In July, The European Union’s highest court reaffirmed that companies in Europe can forbid hijabi women from wearing their headscarves to work. This ruling has led to widespread condemnation from human rights activists and Muslim nations for appeasing Islamophobia. This occurred in two cases brought by Muslim women in Germany who were suspended from their jobs after they started wearing the Islamic garment.
Both Muslim women - a special need carer at a childcare center in Hamburg run by a charitable association, and a cashier at the Mueller drugstore chain - had not been wearing headscarves when they started in their jobs, but decided to do so years later after coming back from parental leave.
Dounia Bouzar, a French anthropologist specializing in legislation concerning religious symbols, says current laws in France are already sufficient to deal with workplace issues around the headscarf. Currently, 94% of problems with religious symbols or practices in the private sector are settled through dialogue. On the consultation to produce a new headscarf law, she says: "I hope it won't just add to hatred of Muslims, or worse prejudice than today."
Amnesty International last month warned the proposed law posed a “serious attack on rights and freedoms in France” and called for “many problematic provisions” of the bill to be scrapped or amended. The law does not specifically mention the word Islam, but French Muslims have for months protested against it, saying several of its measures single them out.
The bottom line is this: hijab bans need to be abolished. The European government is doing nothing but lip service by pretending to save them from oppression, while simultaneously subjecting them to stronger dressing laws which impede on their freedoms. Women should be allowed to present however they want, and the government’s primary intent is simply to squash Islam.
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