SCHOOL pupils and civil servants in Belgium could soon be banned from wearing Islamic headscarves as the emotive debate over the hijab spreads across Europe.

Inspired by French law, two Belgian senators drafted legislation to ban the veil and other overt religious symbols from state schools, causing outrage from Islamic groups.

Patrick Dewael, the Belgian Interior Minister, was denounced by members of his Government last week for declaring that he supports the ban, not just in schools but in all state institutions, including hospitals and government offices.

In Germany, the hijab is banned in schools in 7 out of its 16 states. The Bavarian Government insists that the ban was necessary because the scarf had become “a symbol of fundamentalism and extremism”.

The two Belgian senators, Anne-Marie Lizin and Alain Destexhe, say that the ban is needed to combat what they say is Islamic sexism. “The veil amounts to oppression of the individual in the name of religion,” Ms Lizin, a Socialist, said. Belgium has 350,000 Muslims, mainly of North African and Turkish origin, in a population of ten million.

Mr Dewael, a Liberal Democrat, argued that the wearing of religious symbols “threatens principles such as the separation between the Church and the State”.

Setting out his views in a lengthy document, he said that all civil servants, including teachers, judges and police officers, should be banned from wearing any overtly religious symbol at work and that the ban should also apply to state schools. As in France, the ban would apply not just to Islamic veils but to Jewish yarmulkes and the wearing of large crucifixes.

Explaining his thinking in the Belgian newspaper De Morgan, Mr Dewael wrote: “The Government should remain neutral . . . so there should be no visible use of religious symbols or veils for police officers, judges, clerks or teachers in public schools. It is also clear that students in public schools should not wear veils or other religious symbols.”

The proposed ban has split the Belgian coalition Government, however. Maria Arena, the Social Integration Minister, accused Mr Dewael of “electioneering” before this year’s regional and European polls. “When high-ranking ministers make such radical and aggressive comments without taking the time to consult widely, the result is very dangerous for social cohesion,” she said.

Opposition parties also denounced the proposed ban, apart from the anti-immigration Vlaams Blok party.

A ban on the hijab is already spreading piecemeal among Belgian schools and other state institutions, which have the legal right to set their own dresscodes. When the Athenée Royal High School in Brussels, which has a high number of immigrant pupils, introduced a ban recently, Francis Lees, the school’s administrator, said: “We have changed our rules to forbid the wearing of headscarves because the situation was no longer tenable. Some pupils have since left the school, but we have been able to break out of our ghetto.”

Islamic groups in Belgium have combined forces to condemn the attempt to copy the French ban. In a joint communiqué, 15 groups, including the Imam League and the Association of Parents of Muslim Children, argued that for many Muslim women wearing a veil was a “divine obligation”.

The statement said that a ban on headscarves and veils “would deprive Muslim citizens of the pleasure of exercising their civic rights”.

Supporters say that the veil is already banned in schools in Tunisia and Turkey, both Muslim countries.

Last week a Belgian court ruled that a Muslim woman was allowed to be photographed for her identity card wearing a veil, saying that she had the right to appear in the photograph as she usually does in real life.

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