World News

I think it depends on the broader social and historical circumstances. Policies can't be analyzed in a vacuum, they have to be looked at in context. I am not against the idea of school dress codes, but in general there should definitely be no such restrictions in the broader public, i think we can agree on that.

However, even in schools, in this case i don't think it's a good idea, because this is not rooted in a desire to help women and advance secularism, it's rooted simply in Islamophobia, which in Europe is essentially a form of racism. In different historical and cultural circumstances such a ban might possibly be justified, but not in a European country where Muslim people already face prejudice, othering, hate, suspicion and discrimination.

If we were talking about this policy in the context of, say, early 20th century Atatürk's Turkey, then i can see this argument being valid that this is a way to have schools encourage secularism and combat the entrenched religious conservatism in society, but this is not remotely the case for Belgium. What needs combatting in Belgium is not religious conservatism, that is not a major social contradiction in this society, rather it's bigotry, racism and Euro-chauvinism.