The Danish parliament today debated a proposal to ban the Islamic headscarf in primary schools (from grade zero to grade nine), which was recommended last August by a committee formed by the government. The deliberations concluded with the government stating that: “The headscarf should not be banned in schools,” according to the DR website.
“However, we will continue to fight against coercion and oppression related to honor and negative social control,” said Minister for Immigration and Integration Kaar Dybvad. “The legal assessment is that the proposal to ban the Islamic headscarf in primary schools cannot be implemented within the framework of the constitution and Denmark’s international obligations. Therefore, the government cannot support the proposal.”.
The proposal was met with heated debate late last summer when a committee formed by the government at the time, called the “Committee for the Struggle of Forgotten Women,” recommended a ban on wearing headscarves in primary schools. Primary schools in Denmark mean grades up to the ninth grade. The committee was chaired by the mayor of Holbæk, who belongs to the Social Democratic Party, Kristina Krzyrusijak Hansen, who said at the time, ”Our focus is on ensuring that girls who do not have the same freedoms as us have these freedoms.”
This was under the previous government, the Social Democratic Party government, and although a new government has been elected since then, Kaar Dybvad still holds the position of Minister for Foreigners and Integration. At the time, Dybvad described the proposal as “exciting” and said that he agreed with the committee’s analysis that many girls and women in Denmark are oppressed by social control and religious norms, but he could not answer at the time whether there was a way out of this, but he said: “We will look into it. We will start from the fact that there is a big challenge with young women and girls who do not have freedom of religion because religious norms are imposed on them by their families.”.
