After France, Belgium is now mired in an emotionally-charged debate on whether to ban Islamic headscarves and other overt religious symbols in state schools.
Inspired by a planned French law, two Belgian senators have sponsored similar legislation to combat what they say is Islamic sexism.
"The veil amounts to oppression of the individual in the name of religion," said one of the senators, socialist Anne-Marie Lizin.
French President Jacques Chirac called last month for a ban on religious insignia in schools following months of fierce debate over whether to allow Islamic headscarves in state schools, which are officially secular.
The draft law, which parliament is likely to pass next month, has drawn protest across the Muslim world and in France.
Belgium has no such laws at the moment. But school boards have the right to take their own action, a right exercised recently by the Athenee Royal high school in Brussels, which has a high number of immigrant pupils.
"We have changed our rules to forbid the wearing of headscarves in the school because the situation was no longer tenable," said the school's administrator, Francis Lees.
"Some pupils have since left the school, but we have been able to break out of our ghetto," he said.
A French teacher of Moroccan origin at the school said he was convinced that if Belgium passed an anti-headscarf law, "most of the girls would conform with it."
"They're not going to play with their futures for the sake of that. We shouldn't exaggerate the influence of Islamists," he said.
But in Belgium's 350,000-strong Muslim community (out of a total population of 10 million), the debate has aroused fierce passions.
Following an appeal from a radical Muslim political group, the Party for Citizenship and Prosperity, about 100 Belgian Muslims were expected to take part in a demonstration in Paris this weekend against the proposed French legislation.
"We want to denounce an attack on fundamental liberties and affirm our solidarity with our European colleagues," said a party offi-cial, Rachid Zegzaoui.
He said the party would organize a similar demonstration in Brus-sels in the weeks ahead.
Several Muslim groups said in a joint statement that a ban on Islamic headscarves and veils "would deprive Muslim citizens of the pleasure of exercising their civic rights."
The Belgian government is divided over the senators' initiative.
Interior Minister Patrick Dewael has come out in support of a ban on Islamic veils and other overt religious symbols in schools and other state institutions, such as hospitals and government offices.
But the minister for public functions and social integration, Marie Arena, has called the proposals "radical and aggressive."
The issue is unlikely to recede with local elections in June giving an opportunity for backers of the headscarf bill to press their case.
The anti-immigrant, far-right Vlaams Blok party is hoping to do particularly well in the forthcoming ballot, having gained three seats for a total of 18 in the national parliament in a general election last May.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RSS