THAT MOSLEM BABUSHKA.

In Belgium, it's apparently a prohibited political statement.

Hadija Amajoud, who has taught at a provincial special education school in Assenede since 2022, was wearing a headscarf when she began working at the school, accoridng to local broadcaster VRT as cited by Anadolu Agency.

A disciplinary procedure was launched after Amajoud made clear that she did not intend to remove her headscarf while teaching.

The ACOD trade union said it intends to challenge the dismissal before the Chamber of Appeal in Brussels, saying that the case could establish an important precedent concerning religious freedom and neutrality in education.

Amajoud questioned how far an employer can go in restricting a teacher's personal freedom and described the provincial administration's interpretation of neutrality as "purely political."

"Actually, no one is neutral. Every teacher stands in front of a class with his or her own convictions," she said.

Margaret "University Diaries" Soltan objects to that very postmodern "his or her own convictions."

In free societies, teachers strive to keep their convictions away from the front of the class, so that liberal, exploratory discourse can prevail.

This woman – who has lost her teaching job because she refuses to take off her hijab while in front of a room of students in Belgium – thinks God commands her to express her religious convictions, and model female modesty, at all times. Her conviction of this is so intense that she – unlike many Muslim women – would never think of removing her scarf for the duration of her classes. She would rather ruin her life than follow the law on this. The law is secular, and in this instance that doesn’t count.

That might say more about life in an industrialized tribal society, which is what Belgium is, as distinct from a free republic in which tribe is secondary.  That Moslem babushka might, to European eyes, be a symbol either of the submission of women under the submission that is Islam, or of the hopes of Islam to conquer Europe.

But for the name of all that is holy, we are talking about a teacher in a special education class.  We are not contemplating a judge of Jewish extraction who covers himself, or a traffic cop with a crucifix, and in These United States, none of these ought to be (perhaps on rare occasion it is) grounds for a civil rights suit.

The professor's question about another school setting is also a chance to defend classical liberalism.  "How free would a budding feminist in a middle school feel to talk about cultures that hide women under hijabs and heavy robes, and call for sex-restricted swimming and other forms of gender separation?"  There might be more polite ways to frame that question.  There might be more peer pressure on that budding feminist to not be weird.  There might also be opportunities for that teacher in a babushka to question some of what she had been taught, and there's a good chance any of her own children, should such children exist, rebel against mom's old country ways.