Muslim teachers can wear head scarfs in school

STUTTGART, Germany — Germany’s highest court ruled Sept. 24 that a Muslim teacher cannot be prohibited from wearing a head scarf in a public school. The teacher, Fereshta Ludin, was denied a teaching job in 1998 in the southern city of Stuttgart because school officials said the head scarf — a religious requirement for Muslim women — would be a religious symbol in the classroom.

The Federal Constitutional Court ruled 5–3 that Ludin can wear the head scarf, or hijab, because there is no law that prohibits it. In August, the court ruled that Muslim shopworkers could not be fired for wearing head scarfs. “It is not the task of the local authorities and courts to decide such a question,” the court said, according to The New York Times. “It is the task of the legislator.”

After the ruling, government officials in Bavaria, Lower Saxony and Hesse said they would enact laws to prohibit the head scarfs. In France, a government commission is studying whether Muslim girls should be kept from wearing the scarfs.

Ludin, who was born in Afghanistan and is married to a German, has taught in a Muslim school since being turned down in the public school. She said she hopes to return soon. “For years in all the court cases, I felt stigmatized because I wear a head scarf,” she said, according to the Reuters news agency. “The decision is a big relief for me.”