Brussels, September 13: Dutch-language public schools in Belgium will ban the wearing of hijab in classes, following the suit of many European countries.
“This decision promotes the feeling of equality and prevents group formation or segregation on the basis of external symbols of life philosophy,” the schools said in a statement cited by Reuters on Friday, September 11.
The ban will affect 700 schools in the northern region of Flanders, including some in Brussels.
School officials argue that the ban was taken to guarantee equal treatment of all pupils within the school grounds.
“There is a problem when there is pressure on one group because we want to live together in reciprocity and it’s very important for us,” Karin Heremans, the headmistress of a Dutch-language school, told Euronews.
“Everyone has to feel good in this school, so a social minority here became majority. So it was a problem.”
Most schools in Flanders are Catholic and run by municipalities.
Schools in Flanders that are financed by other Belgian communities are not bound by the ban.
Islam sees hijab as an obligatory code of dress, not a religious symbol displaying one’s affiliations.
Verdict
The ban comes ahead of a court ruling on a decision by two Dutch-language schools in the northern city of Antwerp to ban the Muslim veil.
Last week, the two schools banned the Muslim veil at the start of the school year, arguing that Muslim girls were being pressured to wear the headscarf.
The ban triggered protests from angry students and one girl filed a complaint in court to contest the ban.
The tribunal ruled on Tuesday that schools could not take such decisions on their own.
The court will rule on the student’s appeal next Tuesday — prompting the community’s education board to make public its unified stance on Friday.
The protests over the ban, with banners reading “No headscarves, no pupils” and “Everybody free except us”, have been front-page news in Belgium.
A similar debate is underway in Belgium’s French-speaking Wallonia, and the Brussels capital region.
Hijab has been thrust into the limelight since France banned it in public schools and institutions back in 2004.
Several European countries have since followed the French lead.
Belgium has a Muslim minority of 450,000, about half of them are from Moroccan origin, while 120,000 are from Turkish origin.
–Agencies