A 47 year-old hairdresser in Norway could face up to six months in prison for refusing to serve a Muslim client wearing a hijab in the country’s first case to go to court over the Islamic headdress.

Merete Hodne is being tried on religious discrimination charges for turning away Malika Bayan, who was clad in a hijab, from her hair salon in Byrne in south-western Norway last year.

Ms. Hodne is alleged to have told Ms. Bayan “she would have to find someplace else because she didn’t accept (clients) liker her.”

On her refusal to serve Ms. Bayan, she told judges, “I see it (the hijab) as a totalitarian symbol. When I see a hijab I don’t think of religion, but of totalitarian ideologies and regimes”.

She added, “a hijab is not religious, it’s political”.

Designated a former activist in the Islamophobic movement Pegida by Norwegian media, Ms. Hodne told a national news channel that the “hijab is a symbol” of what she called the “evil” Islamic “ideology” in the same way “the swastika is that of Nazism”.