[Sesay:] Europe's highest court has ruled that employers can ban workers from wearing head scarves.
[Vause:] The European Court of Justice says it's OK for companies to ban any visible political, philosophical, or religious signs. Many rights groups and religious leaders call it discrimination.
[Sesay:] Yes, well, Edina Lekovic joins us now. She's communications director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Edina, it's good to have you with us again.
[Edina Lekovic, Muslim Public Affairs Council:] Thanks for having me.
[Sesay:] You have said that you feel that this decision by the European Court of Justice exposes a double standard in the European law. How so?
[Lekovic:] Well, it's out of line with other rulings that have happened in European courts. But let's back up. I think that it's important that this that we realize that this is it's the wrong approach to a problem. If we're talking about integration, we need to create opportunities for inclusion, not exclusion. And I think that that's exactly what this ruling gets wrong. And it's out of sync with a European Court of Human Rights ruling a couple of years ago, which I want to get this right, said sometimes an employee's right is to manifest freedom of religion. And so there is this contradiction, this gap between these two European courts. And I think that it exposes the way that many of these decisions are becoming more and more political for obvious reasons.
[Vause:] There is a shift under way in Europe where they are sort of leaning towards the secular. So part of the case before this European court, it involved a Muslim woman in Belgium. She's a receptionist. She asked her employer if she could wear a head scarf. The company said no. They then issued a rule banning all clothing which you know, which was religious in nature. And the court said this is OK. And this is what they said. "Because the rule thus treats all employees of the undertaking in the same way, notably by requiring them generally and without differentiation to dress neutrally." So on the surface that would seem to be quite fair, everyone gets treated the same. But you know, Christians, compared to, say, Jewish men and Muslim women, they don't have the same obligations to display their faith, right? So this isn't quite fair if you look at it that way.
[Lekovic:] They do and they don't. I mean, every faith has its forms of religious practice. Some of those are more liberal, some of those are more what we might consider orthodox. And you know, and so you know, and I consider my own situation, I see women who are wear a niqab and I cringe a little bit as a Muslim because that certainly reflect my understanding of Islam. But that's that woman's understanding of Islam and that's the kind of diversity that we're trying to negotiate in our societies. But there's, again, a contradiction because European courts have also allowed for women to wear crucifixes whether it's in corporate settings or educational settings. And so it just this gives further fuel to the idea that this is targeting Muslims and that Muslims are being disproportionately targeted at a time when again if we want to create integration we have to create opportunities for inclusion where people can see the intersection between their faiths and their civic identity and their citizenship. There's a different way to go about this where Europe can benefit and appreciate its European its Muslim immigrants.
[Sesay:] So that being said, effectively where we're at is Muslim women being asked to choose, effectively, between their faith and their employment. But what will they choose?
[Lekovic:] Well, I think that when we put people's identity on the line, we're creating a false choice. First of all, we're saying to them, you can either be a Muslim woman who covers her hair or you can be a professional woman. That's a false choice. You can be a professional Muslim woman. And as an American-Muslim woman, I know this today, I'm once again grateful that my country's laws value religious freedom and that our laws are set up to protect different forms of expression. Nobody should be proselytizing, nobody should be, you know, pushing their faiths out in any of these settings but to simply reflect your own identity in the way that you feel comfortable I think should be something that we all agree on.
[Vause:] You mentioned the difference here between the United States and Europe because in the U.S. there's a strong bias towards, you know, freedom of religion. In Europe, though, there's always been this sort of bias towards freedom from religion. So right now that freedom from religion in Europe seems to be clashing with the surge of Muslim immigration.
[Lekovic:] It sure does. But I think that this is I don't think it's actually about religion in most cases. I think we're talking about immigration. We're talking about who is seen as being a foreigner versus being a native. This is something that we're seeing in the United States with the white nationalist movement as it's being called. So we're seeing this rise in many countries and I think that many of these European countries are going to have to grapple with immigration in different ways. Here we have, in the U.S., the valued idea of being a melting pot, that we take in immigrants and this is what we're fighting for today under the current administration, how to retain those rights and freedoms. And I think that Europe in some ways sends us a warning signal of going down a path that disenfranchises people again instead of creating opportunities for them to be integrated. They came to this countries because they want better lives so we should be creating paths where they get better lives and society to introduce as a whole.
[Sesay:] Yes. And to that point of warning signals, the European court making this decision, you know, some have said, is a warning signal that they're pivoting away from protecting minority rights. What is your sense of where this road takes us?
[Lekovic:] I think that it's very disappointing that Central European values, just like Central American values, are about inclusion and about space for multiple people, these ideas, these ideals have continued to evolve. Europe today, European nations today need to look deeply at their national character. My parents left Yugoslavia. They lived in Austria for eight years. They realized they were never going to be accepted as truly being Austrians and so they decided to reinvent their lives again by becoming Americans because they knew that here they could become Americans. That's something that we're still striving for certainly. But I think that many European countries need to evolve to create space for others in ways that are different than they have in the past.
[Vause:] It seems that they were moving in that direction in the last couple of years.
[Sesay:] Its pivot. Yes.
[Lekovic:] Which yes. And I pray for the best in the Netherlands tomorrow because I think that we democracy is on the line here. There is nothing less than democracy on the line and the western ideals that so many of us cherish.
[Vause:] Edina, good to speak with you. Thank you.
[Sesay:] As always good to speak to you. Thank you.
[Lekovic:] Thank you.
[Vause:] And with that, time for a quick break. "STATE OF AMERICA" with Kate Bolduan is next for our viewers in Asia.
[Sesay:] For everyone else, Dutch voters are getting ready for a crucial parliamentary election. Just ahead, we'll go live to Amsterdam to see why this man could lead the country away from the rest of Europe.