Employers are entitled to ban staff from wearing visible religious symbols, the European Union’s top law court ruled on Tuesday, a decision Muslims said was a direct attack on women wearing hijabs at work.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) said it does not constitute “direct discrimination” if a firm has an internal rule banning the wearing of “any political, philosophical or religious sign”.
The court gave a judgment in the cases of two women, in France and Belgium, who were dismissed for refusing to remove hijabs, or the headscarf worn by many Muslim women who feel it is part of their religion.
Critics called the ban a thinly veiled measure targeting Muslims.
“A ban on religious and political symbols feels to me as a disguised ban on the hijab. I cannot think of another symbol that will affect hundred thousands of people in Europe,” Warda el-Kaddouri told Al Jazeera from Brussels.
“By stating that veiled women can simply take off their hijab, you imply that the empowerment of women to be in control of their own body and to make individual decisions is reserved for white women only.”
Kim Lecoyer, president of Belgium-based Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights, told Al Jazeera the ruling legitimised discrimination on the grounds of religion.
Al Jazeera’s Natacha Butler, reporting from Paris, said Tuesday’s ruling is complex.
“The idea behind it is that companies have the freedom to choose whether or not they want to present a so-called neutral image and what they want to do to benefit their business.”
Butler said the court ruled businesses should have the freedom to choose how they operate, and that included choosing whether people would be allowed to wear items such as hijabs or crosses on chains.
“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,” she said.
