Source / Credit: The Telegraph
By Jonathan Wynne-Jones, Religious Affairs Correspondent
7:30AM GMT 27 Nov 2011
A Christian worker has launched a landmark legal action after she lost her job when she blew the whistle on what she says was a campaign of “race hate” by fundmentalist Muslims.
Nohad Halawi, who worked at Heathrow Airport, is suing her former employers for unfair dismissal, claiming that she and other Christian staff at the airport were victims of systematic harassment because of their religion.
She claims that she was told that she would go to Hell for her religion, that Jews were responsible for the September 11th terror attacks, and that a friend was reduced to tears having been bullied for wearing a cross.
Mrs Halawi, who came to Britain from Lebanon in 1977, worked in the duty-free section as a perfume saleswoman of the airport for 13 years but was dismissed in July.
Her case is being supported by the Christian Legal Centre, who say it raises important legal issues and also questions over whether Muslims and Christians are treated differently by employers.
It comes amid growing concern among some Christians that their faith is being marginalised and follows calls from Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, for Christians to be given greater legal protection in the wake of a series of cases where they have been disciplined or dismissed for practising their faith. It also raises further questions over race relations at Heathrow Airport.
Last week, Arieh Zucker, a Jewish businessman, complained that he has been repeatedly singled out for full-body scans by Muslim security staff at the airport.
“This is supposed to be a Christian country, but the law seems to be on the side of the Muslims.”
A mother of two, she says that she had always got on well with her Muslim colleagues and relations between staff of different faiths had been good in the past, but that the atmosphere became increasingly uncomfortable with a growing number of employees espousing “fundamentalist Islam”.