© Scanpix / Carina Johansen / ReutersMalika Bayan is seen in court during a trial of hairdresser Merete Hodne who refused Malika Bayan access to her hair salon because of wearing a hijab, in Sandnes, Norway September 8, 2016.
A discrimination case in a Norwegian court has sparked renewed debate over Islam's place in Western society, after a Muslim convert wins her case against a hairdresser who refused to serve her for wearing a hijab. The reaction to a court ruling in Rogaland county, southwest Norway, to award compensation to a Muslim woman who was refused service at a hairdresser's has brought tensions surrounding the country's Muslim minority back into the spotlight.
On Monday,
Jæren District Court in Rogaland county, southwest Norway, found that hairdresser Merete Hodne "deliberately discriminated" against a Muslim woman, Malika Bayan, when the latter walked into her salon wearing a hijab. The court ordered that Hodne pay Bayan 10,000 kroner ($1,200) in compensation as well as court costs of 5,000 kroner ($750).
In October 2015, 24-year-old Bayan and a friend walked into Hodne's salon in the town of Bryne, where she asked how much it would cost to dye her hair.
Hodne, 47, refused and advised Bayan, an ethnic Norwegian Muslim convert, to look elsewhere as she "didn't accept"customers like her. When the case originally went to court, Hodne refused to pay the 8,000 kroner fine, claiming that seeing women in hijabs gave her anxiety.
'What can I say? I get freaked out by the hijab," the Fædrelandsvennen newspaper quoted her as saying during her testimony. "I know that not all Muslims are violent, but before one gets to know them, one can never know."
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