FRENCH MUSLIM CONDEMNS WORK SUSPENSION FOR WEARING HEADSCARF.
Agence France Presse, 7/13/03
A Muslim civil servant suspended from her job because she refused to remove
her headscarf on Saturday condemned the decision, saying she would continue
to wear the religious garment on her return to work.
Nadjet Ben Abdallah, 33, who works as a civil servant in the Lyon region in
east France, told journalists that her appeal against an initial penalty in
2002 had been dismissed by the Lyon administrative tribunal.
Instead, the tribunal handed down a one-year suspension without pay to the
Frenchwoman of Algerian origin, describing her action as "particularly
serious given her position".
The debate over whether Muslim women have the right to wear headscarfs at
school, at work or even on identity photos, regularly causes a furor in
France, which is fiercely proud of the State's secular nature.
French Muslims themselves are divided over how to deal with the issue…
Ben Abdellah said she will continue to wear the headscarf when she returns
to work, but in the meantime is launching an appeal against the verdict.
While Ben Abdellah started her job in 1999, she only began wearing a
headscarf in late 2001, for reasons of "individual conscience and certainly
not religious proselytism", she told AFP Saturday.
She said she was shocked by the tribunal's decision, which she described as
an injustice.
"It is not the employee with a good record who has gone before the
tribunal, but Islam," she said.
"They're turning Islam into a religion incompatible with the Republic,
while tolerating people wearing other religions' symbols…"
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