Willingly or not, Europe’s top court has just opened the door to official, legal discrimination against Muslim citizens. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that companies on the continent could ban staff from wearing the hijab and other visible religious symbols – but only if the same rule was applied to other religious symbols as well. The ruling, therefore, does not apply only to Muslims or Muslim symbols.
Yet that disguises the context that this ruling came about because of two cases that involved Muslim women being fired for wearing headscarves. And it comes at a time when Islamophobia is rising across the West and becoming part of mainstream political discourse.
There are two problems with the ruling. It both discriminates against religious groups and will make it easier to discriminate against Muslims and other groups in the future.
The ruling discriminates not only against Muslims but against many other minorities too. Sikhs and Jews also wear visible religious symbols and both will be affected. Christians who choose to wear crosses will also be affected. It will also, of course, fall disproportionately on the shoulders of Muslim women.
Into the future, then, it will give companies a legal instrument to discriminate against Muslim women. Of course, many companies will decide not to create such a rule against religious symbols. But if they wished to, they could, and Muslim women would immediately find those companies closed to them. That amounts to clear discrimination, forcing Muslim women to choose between their deeply held religious beliefs and their careers.
Interestingly, this ruling also goes against a prior ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that found employees had a right to wear religious symbols, although that decision was over the wearing of a Christian cross, suggesting that Europe’s institutions are confused about which is a priority.
That will give succour to the far right, who are seeking to make Islamophobia part of the national conversation and who want to ban outright the hijab – not merely in companies, but everywhere in society. They will see this ruling as evidence that their backwards attitude is spreading across the European continent.
