STOCKHOLM, Nov 2: Sweden's outspoken new integration minister contributed to a growing debate in Europe about Islamic veils on Thursday, saying headscarves had the effect of `isolating’ Muslim schoolgirls.

Nyamko Sabuni also told Reuters in an interview she was closely watching the outcome of a dispute over a school that barred a nine-year-old from wearing a headscarf.

“Where in the Muslim scripture does it say that children shall wear a headscarf? Nowhere. The purpose of a headscarf is for a woman to hide her charms from men whom she could marry,” said Sabuni, who fled to Sweden from Burundi when she was 12.

“The headscarf is a means of isolating the girl from her surroundings,” she said.

Sabuni, 37, became Sweden's first black cabinet minister following September elections that brought a centre-right government to power after 12 years of Social Democratic rule.

Sabuni, who is not herself a Muslim but comes from a Muslim family, must reconcile integration ideas she has proposed in the past to parliament with the new government's milder policies.—Reuters