Muslim shopkeeper who only allowed women to enter his store on weekends is forced to close his business after sexism outcry

From the French edition of The Local and the Daily Mail

“Sisters on Saturdays and Sundays only.” A Muslim shopkeeper’s sexist opening hours falls foul of the law in France.

A Muslim shopkeeper has been fined €500 ($560) for ordering different opening hours for men and women at his store in the French city of Bordeaux, his lawyer said Tuesday. Michalon quickly abandoned the plan after facing a groundswell of negative reaction and his shop has since closed its doors.

Speaking at the time, Michalon said: ‘We put this in place at the request of the sisters who preferred when my wife was behind the counter. It is a shop where we sell clothes.’

Bordeaux Mayor Alain Juppé called out on Twitter for “an end to such a discriminatory practice”. Naima Charai, the head of French equality group ACSE, tweeted her disdain too, saying that gendered opening hours are “unimaginable and unacceptable… Respect for the republic should be seven days a week,” she wrote

Bordeaux’s chief Imam Tareq Oubrou (said) “We never saw this during the time of the Prophet. Markets were mixed. It seems a bit strange to me in a world where social mixing is an established culture,”