ENGLISH TEST – Year 12 - March 2018

I. READING COMPREHENSION
As a Muslim, I strongly support the right to ban the veil
At last, the European Court of Justice has made a stand for European values
Qanta Ahmed 18 March 2017 9:00 AM

I was raised as an observant Muslim in a British family. Women, I was

taught, determine their own conduct — including their ‘veiling’. We’d cover
our hair only if we freely chose to do so. That’s why I’m baffled by the
notion that all good Muslim women should cover their hair or face. My
5 entire family are puzzled by it too, as are millions like us. Not until recent
years has the idea taken root that Muslim women are obliged by their faith to
wear a veil.
It’s a sign, I think, not of assertive Islam, but of what happens when
Islamists are tolerated by a western culture that’s absurdly anxious to avoid
10 offence. This strange, unwitting collaboration between liberals and
extremists has been going on for years. But at last there are signs that it is ending.
In response to cases brought by two veiled Muslim women from Belgium and France, the European Court of
Justice has ruled that employers have the right to stop employees wearing visible religious symbols,
including headscarves worn in the name of Islam. This ruling includes not only the burka and the niqab
15 (already entirely banned from the public space by a number of European countries) but also the face-
revealing hijab. The ruling goes two ways: if the company does tolerate religious symbols, then no employee
can be asked to take them off.
In its ruling, the ECJ has made a secularist stand against Islamists who seek to dominate the public space. A
secular public space allows me to practise my faith, as it allows others to observe theirs. As the Quran says
20 (109:1-6): ‘To you your religion and to me, mine.’ Giving an employer the right to restrict the use of
headscarves, in Britain or elsewhere, is good for every believer.
I’ve seen what happens when the public space is infringed upon by the religious. My medical career took me
to Saudi Arabia, aged 31, where I was mandated by law to wear the hijab, covering all of my hair and neck.
And with it the abbayah, a cloak covering my entire body from my neck to my ankles. For those two years, I
25 became intimately acquainted with the cumbersome nature of forced veiling and its impracticality — even
seeing it imposed upon my unconscious female patients. Where the veil is mandatory, a kind of oppression
is implemented: an oppression that has absolutely no basis in Islam.
There’s nothing from the early Islamic period about what the khimar — or veil — should cover, whether
face, body or hair. The Quran, in Sura 24:31, reminds Muslim women simply of the need to ‘draw…[it] over
30 their bosoms’. One of the Prophet Mohammed’s wives is commanded to speak from behind a ‘hijab’
(Arabic for ‘curtain’) as a mark of high distinction (Quran Sura 33:53). But even though Aisha — one of the
most eminent of the Prophet Mohammed’s wives and a great scholar of Islam — provided many details
about the khimars, no record exists as to exactly how they were worn.
Rigid interpretations of the veil are a recent invention. They’re derived not from the Quran or early Islamic
35 tradition but from a misogyny which claims a false basis in the divine. So when the ECJ supports employers
who ban the hijab, it is categorically not impinging on anyone’s religious freedom. The veil has more to do
with a set of quite new cultural mores. The Islamists wish to say: we Muslims are different from the West.
Increasingly, we don’t look like you, or act like you. For Muslim families who have lived in Europe for
generations, this is a strange and ugly trend. The men and women agitating for the right to wear headscarves
40 in Europe would do well to remember our own history in the Muslim world. In the 1920s, with the rise of
 secular states in Egypt and Iran, Muslim women began to organise in pursuit of their rights. In 1922, these
activists, led by Huda Shaarawi, founded the Egyptian Feminist Union, and discarded their veils. Within a
decade, countless women followed suit, and slowly, they forced their way into the Egyptian academe.
Eventually Iran and Turkey forced women to de-veil as official policy.
45 But the tide turned with the growth of fundamentalist Islam, and the 1979 Iranian revolution. The revivalist
fervour spread quickly from the Shia to the Sunni world as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan started to impose
Islamisation programmes. A prominent Shia fundamentalist spokesman, Iranian Ayatollah Morteza
Motahhari, said the desire to be unveiled was ‘an epidemic’ and ‘the disease of our era’. The real epidemic,
I’d argue, was a sort of totalitarian Islamism that wanted not just to run the government but to police what
50 women chose to wear.
Only now does the West seem to have worked out what has been going on. Rules about dress can, and
indeed must, be imposed when any nation’s social cohesion is threatened. Europe is increasingly reaping the
harvest of multicultural policies that have served to divide rather than unite. Not just with the growth of
Islamism, either, but by engendering hostility to immigration and refugees — often towards my fellow
55 Muslims. The Islamists thrive on this, the idea of Muslims being a society-within-a-society. If they invent
religious grounds to persuade them to dress differently, so much the better. It suits their sectarian agenda.
At long last, the European Court of Justice has moved to restore the bedrock of European identity: secular
liberal democracy, where the public space is shared by all, and dominated by no one. It’s just a shame it
could not have done so sooner, before so much damage was done.
60 https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/03/the-right-to-ban-the-veil-is-good-news-for-everybody-including-muslims/

