The request of a trainee doctor practicing at the Saint-Denis hospital center, fired in February 2014 because his beard was deemed “religiously ostentatious,” was rejected by the Administrative Appeal Court of Versailles in a decision issued December 19th. The court ruled that “growing a beard, even a long one, cannot alone constitute a sign of…
A student of a French high school was threatened with expulsion after he refused to comply with the headmaster’s demand to shave his beard, which the headmaster considered a “sign of radicalization.” “You cut it or you leave,” the headmaster reportedly told the student. The head teacher also reportedly claimed that the student’s beard is…
Prime Minister Valls said France, which is home to around five million Muslims, needs to forge a new rapport with Islam. “We need to reset and invent a new relationship with Islam in France,” Valls said. The PM has long wanted to help nurture a more French version of Islam, without extremists elements and said…
The department’s no-beard policy, as it is known, is at the center of a federal class-action lawsuit filed on Wednesday on behalf of a Muslim police officer who says he was suspended during the fasting month of Ramadan for refusing to shave his one-inch beard. The lawsuit, brought by Masood Syed, 32, aims to force…
PRESS RELEASE: “The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today applauded a unanimous ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that a Muslim inmate in Arkansas be permitted to grow a beard in accordance with his religious beliefs. That decision overturned a state prison policy banning beards. The…
