By Nicole Hunt

Anders Behring Breivik, the man who admitted to setting off the 22 July bomb in Oslo, killing eight people, before killing 69 people on the island of Utoya, makes his first public appearance at Oslo City Court on Monday. On 12 September, the court rejected a police request for another closed door hearing, meaning media and victims’ families will be able to attend.

In Geneva, the UN Global Fund releases the findings of a four-month independent review into its financial safeguards, following accusations of mismanagement of funds in recipient countries.

Monday is also the six month anniversary of the beginning of military action in Libya. Forces from the US, the UK, France, Canada, UAE and Qatar began enforcing the no-fly zone authorised by UN Security Council Resolutions 1970 and 1973 on 19 March.

The trial of seven Italian scientists charged with manslaughter for failing to predict the April 2009 earthquake that killed over 300 people kicks off in L’Aquila on Tuesday. The scientists, who made up the city’s Great Risks Commission, are accused of failing to warn people of the potential risk of an earthquake and convincing people not to leave town a week before the earthquake struck.

In a Paris court, former News of the World chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck and representatives for News Group Newspapers appear charged with breaching France’s privacy and defamation laws in relation to a 2008 story about former FIA president Max Mosley. Mosley was awarded £60,000 in damages by the UK High Court in 2008, but the European Court of Human Rights rejected an application by Mosley in May that would have required media to inform a person before publishing a story containing their private information.

Amid concerns of potential post-election violence, Zambians go to the polls to elect their president and members of the National Assembly. Levy Mwanawasa won the 2006 election, but died in August 2008 and was replaced by Rupiah Banda, who is seeking his first full term.

The UN General Assembly general debate opens in New York on Wednesday, with all eyes on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who, barring last-minute diplomatic developments, is expected to seek a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood.

On Thursday, a verdict is expected in the first case brought in under France’s ‘burka ban’ laws. Two women in the town of Meaux were arrested for wearing the niqab veil in May, with one of them banned from attending the last hearing because her face was still covered.

At the UN General Assembly, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe are both scheduled to speak. Ahmadinejad’s past speeches have prompted walkouts from some delegations, while Mugabe’s have typically been anti-western. British Prime Minister David Cameron, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Ivorian President Alassane Ouatarra are also on the bill.

The week draws to a close with some high-profile court hearings and elections. Closing arguments are set to begin in Amanda Knox’s murder appeal in Perugia on Friday, while Egyptian courts are busy with the testimony of ruling military council member Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi at former President Hosni Mubarak’s trial on Saturday in Cairo, as well as the verdict in the Khaled Said murder trial in Alexandria. Two policemen are on trial for Said’s June 2010 death, which prompted widespread protests in Egypt at a time when police were rarely prosecuted.

In Bahrain, by-elections are held to replace 11 opposition lawmakers who resigned in March over government crackdowns on anti-regime protesters.

French Senate elections take place on Sunday, with half of the 346 seats up for grabs. Party performances will be closely watched ahead of next year’s presidential elections.

In Freiburg, Pope Benedict XVI wraps up a four-day visit to Germany to celebrate the 60th anniversary of his ordination as a priest

This is the question Leila Ahmed sets out to answer in her book A Quiet Revolution, the veil’s resurgence from the Middle East to America. 

Having grown up in the 1940s in a family where the women did not wear veils and with the firm belief that to do so was "backward" Leila Ahmed looked beyond the discussions among the elites, speaking instead to "ordinary people" to discover why since the 1990s increasing numbers of women have been wearing the veil.

She will be discussing her findings with Azadeh Moaveni, an Iranian-American writer, journalist and author of Lipstick Jihad  tonight at the Frontline Club.

The practice of women’s covering in public has been a subject of fierce debate in Europe, with France banning the face-covering niqab and the burqa and Germany imposing a ban on headscarves among teachers. In Britain, where a "Burqa ban" has been ruled out, the subject has been hotly disputed.

Leila Ahmed’s book demonstrates the complex roots of this debate. Her book provides a fascinating account of the unveiling movement in Egypt in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, exploring its complex relationship with colonialism and its notions of the superiority of the European male.

The Harvard divinity professor shows how the assumption took hold that Arab societies needed to follow in the footsteps of the more "advanced" West and how the veil became a potent symbol of Islam’s "degradation" of women.

"Professor Ahmed’s study quickly goes to the heart of the veil’s resurgence," says Azadeh Moaveni:

Both in the early 20th century as well as today, women’s covering has been the flashpoint in political conflicts between the West and the Middle East. Liberating women served as the pretext for the British colonial presence in Egypt, just as rescuing women from the Taliban has provided moral cover for the West’s modern war in Afghanistan.

It is striking how 21st century debates about the rights of women under Islam echo those put forward by the elites at the turn of the twentieth century for political expediency: The burqa, French  President Nicolas Sarkozy said in 2009, represents "a problem of liberty and women’s dignity" and was a "a sign of subservience and debasement".

Azadeh Moaveni says she is also keen to discuss the role of Saudi Arabia in the rise of the veil:

The shadow of Saudi Arabia also looms long across this book. If Saudi money and ideology propelled Islamism and the veil across the Middle East and the world, then it’s resurgence is also Saudi Arabia’s quiet success story.

Professor Ahmed deftly shows us how the veil carries dramatically different meanings in various social and historical contexts. She argues that today, the veil has become unmoored from its old patriarchal associations. Is that really the case, and if so, must liberal and secular Muslims also embrace its resurgence?

Tomorrow night’s event is fully booked but you can watch it live here.

“Put on your burqa and don’t speak English. They can’t know you are
American or we’ll all be dead,” Momand warned me as we left Kabul in
his well traveled Toyota Corolla. (I speak Dari, one of Afghanistan’s
languages).

In Jalalabad, a fairly safe Afghan city near the
Pakistani border, the plan quickly fell apart. The Afghan businessman,
it turns out, had other things on his mind besides arranging my
interview.

While Momand went to repair his car, the businessman
took me to a tiny hotel room where I was to stay the night. The
businessman told me Momand could not accompany us to the room because
he’d gotten the room for his “wife.”

Pashtun culture bars any man from being in the same room with a woman not closely related to him.

But
the businessman would not leave. He kept asking me personal questions.
He repeatedly told me to take off my burqa and sit next to him on the
cushions on the floor. When he finally left the room to get some tea, I
grabbed my cell phone and called my fixer in Kabul for help. He called
Momand. link

Image by Roohullah Anwari for NPR