THE US Supreme Court has upheld the right of Muslim women to wear the hijab. The case, which has dragged on for eight years, centered around the refusal of a fashion house to give a job to young Muslim woman who arrived at her interview wearing a headscarf. The firm, the internationally-famous Abercrombie and Fitch, sought to justify its decision on the basis by saying that the hijab would have violated its in-house policy on the appearance of sales staff. The retailer has since abandoned this line, following a 2013 settlement with two other women whom they fired because they had chosen to cover their heads when at work. Nevertheless, it was right that this first case involving an American girl, Samantha Elauf, went all the way to America's highest court. The judges found that the ban had been in violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This outlawed discrimination based on religious belief or practices. There is, however, an unfortunate element to the case. The judgment was not unanimous. One of the nine judges, Justice Clarence Thomas chose to dissent. His view was that the discrimination by the store had not been intentional. He did, however, concede that women who wore head scarves would inevitably feel more harshly treated under the store's former “Look” policy. It is a pity that justice Thomas did not look beyond what to many will seem a technicality to the far more important wider issue. The United States, like much of Europe, is in the grip of rising Islamophobia. America's top judges, by producing an unanimous verdict, had the chance to give a clear lead to public opinion. Now because of Justice Thomas' dissent, every bigot and redneck in America is going to say that there was one of the judges who, in their view, had a clear view the many dangers posed by aggressive Muslims who insisted on sticking to their own alien dress codes. But at least the US Supreme Court has shown the way. France, which has always prided itself on its republican links with the United States — after all the Statue of Liberty was a gift from the French people — currently bans the hijab in schools and universities. This bigoted stricture has overflowed into the workplace. Yet more reprehensibly, this poisonous measure has flowed onto the streets. Muslim women respectably attired in a headscarf are frequently assaulted, verbally, if not physically by thugs who imagine their behavior is sanctioned by the state. Unfortunately for French Muslims, France's rednecks actually have a political party that is eager to represent their racial and religious prejudices — it is called the National Front. Moreover rednecks the length and breadth of Europe, from countries once renowned for their apparent tolerance such as Holland and Sweden, have respectable-looking far-right politicians catering for their moronic bigotry. But what is worse, the real political establishment is being dragged toward the hate-filled far right policies, as they seek to shore up their political support. Though it denounces racial and religious prejudice, the European political establishment is actually fostering intolerance through the likes of the French hijab ban or the more general clampdown on immigration and even business and educational visits from the Muslim world. It is surely about time the European Court of Human Rights emulated the US Supreme Court and lanced this poisonous boil by overturning the French headscarf ban.
