesky if they’re truly able to… mass. We shall see. Indications are excellent. Even in places you’d never expect it.

Should provide interesting ultrapissed ultraorthodox viewing.

Still – laugh with UD through this article about Iran’s absurd self-destructive tyrannies, and the spirited rebels who aren’t having any of it.

1.) Austria’s Conservative and Green parties have agreed plans to extend a headscarf ban in schools … [Austria’s new Conservative/Green governing coalition] deal includes banning the headscarf in schools for girls up to age 14, an extension of the garment ban that applies until age 10 approved by lawmakers earlier this year.

If women want to cover, they can decide that for themselves; the business of forcing it on children is disgusting. Note too what UD has been saying for years: Opposition to compulsory covering of girls is one of the few issues on which left and right in many countries agree.

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2.)

… “White Wednesday” and “My Stealthy Freedom” campaigns have seen women film themselves without hijabs in public in Iran, which can bring arrests and fines. [Even with the threat of jail] there have been signs of women increasingly pushing back against the requirement.

During a trip to Iran in July, an Associated Press journalist spotted about two dozen women in the streets without a hijab over the course of nine days. Many other women opted for loosely draped colorful scarves that show as much hair as they cover.

While there have been women fined and arrested, others have been left alone as Iran struggles with economic problems and other issues under re-imposed U.S. sanctions …

Lise Ravary, a writer for the Montreal Gazette, makes the simple, crucial argument UD‘s been making since Blog Day One: Despite Katha Pollitt’s lazy claim that “religion is what people make of it,” religion actually isn’t anything people might claim it is. All sorts of acts, ranging from socially destructive to barbaric, are routinely defended as religious, and secular societies have an obligation to scrutinize these acts and when appropriate call them legally out of bounds.

“When she wanted to get the party going, a very progressive lawyer friend of mine liked to argue that female genital mutilation is none of the state’s business and should be allowed under the Charter [of Rights and Freedoms],” notes Ravary, who shares UD‘s incredulity that any self-respecting state would let this progressive lawyer have her way. Few things are more subject to state concern than large-scale physical assault against children.

States similarly have the right – again, I’d say the obligation – to respond to the desire of the people to sustain their secular identity in social places where this seems important. Thus, the bill Ravary talks about, which forbids religious symbols, “applies only to public service workers in positions of authority, including teachers, police officers, prison guards and Crown prosecutors, while they are at work.” So this means no, you cannot wear a niqab and teach at the same time; and if you are unable to imagine life in the social world without your niqab on you at all times, you are going to be unable to teach in the Quebec public sector. This is of course true of many other localities, including France and England.

The high-profile arrest, in Dubai, of a spectacularly murderous drug lord based in the Netherlands, prompts a BBC article which touches on a disturbing possibility: Liberal drug laws (which UD, as an old hippie, tends to go for) attract the cartels. “… 59% of [the Dutch believe] the Netherlands [is] now a narco-state.”

[A] report commissioned by the mayor or Amsterdam in August described the capital as a “Valhalla for drugs criminals .” … The Netherlands has in a sense created the perfect environment for the drugs trade to flourish. With its extensive transport network, its lenient drug laws and penalties, and its proximity to a number of lucrative markets, it is an obvious hub for the global narcotics flow.

The Court of Appeal upholds Quebec’s secularism law.

[A]s an image, the blacked-out face of a woman, the alleged obscenity of a woman’s face and hair which must apparently be hidden from view to please God, is not conducive to the post-religious value of democratic equality and democratic engagement.

The Magic Kingdom: Where a violent demented man pursues a fine living as an Islamic preacher who throws shoes at women on the street if they’re only wearing a hijab and abaya.

“If a woman reveals her face and allows men to smell her perfume, she is an adulteress,” he spoke at the top of his lungs.

Ladies of the world! Saudi Arabia is currently making a big tourism push! Remember to pack black gloves, black tights, black flats, a hijab, an abaya, a chador, a burkini, a niqab, a burqa, Moccasin Joe, and a helmet.

[He] moved the party sharply left on austerity, spending on public services, tax cuts for the working poor, and a higher minimum wage. He outflanked the far right on Brexit and shamelessly echoed the left on economic policy.

This is Trumpism without Trump. A conservative future without an ineffective and polarizing nutjob at the heart of it. Johnson now has a mandate to enact this new Tory alignment, and he will be far more competent than Trump at it. Unlike Trump, he will stop E.U. mass migration, and pass a new immigration system, based on the Australian model. Unlike Trump, he will focus tax cuts on the working poor, not the decadent rich… [If Boris succeeds,] he will have found a new formula designed to kill off far-right populism, while forcing the left to regroup.

The political sweet spot in the next few years will be a combination of left economics and a celebration of the nation-state… If Johnson succeeds, he’ll have unveiled a new formula for the Western right: Make no apologies for your own country and culture; toughen immigration laws; increase public spending on the poor and on those who are “just about managing”; increase taxes on the very rich and redistribute to the poor; focus on manufacturing and new housing; ignore the woke; and fight climate change as the Tories are (or risk losing a generation of support). That’s where the GOP will have to go if they want to recover from becoming an authoritarian cult.

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Also: An interview before the election with Nimco Ali.