Dutch to ban burkas when picking children up from school

The Dutch government is to extend a ban on the burka to all schools, a measure that includes a prohibition on Muslim mothers from picking their children while wearing face-covering Islamic dress.

Ronald Plasterk, the Dutch education minister, announced that the ban would apply to all schools, including private Muslim religious establishments, and their immediate surroundings.

Not only teachers, but parents and all visitors to schools, including suppliers making deliveries, will be forbidden the burka, even though only 100 women in the Netherlands, out of a population of 16.5 million, are estimated to wear it.

Legislation is expected to be agreed by the Dutch parliament next year.

Mr Plasterk has cited security concerns and the need for teachers and schoolchildren to be able to communicate properly with each other.

“It is important for children to learn that proper communication requires being able to look the other person in the eye,” he said to Dutch MPs.

The legendary tolerance of the Dutch has been tested by years of controversy over the burka and radical Islam in the Netherlands.

Local authorities are now expected to follow the government ban by extending restrictions on Islamic dress to council buildings and public transport.

The burka, also known as a Niqab, is a wide dress covering the entire body, hair and neck face of a woman, leaving only a slit for the eyes.

The Dutch ban will not apply to the more common Hijab headscarf, where a woman’s face is clearly visible.

Read more Telegraph

Muslim headscarf divides, Denmark

Muslim headscarf divides, disturbs in Denmar

COPENHAGEN (AFP) — After years of thinly veiled hostility between Copenhagen and the Muslim world, a beauty pageant and a proposed law have Danes locking horns over one potent symbol of Islam: the headscarf.

When Iraqi-born Huda Falah, 18, won Denmark’s first Miss Headscarf competition earlier this month because of “her blue headscarf and her beautiful, irresistible style,” many Danes simply smiled, shrugged and moved on.

Others saw the pageant as emblematic of the growing influence of Islam in Denmark and what some perceive as its anti-democratic and woman-hostile spirit.

“The headscarf symbolises that women are inferior to men (and) I don’t think this is something we should promote through a beauty competition,” Inger Stoejberg, a high-ranking member of Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s Liberal Party said in a newspaper interview ahead of the pageant.

Naser Khader, a Muslim member of parliament, agreed, calling instead for a competition for “the best arguments against the headscarf.”

A number of Imams meanwhile slammed the pageant as disrespectful to Denmark’s 200,000 Muslims, who make up 3.5 percent of the population and the country’s second largest religious community after the state-run Lutheran Church.

The fact that the controversy followed on the heels of a nationwide debate over whether judges should be allowed to sit on the bench while wearing the headscarf, or hijab, made it all the more touchy.

“Some Muslims have the feeling they are being pilloried by Danish society,” sociologist and Liberal Party MP Eyvind Vesselbo told AFP.

Although Denmark counts no Muslim judges, a court ruling late last year that the headscarf would be permitted on the bench sparked public outcry.

Following a virulent campaign by the far-right, anti-immigrant Danish People’s Party (DPP) calling the hijab a “symbol of tyranny” that, if allowed inside a courtroom, could usher in Islamic law in Denmark, Justice Minister Lene Espersen proposed a law to overturn the court ruling.

“We have decided to prohibit the wearing of (all) religious or political symbols while exercising the function of a magistrate, because a judge must be neutral and impartial,” she said at the end of April.

According to a poll published last month, the bill, which is expected to pass in parliament later this year, received support from 51 percent of the Danes, while 44 percent were opposed to a ban.

The polemic, which echoes a similar debate last year on whether the head-covering scarf should be allowed in parliament, was only the latest example of what many Muslims feel is mounting persecution and alienation under Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s centre-right government.

Although DPP is not part of the coalition it is an important ally that has helped Rasmussen stay in power since 2001.

Under its influence, the government, an unwavering supporter of the US-led “war on terror”, has introduced some of Europe’s most restrictive immigration laws, which many feel are specifically aimed at curbing new arrivals from Muslim countries.

Copenhagen has also, in the name of freedom of expression, stubbornly refused to apologise for the publication of 12 cartoons satirising the Prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper in September 2005.

The drawings sparked angry and in some cases deadly protests across the Muslim world in early 2006, with demonstrators torching Danish embassies and flags and boycotting Danish companies.

Another wave of protests came early this year after the most controversial of the drawings, depicting the prophet’s head with a turban in the shape of a bomb with a lit fuse, was widely republished.

Not all government ministers agreed with the decision to ban the headscarf and other religious symbols from the courtroom.

Most critical was Integration Minister Birthe Roenn Hornbech, who slammed DPP’s campaign on the issue as “fanatically anti-Muslim”.

“Without a nuanced debate (we risk) creating many extremists, because the Muslims feel offended,” she warned.

