Sydney mosque condemns One Nation’s school burqa ban

SYDNEY, Australia (MNTV) — Leaders of one of Australia’s best-known mosques have accused the far-right politician Pauline Hanson of using Muslim schoolchildren as political targets, after her One Nation party announced a plan to ban the burqa in schools nationwide.

One Nation, a right-wing Australian party Hanson has led for decades, said this week that it would bar pupils from wearing the burqa — a garment covering the head and body — along with the niqab, a full-face covering, at all schools, including Islamic and private ones, according to the Daily Mail. The party said teachers and classmates should be able to see students’ faces.

The Lebanese Muslim Association (LMA), which runs Australia’s largest mosque, in the Sydney suburb of Lakemba, rejected the proposal outright. “This is not an education policy. It is another attempt to single out Muslims and turn a tiny minority into a political issue,” it said in a statement. “How many students actually wear the niqab? How many teachers have said that they cannot teach without it? Where is the problem that requires a national ban?”

The association said schools could manage any identification or safety questions on their own. “We do not need politicians policing the clothing of Muslim girls,” it said, adding that only a small minority of Muslim students in Australia wear a full-face covering.

“Pauline Hanson has spent decades putting Muslim Australians at the centre of political controversy. Our children should be off-limits,” the statement said. “Stop manufacturing problems where they do not exist. Stop using Muslim students as punching bags. And leave Australian Muslim students alone. They are Australian children. They belong here just as much as anyone else.”