1 - 2004

Religious diversity in Germany

Tough Stuff

The debate over the Muslim head scarf

by F.K., Süddeutsche Zeitung

Some don’t want to "give fundamentalism a chance” (such as the State of Berlin’s Minister of Internal Affairs, Social Democrat Ehrhart Körting, and the women rights campaigner Alice Schwar-zer). Others, such as 70 prominent women from the "no law on the head scarf” initiative, protest against making Islam equivalent to fundamentalism.

While conservative Christian Unionists are discovering the rights of oppressed women, communists in Berlin are fighting on the front lines of religious freedom. But even here, fronts are crumbling: the Muslim politician of the PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism), a MP from Berlin, Evrim Baba, smells a "symbol of a political struggle” in the head scarf.

The dispute over the Muslim head scarf is dividing our nation. Should the government be allowed to forbid its teachers to wear a piece of cloth? If it does, must it then also forbid the wearing of a cross on a gold chain, or a star of David? The Constitutional Court has judged that the states (Länder) must decide for themselves how best to protect the state’s duty to remain neutral and the "negative religious freedom” of schoolchildren. The states of Hesse, Lower Saxony, Bavaria and Baden-Wuerttemberg have already taken their juridical stands against this piece of cloth.

Three more, Berlin, Brandenburg and the Saarland, are still struggling for appropriate wordings. The first laws to be drafted are already arousing the ire of critics, who say it is not state neutrality in matters of faith they are defending, but rather the privileges of Christianity. For example, in Baden-Wuerttemberg the head scarf is banned from classrooms, but teaching nuns may still wear their habit, because "the representation of Christian cultural values” is in tune with "the state’s constitutional educational task”.

The "free state” of Bavaria, as Monika Hohlmeier clarifies, its Christian Unionist Minister of Education and Culture, regards it as its task, to ban only those symbols "which are opposed to Bavarian constitutional values”; schools are allowed to take their "religious roots” into account. Constitutional rights experts warn that the Constitutional High Court in Karlsruhe will topple these laws right away, as contrary to the principle of equality.

This editorial appeared in the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper on 2nd of February 2004.