European Shari'a Watch

Thu, Oct 2, 2003 at 4:53:55 pm PDT

Culture clash comes to a head. (Hat tip: someone.)

Germany's constitutional court has ruled that an Afghan-born woman can wear a traditional Muslim headscarf while teaching in a state school. It determined that education authorities in the southwestern city of Stuttgart had acted illegally by barring Fereshta Ludin, 31, from a teaching job because she insisted on wearing the scarf in the classroom.

In France, meanwhile, two teenage sisters have been suspended from school after insisting on attending class with their heads covered. The school says it is simply enforcing secular laws that ban all displays of religious faith in state schools and public buildings.

"The girls' argument that they have a right [to wear a headscarf] is incompatible with secularism and school rules," Education Ministry Inspector Jean-Charles Ringard said.

Alma and Lila Levy, whose mother is Muslim and whose father is a Jewish atheist, say they are simply demanding that two basic rights be respected.

"We are being asked to decide between our religion and our education; we want both," said Alma Levy, 16. Last week, some 80 of their classmates staged a march outside the school, carrying banners reading "Freedom for the veil", "No to discrimination," and "School for everyone". ...

In France, where there are between four and five million Muslims, secularism was enshrined in the constitution in 1905 and is actively promoted by the state. There are strict rules forbidding the display of any religious symbols in state schools. A constitutional ruling gives schools power to ban any religious symbol - headscarf, Jewish skullcap or Christian cross - worn as an "act of pressure, provocation, proselytism or propaganda."

The headscarf, or hijab as it is called in Arabic, has stirred controversy in France for more than a decade. It is one of the few things on which mainstream political parties, left and right, are united. Even though there are many private Catholic and Jewish schools in France, all parties are united in their belief that religion should be kept clearly out of state schools.

French feminists and left-wingers say the scarf is a token of servitude, a sign of submission to male dominance rather than to God, as devout Muslims claim it to be.