The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) issued a final ruling on Tuesday, July 2, rejecting the appeal against the ban on halal slaughter in Belgium. Filed by Islamic and Jewish organizations, the appeal argued that the ban violates religious freedom, but the court said it found no grounds to review the ban.

According to a statement from Belgium’s most influential animal rights organization GAIA, the ECHR’s decision on February 13 was upheld, confirming that the ban on halal and kosher slaughter does not constitute a violation of religious freedom.

GAIA added that the ECHR’s final decision effectively closes the case, Anadolu Agency reported. GAIA President Michel Vandenbosch stated: “The European Court of Human Rights has confirmed its decision from February 13, 2024, asserting that the ban on halal slaughter does not infringe on religious freedom.”

Belgium banned the practice of halal slaughter, as per Islamic tradition, and kosher slaughter, as per Jewish tradition, in the Flemish region in 2017 and the Walloon region in 2018 through respective legislation. In March 2024, Islamic and Jewish organizations brought the case to the ECHR.

In halal slaughter, the animal is killed by a swift incision to the throat and draining the blood, as prescribed by Islamic law. Meanwhile, Kosher slaughter, similar in many respects, follows Jewish dietary laws and also involves a precise method of cutting the throat and draining the blood.

Currently, halal slaughter is only permitted in the Brussels-Capital Region. Last year, the Brussels Parliament considered a proposal to ban halal slaughter, but it faced significant backlash from the Muslim and Jewish communities and was not approved.

Both Muslim and Jewish communities stress that these practices are central to their religious observances, as well as argue that they are humane when performed correctly. The bans have been perceived by many as an infringement on religious freedom.

Source: Morocco World News

The wearing of the hijab has divided Europe for years and the issue came before the courts again in Belgium, after an employee of the eastern municipality of Ans was told she could not wear one while at work.

Lawyers for the woman, who performs her duties as head of office primarily without being in contact with users of the public service, argued that her right to freedom of religion had been infringed.

The Ans municipality changed its terms of employment to require its workers to observe strict neutrality by not wearing overt signs of religious or ideological belief after the woman was told not to wear a headscarf.

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) said authorities in member states had a margin of discretion in designing the neutrality of public service they intended to promote.

However, this objective must be pursued in a “consistent and systematic manner” and measures must be limited to what is strictly necessary. It was for a national court to verify that these requirements are complied with.

The CJEU ruled for the first time on women’s wearing of the headscarf in 2017, when the Luxembourg court found that the garments could be banned, but only as part of a general policy barring all religious and political symbols.

The judgment also stipulated that customers could simply not demand that workers remove headscarves if the company they were working for had no policy barring religious symbols.

The court has found in favor of banning headscarves on a number of occasions since then. In 2021 it threw out cases brought by two German Muslim women, a special needs childcare worker and a sales assistant in a chemist, both of whom were told to remove their headscarves after deciding to wear the garments on their return to work after parental leave.

The ban on religious and political symbols can be justified by the “employer’s desire to pursue a policy of political, philosophical and religious neutrality with regard to its customers or users, in order to take account of their legitimate wishes”, the court said in a statement at the time.

Critics have described the bans as attacks on religious freedoms that predominantly affect women. Human Rights Watch, the NGO, said bans on religious clothing and symbols for teachers and other civil servants in Germany led some Muslim women to give up teaching careers.

The ban on face coverings in France, meanwhile, led to fines for nearly 600 Muslim women in less than three years and France’s 2004 law banning the wearing of headscarves in schools kept some Muslim girls from finishing school.

In the UK there are no bans on headscarves or other religious symbols.

Continue reading at: The Independent

The French state, perhaps naturally, doesn’t quite see it that way. It believes that in stigmatising the hijab from all areas of public life, it will liberate Muslim women from Islam. “Muslim women are simultaneously oppressed and submissive, but also threatening to the French status quo, both as a result of their Muslimness,” says Dr Amina Easat-Daas from De Montfort University speaking to TRT World.

