Posted on 12/23/2003 9:41:26 AM PST by knighthawk
The German Chancellor wants to bar Muslim teachers from wearing headscarves in public schools
FRANKFURT - Less than a week after French President Jacques Chirac announced plans to ban religious symbols from public schools, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has said that headscarves have 'no place' among public school teachers.
Unlike Mr Chirac, however, Mr Schroeder said he could not prevent Muslim school girls from covering their heads in the classroom.
Debate over whether to ban Muslim teachers from wearing headscarves has occupied Germany since the nation's highest court ruled in September that teachers were allowed to wear them, unless states pass new laws specifically forbidding it.
German pupils would not be affected by the new laws, which only apply to employees of the state.
'Headscarves have no place among civil servants, including teachers,' Mr Schroeder told the Bild am Sonntag weekly. 'But I cannot prevent schoolgirls from wearing headscarves in class.'
Mr Schroeder had not previously commented on the issue, but his statement reminded the nation's 16 state legislatures that Germany's status as a secular state should preclude civil servants displaying religious symbols while on the job.
So far, only the conservative southern states of Bavaria and Baden-Wuerttemberg have started working on Bills that would ban teachers from wearing headscarves.
But the legislation would not apply to the display of Christian or Jewish symbols, which goes against the Sept 24 Federal Constitutional Court ruling that the new laws must treat all religions equally.
Mr Chirac's proposal, on the other hand, would ban all conspicuous religious symbols, including Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses, from the classroom.
It came after months of debate about mainly Roman Catholic France's struggle to hold together its multiracial, multicultural, but often poorly integrated society after waves of immigration from North Africa and elsewhere.
Thousands of French Muslims - many of them women wearing headscarves of various styles and colours - marched through the rain-drenched streets of Paris on Sunday in the first large show of opposition to the proposed law.
Many of the women carried signs reading 'Don't Touch My Veil!' and 'I vote,' a reminder to France's political leadership that the country's estimated five to seven million Muslims could constitute a formidable voting bloc, with regional elections coming in March.
Some of the rally leaders said the march was organised by two high-school girls from Seine-Saint-Denis, an area near Paris with a large Muslim and immigrant population.
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I believe the way the EU Court works is this: they ask France and Germany how the decision should go. Socialists are not big on written law and court precedence. From the time of the French Revolution, the Socialists have based "official decisions" on what the Big Dogs want. THAT's what egalitarianism is all about.
They represent only that those wearing them are adhering to their particular sect's interpretation of their holy book. To require them to remove the scarves, which pose no immediate danger to anyone, would restrict their freedom of religion. To deny them jobs as teachers because they wear these scarves would be to deny them rights of citizens because of religious belief.
" No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon." (Luke 16:13)
Most likely what's stated in the curriculum. There's not much room for deviance from the standard in the German educational system.
It is fun now to watch them reap the results of earlier having pushed for higher European-level powers.
Not exactly true. Schroeder has defeated one other foe...a hairdresser who accused him of dying his hair. Via a law suit.
No joke.
More Sculptures in Marble for that European Squeezed Feeling.
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