When in Austria…
Via Daily Mail:
Austria’s right-wing government has announced plans to ban girls in kindergarten and primary schools from wearing Muslim headscarves.
Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who rules in coalition with the far-right Freedom Party, said the proposed anti-hijab law would aim to combat what the government sees as a threat to Austrian mainstream culture from some Muslims.
If any such plan became law it would apply to girls of up to around the age of ten, however as most Muslims who wear the hijab only begin doing so from puberty, it is not known how many people the ‘ban’ would affect.
Austria took in more than one percent of its population in asylum seekers during Europe’s migration crisis, an issue that helped Chancellor Kurz’s conservatives win an election last year by taking a hard line on immigration.
‘Our goal is to confront any development of parallel societies in Austria,’ Kurz told ORF radio, using a term he and the Freedom Party (FPO) favour to describe what they see as a threat posed by some Muslims to mainstream culture.
HT: BCF