Two Lutheran priests also protested the law proposal in an open letter published last week, claiming it violated the freedom of religion accorded by the Danish constitution and was an assault on all people of faith.

“You begin with the judges, and once you’ve started setting up barriers there is no stopping the process,” Torsten Johannessen and Helge Baden Nielsen wrote.

According to sociologist Vesselbo, “the debate for or against the hijab in court has become a debate for or against Muslims,” at a time when many Danes feel their country and traditions have come under siege by Islamic extremists. That sense of vulnerability was enhanced earlier this month when a suicide bombing at the Danish embassy in Pakistan killed six people. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack, which it said was “revenge” for the Prophet Mohammed drawings.

Danish intelligence has also repeatedly warned that Al-Qaeda and other Islamic militants are planning attacks on Danes and Danish interests abroad as well as in Denmark, where integration of the Muslim population is becoming ever more challenging.

The headscarf debate risks “putting back by 10 years” attempts in Denmark to integrate Muslims, Vesselbo warned.

“Muslims feel yet again that they are being trampled on, that they are not welcome, that they are not liked,” he said, insisting that delaying integration “goes against the interests of society.”

AFP

Danish government in row over head scarves in court

Danish Government in row over Head Scarves in Court

By JAN M. OLSEN –

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Denmark’s government said Wednesday it will prepare legislation that would bar judges from wearing Islamic head scarves and religious symbols in court.

While the law would also ban crucifixes, Jewish skull caps and turbans, it highlights ongoing debate over Islamic traditions in Denmark, an issue that gained world attention in 2006 when Danish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad triggered violent protests in Muslim countries.

Although there are no known cases of a judge in Denmark wearing a traditional Muslim head scarf known as a hijab, Justice Minister Lene Espersen said the law was needed because judges “must appear neutral and impartial” in court.

The new legislation has created a rift in Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s government. It was prompted by discussions over a set of dress code guidelines issued last year by the court administration, which noted that Danish law does not bar judges from wearing head scarves.

The guidelines went largely unnoticed until the government’s ally, the nationalist Danish People’s Party, decided to politicize the issue last month.

The party, known for its anti-Muslim rhetoric, created a poster showing a woman wearing an all-encompassing burqa and holding a judge’s gavel. The party urged the government to introduce legislation ensuring that courts remain “neutral instances in the Danish judiciary.”

Prime Minister Fogh Rasmussen’s Liberal-Conservative coalition was sympathetic to the idea, but Immigration Minister Birthe Roenn Hornbech broke with the party line.

Roenn Hornbech wrote an opinion piece in a Danish newspaper saying lawmakers have no business regulating the dress of judges.

The premier criticized her Wednesday, saying her article was “unfortunate” and should have been cleared with him first.

Danish Muslim groups have been quiet on the issue, although the Muslim Council of Denmark said this month no one should be disqualified from a job “because of one’s clothes, religious beliefs or political views.”

The justice minister said the government bill, to be presented later this year, would be directed at judges, and would not affect prosecutors, defense lawyers or other court officials.

The Associated Press

partial ban on Niqab

Dutch to impose partial ban on Niqab

The Hague – (IINA) February 10– In a retreat from the previous government’s plan for a general ban, the Dutch government has said it would now impose a partial ban on Niqab in the western European country. “Face coverings are undesirable in an open society, they hinder communication between people and undermine equal chances for men and women,” Reuters reported quoting Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende. He says the government will impose a face veil ban on its civil servants and in schools, and it will enter talks with public transport companies on adding a ban to their terms and conditions for passengers. The government wants clauses to the contracts of public employees forbidding them from wearing face-covering garments.

The ban covers all face-covering materials such as ski masks. Islam sees Hijab as an obligatory code of dress, not a religious symbol displaying one’s affiliations. As for the face veil, the majority of Islamic scholars believe that a woman is not obliged to cover her face or hands. Scholars, however, believe that it is up to women to decide whether to take on the face veil. The government has decided against a broad ban on Niqab in public as that would violate the principle of freedom of religion. “Wearing Islamic face-covering veils is an expression of religion and freedom of religion can only be infringed in very special and specific circumstances,” Internal Affairs Minister Guusje ter Horst said in a statement. If the talks with other bodies like private transport companies fail, the cab can always introduce enforcement regulations, the minister said.

Shortly before being voted out of office, the previous centre-right Dutch government proposed a complete ban on Niqab in public, citing security concerns. A new centrist coalition government of Christian Democrats, Labor and the Christian Union came into power in February 2007 and has taken a more conciliatory line on immigration. Right-wing lawmaker Geert Wilders – who has angered Muslims with his fierce criticism of Islam – called the government’s reported retreat “very disappointing and cowardly”, according to the Dutch news agency ANP. Wilders sent a bill to parliament last July proposing a ban on Niqab in public.