Leading Dutch retailer HEMA is being taken to court in Belgium after a female employee was fired for wearing a headscarf. The Belgian Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism (CGKR) is pressing charges against the firm.
HEMA dismissed the Muslim employee a year ago after customers complained about her headscarf. CGKR Director Jozef De Witte told Flemish media that his organisation made several attempts to broker a solution with the Dutch company, but without success.
CHARLEROI — Someone hung a carnival mask representing a pig on the gate of the mosque at Marchienne-au-Pont on Saturday night, provoking the indignation of the local Muslim community, Le Soir reported on Monday. The act was carried out between 8pm and 11.45pm.
The mask was of a pig on which the words “go back home” were written in black marker. Alerted during Saturday-Sunday night by the president of the ASCL Turkish committee of Marchienne-au-Pont, the local police from Charleroi went to investigate. When the officers arrived some twenty worshippers, outraged by this provocative act, were at the scene. Film from a surveillance camera was taken. Officials of the mosque have filed a complaint with Charleroi police.
A Belgian politician has risked causing uproar among Muslims after starting a “Women Against Islamization” campaign featuring his 19-year-old daughter wearing a burka and a bikini.
Filip Dewinter, leader of the far-right Vlaams Belang party, uses a shot of his daughter An-Sofie Dewinter in the dark blue bikini for the political campaign.
Belgium’s highest court on Wednesday refused to suspend a law banning the wearing of burqas, but said it was still examining whether the recently-adopted act is legal.
The Constitutional Court ruled that there was no evidence that the two women who have appealed against the law have suffered serious discrimination, the Belga news agency reported – leaving no ground to suspend it.
The measure came into force in July, making Belgium the second in Europe after France to criminalize the burqa, which completely covers women’s bodies, as well as other types of Islamic veils.
Anyone caught in public places with their face completely or partially covered – thus preventing identification – is liable to a fine of up to 137 euros (182 dollars) and up to seven days’ imprisonment.
A French businessman paid fines Wednesday for two women in Belgium who wore full-face veils in public and said he would take Belgium and France to court over laws banning Muslim niqabs and burqas.
Property dealer Rachid Nekkaz has set up a 1 million euro ($1.4 million) fund to cover fines and paid the first 50-euro penalties imposed in Belgium on two women in Brussels.
“France and Belgium have decided to forbid the possibility and the liberty of women to wear what they want,” he told reporters outside a municipal office in Brussels. The two fined women, both wearing niqabs, were also present.
“I consider that … it’s not acceptable that European governments vote in laws that don’t respect individual rights.”
Belgium’s law banning any covering of the face in public came into effect late last month. France was the first country to introduce a ban in Europe in April.
Nekkaz said he planned a legal challenge in both countries. “I will pursue the French and Belgian states in their national courts and then in the European Court of Human Rights so that they are sanctioned for violating individual liberties.”
Vandals broke into the Alaadin mosque at Marchienne-au-Pont on Monday evening. They pulled down two Belgian and Turkish flags and tore them, before destroying some movable objects. According to several witnesses who saw the youth running away, an ambulance siren must have frightened these unwanted visitors.
“We have complained to the local police in Charleroi who assured us that an investigation would be carried out”, said Coskun Beyazgül, spokesperson for the Diyanet of Belgium, which includes 67 of the country’s mosques. “At the time of the tragic events in Norway and given the Islamophobic tendencies of the perpetrator, this attack on the Alaaddin mosque worries and saddens us. We therefore firmly condemn this act, hoping that the economic crisis in Europe does not degenerate into a social crisis. We therefore expect the authorities to take the necessary preventive measures to preserve social cohesion.”
The Belgian burqa ban is set to be challenged before the country’s constitutional court by two women who willingly wear the full-body Islamic covering, their lawyer said Friday – one day before the new law was to come into effect.
“My clients are far from being the only ones,” Ines Wouters told the German Press Agency dpa. “This is really a head-on attack on the Muslim world.”
Belgian lawmakers earlier this year approved the new law, which punishes anyone caught in public places with their face completely or partially covered – thus preventing identification – with a fine of up to 137 euros (197 dollars) and up to seven days’ imprisonment. Officials argue that the law is a matter of safety. Concerns about women being forced into wearing the burqa have also been raised.
