The European Court of Human Rights has ruled against a Muslim woman who claimed that workplace rules forcing her to remove her headscarf amounted to discrimination. The ruling upholds France’s ban on religious symbols in the workplace, which judges said did not violate freedom of religion. The case was brought by Muslim social worker Christiane Ebrahimian, who in 2000 was working at the psychiatric department of a hospital in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre, DW has reported. Ebrahimian repeatedly ignored requests to remove her headscarf despite numerous complaints from fellow members of staff and patients, causing the hospital not to renew her contract. She responded by taking them to court, eventually taking the case all the way to the Strasbourg-based high court. But judges hearing the case have ruled that the ban on religious symbols in the workplace did not violate freedom of religion as France’s constitution enshrines secularism and religious neutrality. They have insisted that religious freedom does not extend to the right to express religious views in the workplace. France banned “conspicuous” religious symbols, including headscarves, in 2004, leading to a huge rift with the Muslim community. In 2010, it also banned the wearing of a niqab and