Geneva, Europe Brief News – Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor slammed the proposal by Denmark’s government-formed commission to impose a ban on the wearing of hijabs and headscarves in primary schools.
On Thursday, Denmark’s Kommissionen for den Glemte Kvindekamp (Commission for the Forgotten Women’s Struggle) – appointed last year by the sitting Social Democratic government – made a total of nine recommendations related to minority ethnic girls in Denmark.
Denmark’s headscarf ban proposal is fundamentally counter-productive, dangerous, and inciteful, Euro-Med Monitor said in a statement on Friday.
This conclusion is wholly premised on flawed and prejudiced views of Muslim monitories in Denmark and would contribute to fueling discrimination, xenophobia, and intolerance against an already vulnerable group, the statement reads
Nour Olwan, Euro-Med Monitor’s Chief Media Officer
In a proclaimed context of ensuring “that women with minority backgrounds can enjoy the same rights and freedoms as other Danish women,” the committee recommends tightening control over Muslim independent schools in addition to banning the use of headscarves in public, private, and free primary schools across the country.
The recommendation of the committee – which did not include a single member who wears a Hijab in its composition – is based on a prejudiced premise that young Muslim girls in Denmark who wear headscarves are forced to do so by their families and social control in their communities.
While this conclusion is demonstrably unfounded, it perpetuates a dangerous stigma against Denmark’s heavily targeted Muslim minority and fuels a xenophobic view of prevalent Islamic religious symbols like the hijab as an instrument of oppression and subjugation of women.
Given Denmark’s increasingly hostile discourse and policies towards racial, ethnic, and Muslim minorities, including the infamous Ghetto laws, such a proposal would further fuel prejudice, xenophobia, and intolerance.
It would have a profoundly dangerous impact on legitimizing and spreading an association between the Hijab and oppression. This would also affect Muslim women who wear headscarves in the labor market or higher education.
