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German State Plans Hijab Ban for Teachers
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A library photo of a hijab-clad teacher at a German school.
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BERLIN,
August 31, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Female
Muslim teachers in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia will be
banned from wearing hijab at schools from next summer, according to a
German press report.
Officials
in the State told Wednesday's edition of the Westdeutsche
Allgemeine Zeitung that the hijab ban would take effect
from August 2006, Reuters reported.
"Female
and male teachers are not allowed to express any world views or any
religious beliefs, which could disturb or endanger the peace at
school," North Rhine-Westphalia schools minister Barbara Sommer
said.
"That's
why we want to forbid (female) Muslim teachers at state schools from
wearing headscarves."
State
officials maintained that the decision would be probed with the Muslim
groups in the state.
They
denied that the hijab ban was targeting religious beliefs of the
Muslim minority.
Germany's
constitution obliges the states to maintain strict religious
neutrality but it does not enshrine a formal separation of church and
state.
Islam
comes third in Germany after Protestant and Catholic Christianity.
There
are some 3.4 million Muslims in the country, including 220,000 in
Berlin, and Turks make up an estimated two thirds of the Muslim
minority.
Controversy
The
hijab ban in schools has been a controversial issue in Germany for
several years.
The
superior administrative court of Bremen ruled Monday, August 29, to
ban a Muslim teacher from teaching in schools for her refusal to take
off her hijab.
Germany's
highest tribunal, the constitutional court, ruled in 2003 that Baden-Wuerttemberg
was
wrong to forbid a Muslim teacher from wearing hijab in
the classroom.
But
it said Germany's 16 regional states could issue new legislations to
ban it if they believe hijab would influence children.
The
states of Hamburg, Mechlenburg-Vorpommern, Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt and
Thuringen still allow teachers to wear hijab.
The
state of Hessen also made amendments to its school laws, banning
teachers from wearing any symbols of religious or political nature
while allowing them a limited right to put on Christian or western
symbols.
In
Bavaria, laws were enforced in 2004 banning teachers from wearing
religious symbols that are not harmonious with Christian cultural
values.
The
state of Brandenburg made the same amendments in 2003.
Islam
sees hijab as an
obligatory code of dress, not a religious symbol
displaying one’s affiliations – unlike the symbolic Christian
crucifixes or Jewish Kappas.
France
spearheaded anti-hijab European countries with its lower house of
parliament adopting the controversial bill on February 10 last year
with an overwhelming majority.
The
text, put forward by President Jacques Chirac's ruling center-right
Union for a Popular Majority (UMP) party and supported by the
left-wing opposition Socialists, was adopted by a vote of 494 to 36.
Shortly
afterwards, other European countries followed the French lead.
The
French ban, described by international rights watchdogs as amounting
to religious discrimination, prompted demonstrations across Europe.
International
figures also stood behind the Muslim right, including London Mayor Ken
Livingstone, who said Paris’s move is an “anti-Muslim measure”
and accused Chirac plays a “terribly, terribly dangerous game.”
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