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Headscarf ban turns France’s Muslim women towards homeworking. Every day Meryem Belmokhtar turns her tidy sitting-room into a workshop.
She lays out the equipment on the table, puts on rubber gloves and dips into various jars to make up 250g bags of sweets. Each packet is marked with her logo, featuring a stick of barley sugar. Belmokhtar, 39, lives in Compiègne, northern France, and manages the Candine Halal website (a pun on candy in English and dine, religion in Arabic), which markets the usual chocolate-coated marshmallow bears, preserved cherries and acid drops, except that hers contain no pork gelatine and are halal. In other words, they comply with Islamic dietary rules. Becoming self-employed has been an adventure for Belmokhtar. The French parliament has passed several laws on when and where women can wear headscarves.
Belmokhtar is no exception, other women of similar background and religious convictions have gone into business on the net. On the Hijab Glam website the faces are blurred too. They all seem very happy with their choice. European Court upholds French full veil ban. 1 July 2014Last updated at 07:45 ET There are calls beyond France too for public wearing of the niqab to be banned The European Court of Human Rights has upheld a ban by France on wearing the Muslim full-face veil - the niqab.
A case was brought by a 24-year-old French woman, who argued that the ban on wearing the veil in public violated her freedom of religion and expression. French law says nobody can wear in a public space clothing intended to conceal the face. The penalty for doing so can be a 150-euro fine (£120; $205). The 2010 law came in under former conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy. A breach of the ban can also mean a wearer having to undergo citizenship instruction. France has about five million Muslims - the largest Muslim minority in Western Europe - but it is thought only about 2,000 women wear full veils. PDF download ECHR ruling[116KB] Continue reading the main story. Hijab debate returns to France after student asked to remove her ‘thing’ By Rajia Aboulkeir | Al Arabiya News Wednesday, 1 October 2014 Controversy surrounding the Muslim female headscarf in France has returned after a student was ordered to remove it during a class at the prestigious La Sorbonne university.
“Are you planning on keeping your thing on throughout all my classes?” The geography lecturer asked the student, French daily Le Monde reported. French Muslims Say Veil Bans Give Cover to Bias. Photo WISSOUS, France — Malek Layouni was not thinking about her Muslim faith, or her head scarf, as she took her excited 9-year-old son to an amusement site near Paris.
But, as it turned out, it was all that mattered. Local officials blocked her path to the inflatable toys on a temporary beach, pointing at regulations that prohibit dogs, drunks and symbols of religion. And that meant barring women who wear head scarves. France Moves to Clarify the Rules on Full Veil. PARIS — The government said Monday that it would circulate guidelines for cultural institutions on ’s law against wearing full veils in public places after a woman at a performance of Verdi’s “La Traviata” was asked by an attendant to remove the covering over her face or leave the audience.
Jean-Philippe Thiellay, the associate director of the Paris National Opera, told Agence France-Presse that some performers had complained after spotting the woman, who was sitting close enough to the conductor to be visible on the television monitors at the Opéra Bastille, the French capital’s hulking, modernist opera house. The performers at the Oct. 3 production said they did not want to sing if the woman kept her face concealed, he said.
“I was alerted in the second act,” Mr. Thiellay was quoted as saying by the news agency. The Paris National Opera declined to elaborate, but the Culture Ministry confirmed the account. “It’s never nice to ask someone to leave,” he added. France’s burka ban is a victory for tolerance. A Voice Behind the Veil: Planning to Defy a French Law.