BERLIN, 2 January 2004 — An appeal by German President Johannes Rau for Islamic headscarves to receive equal treatment with symbols of other faiths such as Christianity or Judaism has prompted fury from Roman Catholic politicians and clerics.
Speaking on television on Sunday, Rau appealed for all religions to be treated equally in schools. “State schools must respect each and everyone, whether Christian or pagan, agnostic, Muslim or Jew,” he said:
“If the headscarf is an expression of religious faith, a dress with a missionary character, then that should apply equally to a monk’s habit or a crucifix.”
If headscarves are forbidden in German schools, then so should other outward religious symbols, he argued. This caused an outraged response from Edmund Stoiber, Bavarian state prime minister and head of the ultra-conservative Christian Social Union, the Bavarian wing of the Christian Democratic Union, Germany’s main opposition in Parliament in Berlin.
Rau has no right to “cast doubt on our national identity, distinguished by the Christian religion,” he said. He described Islamic headscarves in schools as “a political symbol is incompatible with our democracy.”
Bavaria has been preparing its own regional legislation banning the wearing of Islamic headscarves by teachers while crucifixes continue to adorn the classrooms of the strongly Catholic southern German state.
The southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, dominated by the Christian Democrats, likewise wants to ban teachers from wearing headscarves while continuing to permit the wearing of Christian or Jewish religious symbols.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the German prelate who heads the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, likewise criticized what he called the “strange doctrine” of President Rau, himself a devout Protestant believer.
“I will not forbid any Muslim to wear a headscarf, but still less do we accept a ban on wearing the crucifix,” he said in a Christmas Eve sermon.
Following the counter-attacks, Rau reiterated Tuesday he had not come out either for or against the wearing of Islamic headscarves in schools, but had simply appealed for equal treatment of all religions.
Rau, a Social Democrat like Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, has been supported in his views by the environmentalist Green Party, junior partners in Schroeder’s left-of-center government coalition.
Schroeder himself said in an interview last Sunday he was opposed to public servants wearing Islamic headscarves but was not against students wearing them in schools.
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 have drawn up legislation and plan to put a ban in place.
The issue has also 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 came out in favor of a ban on Islamic headscarves in schools.
