KUWAIT: A 23-year-old British Muslim had been told she would have to remove her hijab if she wants to be appointed as a nursery teacher at the school in the gulf state.
Fouzia Khatun, a British national, had applied for a nursery teacher at The English Playgroup in Kuwait. According to Fouzia, she had applied for the job because she felt she would be more accepted due to hijab than her home country Britain.
Fouzia, soon after applying for the job, received an email from the HR department of the school that “Parents don’t want their children taught by covered teachers. It is an English school”.
It added that Fouzia would not be allowed to wear her headscarf on the premises if she wanted the job at the fee-paying school – and that this was ‘non negotiable’.
The English Playgroup Educational Company has since claimed the comments were ‘by a new employee’ and said it ‘proudly employs’ hijab-wearing staff.
The school’s website said children are ‘taught by the very best trained English specialist teachers’ using the ‘English National Curriculum’.
Fouzia, from Bradford, West Yorkshire, who currently works as a teaching assistant, said the email was ‘offensive’.
She said: ‘When I received that via email I couldn’t believe what I was reading.
‘It might sound unusual, but to me being asked to leave the house without my hijab is like being asked to go out without a top on.
‘It doesn’t represent my religion – it is part of me.
‘I am a loud, bubbly, chatty, normal British girl and my hijab is part of that same identity.
‘To have them suggest that British parents or an English school wouldn’t want me to wear it is very offensive.
‘I was born in England and I am English.
‘I have never experienced any Islamophobia in my life, living in England, so it is bizarre to experience it for the first time – in the context of a country which is 99 per cent Muslim.
‘I thought if anything I would be more accepted there.
‘It has made me feel very blessed to have grown up in England, where we are clearly so much more accepting.’
