Headscarves – Oppression or freedom of choice?

The review of religions (September 2003 , Vol.98,No9)

In September of this year, a German court ruled that a school in the southern state of Baden Wuttemberg was wrong under current legislation to exclude a female teacher for insisting on wearing a headscarf to work. The teacher in question is a Muslim. The school had argued that wearing the headscarf violated the state’s neutral stance in matters of religion. The teacher argued that the school was violating her freedom of religion.

The debate is not confined to Germany. In Turkey, Muslims are in the majority and the headscarf, is worn by more than half of Turkey’s women, Yet it is seen as a symbol of Islamic fundamentalism by the defenders of Turkey’s secularist state and is banned in government institutions and schools.

In France, secularity has been enshrined in the constitution since 1905. So one’s national identity has precedence over one’s religious belief. However in 1989, the then left-wing government declared that the wearing of scarves was not  necessarily incompatible with France being a secular state. The decision on whether to allow pupils to wear them or not had been left up to the discretion of head teachers.The new centre-right government, however, has said that it is prepared to pass a law banning all religious effects from the classroom.

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