Dutch want total ban on face veils around schools

A proposed ban on Islamic face veils in Dutch schools should apply to everyone including parents and other visitors, the Dutch education minister has written in a letter to parliament.

Minister Ronald Plasterk said the wearing of face-covering clothing was incompatible with the education process, because of the importance of non-verbal communication.

He said the ban should apply not only to teachers and pupils, but also to all other staff and anyone visiting schools and their grounds.

The Dutch government will impose a face veil ban on its civil servants and in schools, but has said that a blanket ban in the country is not legally possible.

The ban is set to apply to all schools but not to the higher education sector. A proposal for a law banning veils in schools should be ready by mid-2009, Plasterk wrote in the letter.

Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende has said traditional veils such as the niqab and burqa – as well as face covers such as ski masks – are incompatible with open society.

The wearing of headscarves in schools and at work is a sensitive topic across the European Union.

France, with Europe's largest Muslim minority, bans headscarves and other religious garb from state schools and Italy has a decades-old law against covering the face in public as an anti-terrorism measure.