In her book “Muslim Women’s Political Participation in France and Belgium,” East-Daas found that Muslim women in France faced deliberate hurdles in participating in politics, often due to their religious affiliations.

Source: TRT World

Those “certain groups of women” are Muslim women.

It is ironic that the vote will take place on the eve of International Women’s Day on March 8, which strives for a gender-equal world. Removing a Muslim woman’s right to wear a face veil is not equality.

Why should a Muslim woman who chooses to cover her face because of her faith not be allowed to do so? People of different faiths adhere to different dress codes, yet it is Muslim women who bear the brunt of this policing around the world.

Switzerland is far from the first country to propose laws limiting Muslim women’s choice of attire: France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Latvia, Austria, Bulgaria, Belgium, Republic of the Congo, Chad, Gabon and Sri Lanka all have laws prohibiting the wearing of religious face coverings. These bans are called a “security measure,” even though women’s role throughout history in political violence is not linked to the clothing they wore.

Source: Washington Post

The ban brings Belgium in line with European Union regulations that require animals to be stunned so they can’t feel pain before slaughter. However, Jewish and Muslim religious laws require that animals are conscious when they are killed. Kosher and Halal methods of slaughter involve the animal being killed with a single cut to the neck which severs critical blood vessels. Advocates claim the animal loses consciousness in seconds and it doesn’t suffer during the process.

Approximately 500,000 Muslims and over 30,000 Jews live in the small European country, which has a population of 11.3 million. Leaders of both communities have railed against the new law and are challenging it in Belgium’s Constitutional Court. Most EU countries have religious exceptions to the EU’s stunning requirement. However, Belgium is joining Sweden, Denmark and Slovenia among the nations that do not make allowances; while in Germany and the Netherlands, the exceptions are very limited.

The new law applies to the country’s Flanders region and a similar ruling will come into force in the Wallonia region in August, meaning the religious slaughtering practices will be outlawed across the country.

They called on member states and policymakers to play a more active role in the fight against Islamophobia and strengthen legal procedures on the issue.

The project reviews dominant anti-Muslim narratives and compares counter-narratives in eight EU members states of France, Germany, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Portugal, Greece, and the U.K.

It outlines 10 counter-narratives that must be prioritized in Europe.

Continue reading at: Anadolu Agency

Most non-Muslim adults in Western Europe favor at least some restrictions on the religious clothing of Muslim women who live in their country, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey of 15 countries in the region.

The prevailing view (a regional median of 50%) is that Muslim women should be allowed to wear religious clothing as long as it does not cover their face. Fewer (regional median of 23%) say Muslim women should not be allowed to wear any religious clothing. And a regional median of 25% take the more permissive view that Muslim women should be allowed to wear any religious clothing they choose.

In the United Kingdom, for example, 53% of non-Muslim adults say Muslim women in the UK should be allowed to wear religious clothing as long as it does not cover their face, while 19% favor restricting all religious clothing. Roughly a quarter (27%) support allowing Muslim women to wear the religious clothing of their choosing.

The recently enacted laws in European countries do not explicitly target Muslim women’s dress.  In the case of Denmark, for instance, the statute prohibits face coverings except for “recognizable purposes,” such as cold weather…

Source: Pew Research Center

The Society holds bilingual (French & English) conferences every two years. Though we do not publish our own journal, we fill one issue of the international journal Social Compass annually with papers from our conferences.

Our 500+ members come from all continents of the world.  They include some of the world’s leading authorities on religion as well as some of the field’s newest scholars. Though most members are sociologists by discipline, there is an increasing number of members with backgrounds in disciplines such as anthropology, political science, and women’s studies. Similarly, though most of our members are based in universities, others work for denominational research centers and independent research institutes.

The ISSR publishes a bulletin in French and English. It also sponsors a New Researcher’s Network for postgraduate students and recent PhDs, regardless of age.

