A Norwegian court Monday Sept. 12, 2016 found hairdresser Merete Hodne guilty of discrimination for refusing to serve a Muslim woman Malika Bayan who was wearing a hijab.
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Hodne, 47, must also pay costs of 5,000 krone.
The Jæren District Court ruled on Monday that Merete Hodne, a hairdresser in the small southwestern Norwegian town of Byrne, “deliberately discriminated” against Malika Bayan when she denied her service previous year. Bayan told the authorities that when she went in and asked what it would cost to dye her hair, Bodne asked her to leave, saying she wouldn’t touch the hair of anyone like her.
Ingrid Havarstein Eldoy, a judge of the district court, wrote that the court concluded that Hodne had willingly discriminated Bayan by sending her away because she is Muslim. She told the court that she viewed the hijab as evil and a totalitarian symbol.
“To me, the hijab is an extreme political symbol”.
She added: “Evil is Islam’s ideology, Mohammedanism and the hijab are symbols of this ideology, like the swastika is for Nazism”. But the hairdresser – who accordingto Norwegian media was allegedly linked with xenophobic groups – chose to appeal to the court decisions, as NTB agency reported.
“As most people know hijab clad woman do not get to show their hair to men”. Among the critics have been Carl I. Hagen, leader of the anti-immigration Progress party, as well as fellow MP Peter Myhre, who echoed Hodne’s comparison of Islam with the Nazis.
A woman wearing traditional Muslim clothing has told police that a man lit her blouse on fire in New York City.
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“I think this is staged by [Prime Minister] Erna Solberg and the government”, he said to the channel TV2. She said the man then walked away. Her lawyer said that she was likely to take the case all the way to the European Court of Human Rights.
