THE HAGUE, 14/06/07 - The municipality of Diemen may not freeze the welfare benefit of a Muslim woman who wears clothing that covers her entirely. She cannot be asked to remove her burqa to improve her chance of getting a job. Nor is she required to accept work that is contrary to the Koran, according to a ruling by an Amsterdam court.

The woman started wearing the burqa in the summer of 2005, and decided to apply for benefit a year later. In March, the Diemen local authority stopped the benefit payment for three months because of "culpable actions" by the woman that formed an obstruction to finding work.

The woman applied for work at call centre company Telfort, the Bedrijven Vereniging Amsterdam Zuidoost and at Aurora, a telework centre. All three rejected her because the burqa represented a safety risk, gave insufficient scope for normal communication and for other practical reasons.

The court judged that it was not the woman's fault that she was rejected. Also, it would be "disproportional" for the local authority to insist that she should remove the burqa to improve her chances of finding a job. In the verdict, the court took into account the fact that the chances of the woman finding suitable work were by no means exhausted.

The Muslim woman was offered a job at call centre Annie Connect, selling lottery tickets by phone. But she justifiably refused this, said the judges. Although every welfare benefit recipient is obliged by law to agree to generally accepted work, it is "a generally known fact that Muslims are not allowed to gamble", the court stated. The job at Annie Connect was therefore not generally accepted work.