Muslim children<\/a>.<\/p>\nAccording to the new law, girls under 14 would be prohibited from wearing any kind of Islamic veil, including hijabs and burqas, at school.<\/p>\n
Integration Minister Claudia Plakolm also claimed the practice was not religious but \u201coppression,\u201d since one should not teach girls to hide themselves from men.<\/p>\n
It will be banned starting this September; schools will begin an initial grace period in February, during which they will be informed but not penalized.<\/p>\n
Parents who are repeatedly found in contravention may be fined between 150 and 800 euros. The government estimates that it could be around 12,000 girls, citing a 2019 study showing 3,000 girls below 14 wore headscarves at the time.<\/p>\n
Rights groups, including Amnesty International Austria, condemned the bill as “blatant discrimination” and warned it fuels anti-Muslim prejudice.<\/p>\n
The official Islamic community body in Austria, IGGOe, said this move will “stigmatize and marginalize” rather than “empower the children”.<\/p>\n
Women’s rights organizations also criticized the proposal as sending a message that the state can dictate choices regarding girls’ bodies.<\/p>\n
The far-right Freedom Party (FPOe) said the ban did not go far enough and called for it to be extended to all students, teachers, and school staff.<\/p>\n
While the government maintains the law is constitutional, legal experts such as Heinz Mayer disagree, pointing to the court’s earlier ruling that the previous ban targeted a single religion and therefore violated equality principles.<\/p>\n
Austria’s debate echoes the long-standing restrictions of France under its secularism laws, which ban overtly religious symbols in schools.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
AUSTRALIA: Austrian lawmakers are expected to approve a new law on Thursday banning girls under 14 from wearing Islamic headscarves in schools, a move rights groups warn is discriminatory and could deepen social divisions. The bill, introduced by the conservative-led government in the face of rising anti-immigration sentiment, is reportedly intended to protect girls \u201cfrom […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":93684,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,3],"tags":[32918],"class_list":["post-93683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-world","tag-wearing-headscarves-ban"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93683"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93685,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93683\/revisions\/93685"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}