BERLIN, 22 December 2003 — German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is opposed to public servants wearing Islamic headscarves but is not against students wearing them in schools, he said in an interview published yesterday.
“My position is clear: headscarves have no place in the public service, and that includes teachers. However I would not stop a young girl from going to school with a headscarf,” he told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.
“Germany is a secular state influenced by three great traditions; Greco-Roman philosophy, Judeo-Christian religion and the heritage of the Enlightenment,” he said.
Germany’s highest tribunal, the federal constitutional court, ruled in September that the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg was wrong to forbid a Muslim female teacher from wearing a headscarf in the classroom.
But the court specifically said individual states could legislate to ban religious apparel if it were deemed to unduly influence children. Since then, Baden-Wuerttemberg and neighboring Bavaria, both run by the Christian Union alliance parties, have drawn up legislation and plan to put a ban in place. The issue has been a hot topic of debate in France. Ignoring warnings that it would alienate France’s five-million-strong Muslim minority, French President Jacques Chirac on Wednesday came out in favor of a ban on Islamic headscarves in schools. He said he wanted it written into law by the start of the next academic year. “The Islamic veil — whatever name we give it — the kippa and a cross that is of plainly excessive dimensions: these have no place in the precincts of state schools. State schools will remain secular,” he said.
