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What Do You Know About Algeria’s Niqab Ban in the Workplace?

by in World on 29th October, 2018

Algerian Prime Minister, Ahmed Ouahiya has passed a ban on women wearing a ‘full face veil’ the niqab to work, earlier this month. The ban means laws have been implemented in the country’s public sector. This move had occurred as a result of the leaders’ instruction that the need for identification at work was necessary in a letter sent to ministers and regional governors. He wrote about the importance of the need for civil servants to, “observe the rules and requirements of security and communication within their department, which impose their systematic and permanent physical identification.”

 According to Al-Arabiya, the country has been plunged into a split between more radical, and moderate forms of Islam since the 1992 civil war “when a military-backed government cancelled elections that an Islamist party was poised to win.” In a statement released by the government titled, ‘The duties of employees and public servants in dress codes’.

The document states that women, “are obliged to respect the rules and requirements of security and communication which is at the level of their interests, and requires the recognition of their identity in an automatic and permanent manner, especially in the workplace.”

There is a list of rules to be followed strictly, detailing that any piece of clothing prohibiting them from carrying out public service, is prohibited. Which has caused controversy and global outrage since many cannot reconcile how niqab may obstruct women from doing their jobs. As some eluded to how the hijab ban during examinations for students in Algeria was justified because it can be used as a way to cheat. The UN has previously deemed France’s niqab ban a human rights abuse.

Most Algerian women are said to not wear the niqab, therefore this only affects a minority of Salafi Muslim women in Algeria.

Here is how the world reacted

Amaliah Team

Amaliah Team

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