16 August 2018•Update: 16 August 2018
STOCKHOLM
A Muslim woman will get 40,000 Swedish ($4,366) in damages from a company that discriminated against her faith-based choices during a job interview, a Swedish court ruled late Wednesday.
Farah Alhajeh’s job interview in Uppsala, eastern Sweden was when she did not shake hands with the interviewer due to her religious beliefs, but instead chose to bow her head, according to a statement by Sweden’s equality ombudsman.
reported her case to the ombudsman, which took it over.
“The money was never important. That doesn’t matter at all. The important thing for me was that I was right,” Alhajeh said, according to Swedish state television SVT.
“I hope I can give hope to other Muslims who go through the same thing and feel there’s no point in going on with it,” she added.
“For the first time, we have a case on a handshake,” said Clas Lundstedt, the ombudsman's press spokesman.
The company, for its part, claims that greetings other than handshakes are unacceptable. Faith-based greetings discriminate between sexes, are offensive, and can lead to workplace conflict, it claimed.
Reporting by Atila Altuntas; Writing by Kubra Chohan