But Wouters described the measure as disproportionate and discriminatory, arguing that it will further stigmatize the Muslim community. She said she would file her lawsuit with the constitutional court over the weekend. It calls for the burqa ban to not only be reversed, but also suspended until the court rules on the matter.
One of her clients, a Belgian woman who converted to Islam and has worn the burqa for 13 years, is no stranger to challenging such bans. She succeeded in overturning a fine in the Brussels commune of Etterbeek, which implemented a similar local ban, Wouters said. Her other client is a Moroccan woman who moved to Belgium a few years ago.
Both women are married, in their 30s and don’t consider wearing the burqa “an obligation, but a choice they make,” Wouters said.
See also Open Democracy and Deutsche Welle.
The Council of Europe, the oldest European institution which specialises in human rights, today (20 July) strongly criticised recent French and Belgian legislation targeting the burqa, a veil that covers entirely women’s faces.
Penalising women who wear the burqa does not liberate them, Thomas Hammarberg, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, said today in a written statement.
Hammarberg explained that a law in Belgium will enter into force on 23 July, introducing fines and up to seven days of imprisonment for women wearing such dress. Meanwhile in France, since April anyone who wears the niqab or burqa in public is subject to fines of 150 euros and/or “citizenship training”.
He adds that “loud voices” in countries such as Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands and Switzerland are demanding similar measures, while in northern Italy an old anti-terrorist law against concealing the face for security reasons has been used by some local authorities to punish women who wear full-cover veils.
The human rights commissioner rejects the view that such bans ‘liberate’ women, stressing that there is “very little” to show that this is the case.
Instead, Hammarberg insists that the way the dress of a small number of women has been portrayed as a major problem requiring urgent discussion and legislation is “a sad capitulation to the prejudices of xenophobes”.
“Much deeper problems of intercultural tensions and gaps have been side-tracked by the burqa and niqab discussions. Instead of encouraging this unfortunate discourse, political leaders and governments should take more resolute action against hate crimes and discrimination against minorities,” Hammarberg argues.
Belgium will enforce a burqa ban from July 23 with a fine and possible jail time for women who wear it, joining France as the second EU nation to forbid full veils, Belgian media said Thursday.
The new law was published Wednesday in the kingdom’s official journal after deputies approved it unanimously in parliament in April.
Offenders will face a fine of 137.50 euros ($195) and up to seven days behind bars. An estimated 270 people wear the face-covering niqab or the full-body burqa in Belgium.
Deputy Minister Ayoob Kara met with Swedish-German millionaire Patrik Brinkmann who has ties with German neo-Nazi groups in Berlin over the weekend,Yedioth Ahronoth reported.
Brinkmann, who is trying to establish a far-right anti-Islamic party in Germany claims he is not an anti-Semite, however his previous close contacts with the German neo-Nazi party (NPD) and his past membership in another neo-Nazi party raise questions regarding his ideology.
Brinkmann, 44, made his fortune in the Swedish real estate business in the 1980s before becoming mixed in tax problems in his home country. As legal battles were going on he used the majority of his finances for the establishment of two research foundations which became closely affiliated with far-right and neo-Nazi elements in Germany.
The millionaire later began supporting the Pro NRW movement, Germany’s far-right and anti-Islamic party. He declared he fears that Sharia law will be introduced in the country and has pledged to establish a strong German right-wing party. He left the party last year in protest of its anti-Semitism, but resumed membership earlier this year. He now heads the party’s Berlin branch.
Brinkman visited Israel several months ago where he met Kara and announced his intention to promote one of his foundations in Israel. He met the deputy minister again in Berlin over the weekend as part of Kara’s private visit to the city’s World Culture Festival. Several months ago, Kara met with Austrian Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache who was once active in neo-Nazi groups.
Israel’s embassies in Berlin and Vienna have warned against such contacts. “Even if this is an alleged attempt to create an anti-Islamic European front, some of these elements seek to obtain an Israeli seal of approval without altering their anti-Semitic views,” an Israeli state official said.
The deputy minister said he was unaware of Brinkmann’s problematic connections with Germany’s neo-Nazi far-right movement, claiming this was “irrelevant.”
See also Ayoob Kara’s meeting last month with Filip Dewinter of the Belgian far-right party Vlaams Belang.