Word: hijab
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Fatima Zibouh, a Ph.D. candidate and researcher at the University of Liège in Belgium, says her hijab is "not a flag or a symbol, merely a manifestation of my spiritual life." A British teaching assistant, sacked for wearing the face-covering niqab, invoked not Shari'a or tradition but her concern for the rights of career women: the ruling, she said, made her "fearful of the consequences for Muslim women in this country who want to work...
Such moxie is the preserve of the exceptionally talented. And it is far easier to be a practicing Muslim in a globalized London firm than in Denmark, where prayer rooms at work are controversial, or in those German states that have outlawed the hijab for government employees. Islam is traditionally a faith that shapes not just individual souls, but public life. That makes for difficulties. Many Muslims who want to thrive in the European mainstream feel they have to take their cue from Christians and make their faith a private matter, so that they become Protestantized, as it were...
...Those who can get jobs tend to work in back offices. As CEO of the French communications group CS, Yazid Sabeg is perhaps France's most prominent French-Arab businessman and the author of a study on workplace discrimination. Asked if any of his 4,000 employees wear the hijab, he says he remembers one who did, but adds that she wouldn't have had contact with clients: "I'm against wearing the hijab at work. Shows of religion just result in antagonism between the majority culture and minorities." Recruiters often ask Boujema Hadri, owner of the Paris-based employment...
That said, there's evidence suggesting the evolution of a French hijab economy. "I'll tell recruiters, 'Take a veiled woman - it's cheaper,'" says Hadri. In a country with 8% unemployment - and over double that if you're young and have an Arab name - it's hardly surprising, he says, that "the women don't care. They just want to work." Zeenath Simozrag is a Sorbonne-educated lawyer with two master's degrees and three languages, but it still took her six months to find a job, a fact she attributes to her wearing a head scarf...
...wanted to be a doctor, they'd respond: "Najett, that's just a dream. Think about something you could realistically do." She recalls: "I thought, 'I'm better than the white people in my class. I can do it.'" Eventually she did, but faced hurdles when she donned the hijab. Kaddouri had wanted to wear it since she was 15, but knew that French law meant she had to choose between covering her head and getting an education. "It wasn't just ambition that made me feel education was more important than wearing it, but my religion," she says...