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France Says Anti-Veil Law Success, Muslims Complain Tue Mar 15, 2005 11:55 AM ET By Tom Heneghan PARIS (Reuters) - A senior official declared France's law against Muslim headscarves in schools a success on Tuesday, one year after the bill was passed, while a pro-veil group said the new line had claimed what it called 806 victims. Hanifa Cherifi, inspector general at the Education Ministry, said the law had eased tensions at state schools and reconfirmed the separation of church and state as an essential rule. After the stormy debate over the law, France now understood its Muslim population better...

Second expulsion for veiled schoolgirl in France STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - A Muslim girl who refuses to remove her headscarf was expelled Tuesday from French state schools for the second time in six months, education authorities said. Hilal, a 12-year-old of Turkish origin, was shut out of a school in the eastern town of Thann in November for refusing to uncover her hair. Another school there took her in on condition that she wear a bandana instead of the full headscarf. "The agreement was never clearly put into practice, despite the contacts the principal had with her and her parents,"...

Muslim group questions denial of visa over head scarf HOUSTON (AP) - The Houston office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations challenged France's denial of a visa to a Bangladeshi Muslim woman because she refused to remove her head scarf to have her photograph taken. On Monday the woman reported that she was unable to attend a business conference in Paris over the weekend because the French Consulate in Houston wouldn't let her wear her Islamic head scarf in her visa photograph. "This policy would in effect ban any Muslim woman who wears Islamic attire from entering France for any...

PARIS: France tightened up proposed guidelines for a ban of religious headwear in state schools yesterday after teachers complained an earlier draft was too vague and filled with potential loopholes. France last month passed a controversial ban on headscarves, skullcaps and large Christian crosses in a bid to keep tensions between its large Muslim and Jewish populations out of schools. The guidelines were aimed helping schools enforce the ban. The new, shorter draft by Education Minister Francois Fillon includes a revised clause forbidding pupils from citing religious grounds for refusing to remove an item of headwear. It also scraps an...

ELEANOR HALL: In Turkey, Islamic human rights groups are increasing the pressure on the Government to overturn a ban on headscarves. Despite Turkey's majority Muslim population, the Government has banned headscarves in schools, universities, public offices, and from Government functions. Many argue that the headscarf is a symbol of radical Islam, and a threat to Ataturk's legacy of secular statehood. But others say some Muslim women are being barred from an education or from working as public servants because of their faith. This report from our Middle East Correspondent Mark Willacy in Istanbul. MARK WILLACY: Squeezed uncomfortably between Europe and...

HANOVER, 29 April 2004 — Lower Saxony became the second German state to ban Muslim public school teachers from wearing headscarves after regional deputies voted in a new law to that effect yesterday. The state Parliament dominated by a coalition of the conservative Christian Democratic Union and the liberal Free Democrats pushed through the vote, with support from the Social Democrat opposition. On April 1, the legislature in the southern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg voted almost unanimously for a similar law, which goes into effect this month. Germany’s highest tribunal, the constitutional court, ruled in September that Baden-Wuerttemberg was wrong to...

France Tries to Clarify Head Scarves Law Wednesday April 21, 2004 8:31 PM By ELAINE GANLEY Associated Press Writer PARIS (AP) - A law banning Islamic headscarves in French public schools could add bandanas, seen by some Muslims as a substitute for a full head covering, to the black list of forbidden dress. Or maybe not. A document on implementing the law, made public Wednesday by the Education Ministry, is so imprecise that one leading French daily, Le Figaro, wrote that bandanas would be forbidden while another, Le Monde, said that bandanas might be acceptable. ``The situation risks becoming worse...

Among the issues dividing Europe and its Muslim communities, the headscarf, or hijab, is perhaps the most controversial. In Germany, Muslim teachers are fighting for their right to wear headscarves to class. Having spent the last 15 years of her life wearing the Muslim hijab, teaching student Emine Oztürk can’t imagine taking it off in public, even for just one minute. But that’s exactly what Oztürk might have to do if she ever wants to get a job in a Berlin public school. “It’s part of my identity,” said the 25-year-old German of Turkish descent. “How can I lay my...