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German court strikes down headscarf ban in schools


Melech

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Melech

 

"Germany’s constitutional court has ruled that bans on teachers wearing the Muslim headscarf — in force in half of Germany’s 16 federal states — are unconstitutional.

The ruling on Friday marks a shift from the court’s previous stance, which allowed German states to pass regional laws on the balance between religious freedom and state neutrality.

The judges in Karlsruhe said that blanket bans on the headscarf, or other religiously mandated clothing, violated the constitutional right to religious freedom.

The legal challenge was brought by a Muslim teacher in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, who lost her job over the ban, and a classroom social worker in the same state, who received an official warning.

Teachers are banned from wearing Muslim headscarves in six out of 16 German federal states. Two more states, Berlin and Hesse, extend the ban on wearing religious symbols to all public servants.

North-Rhine-Westphalia’s law includes an exemption for “Christian or Occidental” religious symbols, which allows Christians to wear crucifixes and observant Jews to wear skullcaps.

The German court said on Friday that the exemption in North Rhine-Westphalia could not be justified by the constitution as it discriminated against believers who are not Christians or Jews.

However, the judges said that bans on religious symbols could still be imposed on the grounds of a “concrete danger, or the disturbance of school peace”.

The risk would have to derive from a significant number of cases, and a ban could not be imposed on an individual but only on an entire school or school district, the court ruled.

Nurhan Soykan, general secretary of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, said in statement that the ruling was “very gratifying”.

Nurhan Soykan, general secretary of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany

Ms Soykan said: “This recognises the reality of life for Muslim women in Germany and allows them to participate as equal citizens in the life of society.”

Across Europe, Muslim women’s clothing has been a lightning rod for disputes over secularism.

France banned conspicuous religious symbols from state schools in 2004, and banned the wearing of full-face veils in public places in 2010. Belgium has also proscribed the burka or niqab in public.

There are around 4m Muslims in Germany, chiefly of Turkish extraction. Disquiet over the role of Islam has become a familiar theme in Germany.

In 2010, Thilo Sarrazin’s book Deutschland Schafft Sich Ab — “Germany is abolishing itself” — topped the non-fiction bestseller list with the thesis that Muslim migration was eroding the country’s identity. 

This discontent has begun to find a political outlet. There have been vast “anti-Islamisation” protests by the Pegida movement in Dresden in recent months, while the euro-sceptic party Alternative für Deutschland has made the construction of mosques with minarets a campaign issue.

However, the German chancellor Angela Merkel has affirmed that “Islam belongs in Germany”, and in many German cities Pegida rallies are regularly dwarfed by counter-demonstrations."

 

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/bba9ff90-c96e-11e4-b2ef-00144feab7de.html#axzz3UdZjIiVT

 

:applause:

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It would be ridiculous :smh: 

If you see me posting like crazy, I'm either bored or procrastinating.
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Melech

Why was it banned in the first place? :smh: 

​Because some old ass politicians think that teachers only should be allowed to wear things of the "german religions" (Christianity and Judaism). But they seem to forget that Islam is also a religion of Germany :smh: 

 

Though I favor a complete ban of religious things in school. 

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