Islamophobia: Hijab-Wearing Muslim Doesn’t Get Hairdressing Job

Was this whole thing an attempt to shake down the infidels? The Islamization of Europe is proceeding apace, and amid all the crime sprees, mass rapes, random jihad attacks, intimidation, threats, and boasts of imminent takeover, there is also a touch of the absurd. How could there not be? When has a civilization ever committed suicide before? The whole situation is absurd, so why shouldn’t there be a few absurd incidents?

The German-language publication Unzensuriert reported Monday that “Vienna-based business owner Peter Schaider is facing preliminary proceedings before an administrative tribunal,” and the accusation against him is weighty: It seems that he rejected “an applicant for an apprenticeship in the hairdressing trade,” and “the case stems from allegations of discrimination, as the rejection was based on the applicant’s decision to wear a headscarf.”

That’s right. A Muslim woman wearing a hijab applied to be a hairdresser, was turned down, and is now claiming that she was discriminated against. Her target in this absurd shakedown attempt, the hairdresser Schaider, is just as confused as everyone else: He “expressed bewilderment regarding the legal scrutiny of the matter. He emphasized that the hairdressing profession is defined, above all, by the presentation of hairstyles: ‘I was told this constitutes discrimination. But our business is built on styling, beauty, and hair fashion. You can’t have people standing there wearing a headscarf. I’m sorry, but that just doesn’t work.’”

That’s right, it doesn’t, any more than it would work to have a fat person giving dieting instruction, as Schaider himself noted: “In his view, personal appearance plays a crucial role in establishing credibility when selling hairdressing services: ‘We sell hair accessories. You wouldn’t expect someone weighing 130 kilos to sell weight-loss products, would you? That simply doesn’t work.’” Ah, but anything works nowadays if it advances the impression that Muslims are the poor, terrified victims of a relentless, remorseless “Islamophobia.” Portraying oneself as a victim so as to gain the special protections and freedom from scrutiny that victim status offers — it’s a growth industry.

Boston’s public radio station, WGBH, claimed last September that “Muslim community leaders say women who wear hijab often experience an especially high rate of harassment because their Islamic faith is more visible in public.”

We hear that asserted all the time, but there are never any specific incidents described. Why not? Here are some incidents: An eleven-year-old girl in Toronto made international headlines with her claim that a man had followed her and cut her hijab with scissors. After an investigation, police concluded that the attack never happened. Likewise, Yasmin Seweid, a Muslim teen, claimed in December 2016 that Trump supporters on a New York subway tore off her hijab and no one in the packed subway car helped her. She, too, gained international media attention, and she, too, made up the whole thing. Shortly before that, a hijab-wearing Muslim student at San Diego State University also falsely claimed that she was assaulted by Trump supporters.

In July 2017, a Muslim in Britain falsely claimed that a man had pulled off her hijab in a “race hate attack.” In November 2016, a University of Michigan Muslim student claimed she was “accosted by a white man who told her to remove her hijab or he would set her ablaze with a cigarette lighter.” She also fabricated the whole event.

Now, Peter Schaider over in Vienna isn’t being accused of a “hate crime,” but simply of employment discrimination. Yet the plaintiff in the case against him is as ridiculous as would be a Muslim who claimed employment discrimination for not being hired as a clerk in a liquor store. The owner of such a store might not want a clerk who thinks that drinking alcohol will send you to hell, but as Schaider’s case demonstrates, in Europe and North America today, we aren’t allowed to have common sense.

Peter Schaider should have looked at the hijab-wearing woman who wanted a job in his hairdressing salon and realized that she wasn’t just a job applicant. She was a sign of the times. And he was expected to capitulate to the absurd demand she was making, to be employed as a hairdresser though she kept her own hair covered, for fear of charges of “Islamophobia.” It’s increasingly clear that if the West wants to survive as the home of free societies, it’s going to have to reject the “Islamophobia” narrative and repudiate the “Islamophobia” industry. But that is not on the horizon.