First woman fined in Denmark for wearing full-face veil

From the Telegraph and the Danish edition of The Local.

A 28-year-old woman wearing a niqab on Friday became the first person in Denmark to be fined for violating a new controversial law banning full-face Islamic veils in public places, media reported.

Police were called to a shopping centre in Horsholm, in the northeastern region of Nordsjaelland, where the woman had become involved in a scuffle with another woman who had tried to tear her niqab off, police duty officer David Borchersen told the Ritzau news agency.

“During the fight her niqab came off, but by the time we arrived she had put it back on again,” Borchersen said.

Police took a photograph of the woman wearing the niqab, and obtained security camera footage from the shopping centre of the incident. The woman was informed she would receive a fine of 1,000 kroner (£119) in the post, and was told to either remove her veil or leave the public space. “She chose the latter,” Borchersen said.

The ban came in on Wednesday (1st August) but police didn’t arrest or have fined the faceless protestors in Copenhagen that day. 

Marching from Superkilen to the police station in Bellahøj, hundreds of protesters violated the ban by covering their faces. A spokesman for the Copenhagen police said they did not plan to fine the protesters, AFP reported on Wednesday.

“I refuse to take off my niqab because I refuse to bow down to oppression,” Sabina, a niqabi woman who was participating in the protest, told The Local. “I chose to wear niqab a couple years ago as a very spiritual choice. I did it for the sake of God and a way for me to connect with God. It is a part of my faith and a part of my identity,” Sabina said. “This ban is discriminating, oppressing and is built on Islamophobia,” the 21-year-old, who preferred not to disclose her full name, said.

Whining Muslima (her sign translates as Liberal hypocrisy) and liberal useful idiots in Nørrebro last week.

Hani Ali, another niqabi woman, told The Local that the ban would restrict her freedom of movement. “I am going to try to live my life as normally as I can. Of course, it is going be difficult, there are places that I cannot go to any more but I’ll just have to make a sacrifice for what I believe is true,” Ali said. “I will hope that we can change the climate or the narration of what a Muslim woman is and maybe they will change the law or subtract it someday,” It won’t restrict her movements at all; she should just remove the veil and operate according to the customs of the country in which she has chosen to live. 

After the government proposed the ban to the parliament in February, Justice Minister Søren Pape Poulsen said in a statement that the face veil is “incompatible with the values in Danish society and disrespectful to the community.”