AMSTERDAM (EJP)--- A Dutch school has sacked a female Muslim teacher after she refused to shake hands with men.

The Vader Rijn College in Utretcht sent the woman, not named for legal reasons, a letter of dismissal despite an earlier advisory ruling by an equal rights committee urging it not to sack the teacher.

The teacher had been suspended earlier this year following her refusal to shake hands with men.

At the time, she told her bosses that she had refused because of religious reasons. But it emerged that she had shaken hands with men previously.

The school, where 80 per cent of its 700 students have Moroccan or Turkish backgrounds, said that the teacher’s conduct had set a bad example for pupils.

School director Bart Engbers said: "Religious and political flag-waving must stay at home."

He added that it was a normal part of Dutch society for people to greet each other and that he wanted students to be prepared for life in Dutch society.

Public debate


The suspension caused a fierce public debate over the balance between respect for religious rights and the importance of local customs. Many Dutch people have recently raised concerns that immigrants to the country integrate poorly.

But the school was expected to re-instate the teacher after the Equal Treatment Commission made its non-binding ruling.

"We judge on a per-case basis to what extent an employer has attempted to balance the duty to ensure a discrimination-free workplace and to leave room for the expression of faith by employees," said committee chairman Alex Geert Castermans after it had announced its decision in November.

The news comes after a number of cases in other European countries involving teachers’ religious beliefs.

In 2003, Germany’s Constitutional Court ruled that a Muslim teacher could wear a headscarf in class. Fereshta Ludin, originally from Afghanistan, was rejected for a job in Baden-Wuerttemberg because she insisted on wearing the scarf in school.

The state of Baden-Wuerttemberg had claimed that, by doing so, she violated Germany’s constitutional religious neutrality. But Ludin had argued that she was guaranteed a right to religious freedom under the German constitution.

But in its ruling, the Constitutional Court urged federal German states to address the issue of legislation on headscarves worn by teachers, and, since then, a number of states, such as Baden-Wuerttemberg, have introduced bans on teachers wearing headscarves in schools.

And in England this year, a Muslim teacher was sacked after she refused to take off a full-face veil when teaching kids at a primary school.

The children, many of whom were from non-native-English ethnic backgrounds, had complained that they could not understand her and could not see her lips moving when she was teaching English.

Teachers said that the sacking had nothing to do with religion but the fact that, with the veil on, the teacher could not teach the children properly. The Muslim Council of Britain said that the teacher had been wrong to insist on covering her face.