1. Say who or what the following sentences refer to:

1. them (l.17) __________________________ 4. where (l.23) _________________________
2. its (l.18) ____________________________ 5. it (l.24) _____________________________
3. theirs (l.19) _________________________

2. Find synonyms for the following in the last 3 paragraphs of the text:
1. strict – ______________________ 4. renowned - ____________________
2. unconditionally - _______________ 5. flourish - ______________________
3. conventions - __________________

3. Find evidence in the text for the following:

1. Qanta Ahmed feels perplexed by the idea that the veiling is respectable. - ________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
2. Devotees must see it as a benefit if companies limit the use of religious symbols. - _________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
3. The hatred of women led Islamists to impinge the veiling as a practice. - __________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
4. The despotic Islam had a hidden agenda regarding women. - ___________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
5. Due to past mistakes, Europeans now realize that some democratic policies have had a reverse effect. - ________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________

4. Explain the meaning of the sentences from the text using your own words:
1. …a western culture that’s absurdly anxious to avoid offence. (l.8) ________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
2. It suits their sectarian agenda.(l. 55) - ______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
5. Identify the grammatical structure used on lines 5 and 50 and the reason/s for its use:
“Not until recent years has the idea taken root that Muslim women are obliged by their faith to wear a veil.”
“Only now does the West seem to have worked out what has been going on.”
_______________________________________________________________________________________________

II. USE OF ENGLISH

1. Select the most appropriate word from the box and complete the following text.

protection oppression fundamental paid peace

human rights abuses safe place world allowed to

Every person is entitled to certain _________________1 rights, simply by the fact of being human.
These are called “_________________2” rather than a privilege (which can be taken away at someone’s
whim).
They are “rights” because they are things you are _________________3 be, to do or to have. These
rights are there for your _________________4 against people who might want to harm or hurt you.
They are also there to help us get along with each other and live in _________________ 5.
Many people know something about their rights. Generally they know they have the right to food and a
_________________6 to stay. They know they have a right to be _________________7 for the work
they do. But there are many other rights.
When human rights are not well known by people, _________________ 8 such as discrimination,
intolerance, injustice, _________________9 and slavery can arise.
Born out of the atrocities and enormous loss of life during World War II, the United Nations Universal
Declaration of Human Rights was signed in 1948 to provide a common understanding of what
everyone’s rights are. It forms the basis for a ______________10 built on freedom, justice and peace.
From: http://www.youthforhumanrights.org/

2. Rewrite the following sentences as suggested below:

a. Gandhi stated the Indians had to prove they were deserving of independence.
Gandhi said: “________________________________________________________________________ .”
b. “I do protect human rights, and I hope I shall always be looked up as a champion of human rights.”
Aung San Suu Kyi wishes _________________________________________________________________
c. We don’t know much about the “veiling”.
Little _______________________________________________________________________________
d. The readers easily understand the message in Qanta Ahmed’s text.
For the readers, ______________________________________________________ is easy.
e. Martin Luther King Jr. wished for a difference in the US.
Martin Luther King Jr. wanted ___________________________________________ in the US.
f. Muslim women were persuaded into wearing the veil.
Fundamentalist Islam brought ___________________________________________________
KEY -

1. Referents - religious symbols/ of the ECJ/ others’ faith/ Saudi Arabia/ hijab
2. Synonyms – Rigid/ categorically/ mores/ prominent/ thrive

3. Find evidence – 1. That’s why I’m baffled by the notion that all good Muslim women should cover their hair or
face.

2. Giving an employer the right to restrict the use of headscarves, in Britain or elsewhere, is good for every believer.

3. They’re derived not from the Quran or early Islamic tradition but from a misogyny which claims a false basis in the
divine.

4. totalitarian Islamism that wanted not just to run the government but to police what women chose to wear.

5. Europe is increasingly reaping the harvest of multicultural policies that have served to divide rather than unite.

4.1 – Occidental culture that is too concerned about offending no one.

2 – It fits/ meets their biased/ intolerant plan

5. Inversion of the subject to emphasise the idea in the sentence.

II. 1

4. protection 9. oppression 1. fundamental 7. paid 5. peace

2. human rights 8. abuses 6. safe place 10. world 3. allowed to

2. Rewrite the following sentences as suggested below:

a. Gandhi stated

Gandhi said: “The Indians have to prove they are deserving of independence.”

b. Aung San Suu Kyi wishes to be admired as a champion of human rights as she really protects them.

c. Little do we know about the “veiling”.

d. For the readers, understanding the message in Qanta Ahmed’s text is easy.

e. Martin Luther King Jr. wanted to make a difference in the US.

f. Fundamentalist Islam brought women around into wearing the veil.