… talks about a professor at the University of Tromsø (the best Northern Lights YouTubes are from Tromsø) who has banned niqabs from his classrooms.

[The professor] quoted a parliamentary decision “that says a teacher may request to see the face of those who are taught. This is to do with covering the face, not hats or religious symbols.” [Okay, so he’s within his rights.]

The niqab covers a woman’s face apart from the eyes, and is most commonly worn in Arabian peninsula Arabic countries such as the UAE (United Arab Emirates), Oman, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia.

Whilst France introduced a ban on niqabs last year, Norway’s far-right Progress Party (FrP) has also suggested penalising women who wear these and burkas in public. [So only Norwegian reactionaries think this would be a good idea?]

Labour Party (Ap) deputy leader Helga Pedersen stated, “I’m against burkas and niqabs. We don’t want a society where people are concealed from top to toe.” [Ah. At least one Labor politician agrees.]

Professor Aarsæther’s policy has been greeted with a mixture of both conditional support and discouragement.

Senior Tromsø police station officer Morten Pettersen told Nordlys it is legal to wear niqabs in public but not during demonstrations, parades and the like. [And what of the parliamentary decision the professor cites?]

Leader of Tromsø’s Muslim community Alnor, Sandra Maryam Moe, finds it “disappointing that he [the professor] chooses to exclude someone for wearing a niqab. This is neither about a disciplinary, nor a behavioural problem.” [No – it is about a pedagogical problem. Like many people, he has serious difficulty interacting with a person whose face he can’t see.]

“I hope this is just a storm in a teacup. Norway is an open and inclusive country. One should accept the people who use the niqab here because they are so few in number, as well as let them make use of the opportunities they have in our society,” she said to NRK, doubting the lecturer’s claim that the niqab creates problems with student-teacher communication. [One of the opportunities women have in Norwegian society – as opposed to Saudi society – is that they can live a normal human life, on an equal footing with men. As a Norwegian, one should not accept the grotesque inhumanity of the burqa, even if its wearers are few in number.]

Government education officials [say] such a move is neutral and non-discriminatory, but Ole Petter Ottersen, Rector of the University of Oslo says they have no power to stop niqab-wearing students from attending lectures. [So which is it? Do professors have a right to see their students’ faces or not?]