Past Conferences

• 34^th ISSR Conference: Religion, Cooperation and Conflict in Diverse Societies, Lausanne (Switzerland), 2017
• 33^rd ISSR Conference: Sensing religion, Louvan-la-Neuve (Belgium), 2015
• 32^nd ISSR Conference: Rethinking community. Religious continuities and mutations in late modernity, Turku/Åbo (Finland), 2013
• 31^st ISSR Conference: Religion and economy in a global world, Aix-en-Provence (France), 2011
• 30^th ISSR Conference: The challenges of religious pluralism, Santiago de Compostela (Spain), 2009
• 29^th ISSR Conference: Secularity and religious vitality, Leipzig (Germany), 2007
• 28^th ISSR Conference: Challenging Boundaries: Religion and Society, Zagreb (Croatia), 2005
• 27^th ISSR Conference: Religion and generations, Turin (Italy), 2003
• 26^rd ISSR Conference: Interpreting Religion Today: Competing Processes and Paradigms, Ixtapan de la Sa (Mexico), 2001

Contacts

• Office phone: + 44 2890 97 3581
• Email: contact@sisr-issr.org
• Website: https://www.sisr-issr.org/

Redouane Ahrouch, who is the founder and leader of the party, attended a debate aired on Belgium’s national TV on Tuesday. In the VRT-program “De Afspraak” he announced that his party will expand from Brussels to other big cities like Antwerp and Ghent.

Ahrouch thinks Belgium’s changing population will increase his pro-sharia party’s chances: “Within 12 years, Belgium will have a Muslim majority”. He adds that then there will be two groups that can lead the country: “Extremists or democrats like us” …

Source: The Voice of Europe

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) made the decision after two Muslim women in Belgium and France were fired for refusing to remove their headscarves and took their cases to court.

It was the ECJ’s first ruling on wearing Islamic headscarves, or hijabs, at workplaces. The court said it is up to employers to decide whether to ban the visible wearing of religious, political and philosophical symbols by their employees.

The judgment comes the day before a Dutch election where immigration from majority-Muslim nations is a major issue.

One of the cases the ECJ ruled on was that of Samira Achbita, a Muslim woman employed as a receptionist by the security services firm G4S in Belgium in 2003, when there was an “unwritten rule” within the company barring employees from wearing visible signs of their religious and political beliefs at work.

In 2016, Achbita told the company she intended to wear a headscarf, after which the workplace regulations were amended to include the ban. Achbita was dismissed for continuing to wear a hijab, and challenged her firing in the Belgian courts.

The ECJ concluded that a ban on Islamic headscarves arising from an internal rule “does not constitute direct discrimination based on religion or belief within the meaning of the directive.”

In the other case, Asma Bougnaoui, a Muslim woman, arrived at Micropole — a consulting, engineering, and training firm — in France for an internship in Feb. 2008 wearing a bandana but later wore a headscarf. The firm hired her as a design engineer at the end of her internship but a customer complained about her hijab and the firm asked her not to wear it. Bougnaoui objected and was fired, leading her to challenge her dismissal in the French courts.

The ECJ decided that customers cannot demand that workers do not wear headscarves if the company doesn’t have a policy banning them.

It said in the absence of an internal rule banning the wearing of religious, political and philosophical signs, “the willingness of an employer to take account of the wishes of a customer no longer to have the employer’s services provided by a worker wearing an Islamic headscarf cannot be considered an occupational requirement that could rule out discrimination.”

John Dalhuisen, a director at human rights organization Amnesty International, said the ruling had “opened a backdoor to prejudice.”

“Today’s disappointing rulings by the European Court of Justice give greater leeway to employers to discriminate against women – and men – on the grounds of religious belief. At a time when identity and appearance has become a political battleground, people need more protection against prejudice, not less. It is now for national governments to step up and protect the rights of their citizens,” he said in a statement.

The European Court of Justice, based in Luxembourg, interprets the law for the 28-nation European Union, and its decisions are binding for member states.

Source: USA Today