Sweden’s education agency on Wednesday rejected a blanket ban on veils but said that teachers had in some situations the right to ban students from wearing them.
A general ban on Islamic garments such as the full-face niqab or full-body burqa could be considered a violation of religious freedom, the National Agency for Education said. The agency had been asked to clarify its guidelines on in which situations it was possible to ban facial coverings.
Lessons in which students could be required to remove veils included those involving laboratory experiments or metal and machinery work, the agency said.
France’s interior minister says that since a ban on face-covering Islamic veils took effect in April only six women have been convicted and fined.
Hundreds of Arabs across Israel took to the streets Saturday to rally against attacks on mosques and the so-called ‘
Ten years ago, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, the British government passed laws allowing them to detain and imprison foreign “terrorism suspects” without charge or trial. By December 2001, almost a dozen Muslim men, mainly from Algeria, had been detained and later became known, with others, as the “Belmarsh detainees”. They were held without trial or charge for over three years until the courts ruled this system illegal in 2004.