EU Court Rules Hijab Can Be Banned From Workplaces

By teleSUR

14 March 17

The EU court’s ruling allows so-called "indirect discrimination" if it is “objectively justified," such as to maintain a certain corporate image.

he top court in Europe issued a ruling Tuesday allowing employers to ban employees from wearing the hijab if the company implements such a policy alongside a ban of all political, philosophical or religious signs.

The European Court of Justice declared the ruling does not constitute "direct discrimination.” The judgment was based on the cases of two women, in France and Belgium, who filed for discrimination after being fired from their jobs for wearing hijabs.

Critics argue that the ruling is a thinly-veiled attempt to target Muslim women. It has also been described as a complicated ruling.

"It's going to be very complicated to rule on such cases within each country, because it will come under the jurisdiction of each separate nation in the EU because there are so many shades of grey, what constitutes discrimination against somebody’s religious freedom or not," said Al Jazeera's reporter Natacha Butler.

The Belgium case was brought on by Samira Achbita in 2003, who was dismissed from her post as a receptionist at G4S security services after she refused to stop wearing the hijab to work. The company introduced a formal ban of the hijab at the company thereafter and the ECJ ruled that European Union law does bar discrimination on religious grounds.

In France, design engineer Asma Bougnaoui was fired from a private company called Micropole, after a customer complaint about her hijab in 2008. In her case, the ECJ ruled that she had indeed been treated differently and so the client's demand that she not wear a hijab "cannot be considered a genuine and determining occupational requirement."

In sum, the EU court’s ruling does allow so-called "indirect discrimination" if it is “objectively justified by a legitimate aim,” such as a company's policy of neutrality.

The ruling comes in the wake of a massive tide of Islamophobia and a rise in xenophobic aversion to Muslim immigration across the continent.