Afghanistan-born Ludin speaks with reporters before the verdict

BERLIN, Germany, September 25 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Although Germany's constitutional court on Wednesday, September 24, quashed an earlier verdict by a lower court banning a Muslim teacher from wearing hijab in school, it authorized individual states to pass new laws to outlaw it.

In a long-awaited decision on freedom of expression and religious neutrality in public schools, the constitutional court overturned a ruling that the southern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg was justified in refusing to hire Muslim teacher Fereshta Ludin, who insisted on wearing hijab, reported Agence France Press(AFP).

The Afghanistan-born teacher, who became a German citizen in 1995, had fought her way to the highest tribunal to win the right to work in public schools while wearing her hijab.

Baden-Wuerttemberg had argued that a teacher with a hijab would allegedly violate "the strict neutrality of public schools in religious issues" and could have undue influence on impressionable young children.

The state education minister Annette Schaven claimed the hijab was political and "understood as a symbol of the exclusion of woman from civil and cultural society".

The German Constitutional Court has now ruled by five votes to three that, under current laws, Ludin can wear the hijab.

Marieluise Beck, the federal government's point woman on immigration, refugees and integration, had been a vocal supporter of Ludin's case.

"The headscarf worn by some Muslim women has long been considered normal in Germany," she said in a statement.

"In the debate on the Muslim headscarf, this piece of cloth is often a surface on which to project fears, anxieties and hasty generalizations."

She interpreted the ruling as setting a clear legal foundation in support of religious freedom and parents' singular role in raising their children while respecting religious neutrality in schools.

She was refused a job in 1998 - despite successfully completing an internship at a high school near Stuttgart.

Ludin charged the state was equating the hijab with "things I already distanced myself from during my own school years".

Today she works at an Islamic school in the Berlin district of Kreuzberg, which has a large Turkish Muslim population.

The Muslim teacher maintained in the case that her religious beliefs posed no threat to Western values.

"I consider religion part of my identity," the 31-year-old told the court at the first hearing in June.

"So are democratic values," she added.

"I often felt discriminated against in the past. Many of those accusations have now been lifted," she said.  

Ludin said that if she were unable to return to Baden-Wuerttemberg to teach if the state passed new legislation, she would be able to seek work in a public school in another state.

Ms Ludin is not the only Muslim woman to be refused employment at a state school because of her hijab, so her case will have far-reaching implications, asserted BBC's Tristana Moore.

Last month, the constitutional court ruled that a Muslim shop assistant had been wrongly sacked by her employers for wanting to wear a headscarf at work.

The court declined to hear the department store's appeal against an October 2000 ruling by the federal employment tribunal, which said that wearing a headscarf was part of the woman's right to religious freedom.

Dangerous

However, the court ruled that regional governments in the 16 states are free to establish their own rules, and authorizing them to set up the necessary legislation on banning hijab.

But in a country with 3.2 Muslim residents, it urged regional governments to find "a ruling acceptable to all".

"The state legislatures are now free to provide the legal basis (for a hijab ban) that has been missing until now," the court said.

The Central Council of Muslims in Germany blasted the decision as opening the door for states to issue blanket bans on teachers wearing hijab in schools, said AFP.

"That would be a severe action against Muslims," council chairman Nadim Elias told Deutschlandfunk radio, adding that women wearing hijab had become part of "everyday life" in Germany.

Hijab Debate

The issue of hijab was become the center of heated debates between a sizeable and increasingly assertive Muslim minority in several European countries and the long tradition of secular education in the continent.

So far, most countries do not have any specific legislation on whether or not hijab can be worn in schools or other public establishments.

Major exceptions are Turkey, whose founder Ataturk banned hijab as part of a sweeping plan of modernization, and France which bars any kind of religious ostentation in the officially secular public schools, according to AFP.

At the opposite extreme is Britain, where school principles allow hijabs, yarmulkas, turbans and crosses but often insist on students' wearing school uniforms at the same time.

The Netherlands, for its part, allows hijab in schools but has drawn the line at face-covering veils known as niqabs because they are considered dangerous in physical education and hamper communication.

Several countries like Denmark or Greece have no problems with hijab, which are widely worn in the northeastern Greek province of Thrace with its large Muslim population.

In some countries, like Spain and Switzerland, governments leave it up to regional authorities to set the rules or, as is the case with Belgium, they leave the decision with school principals.

Ironically, Europe's Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has sided with governments that want to ban hijab in schools.

It rejected an accusation of discrimination against the canton of Geneva by a Muslim primary school teacher.

The court claimed the canton's ban on hijab was not directed against the woman's religious convictions, but was meant to protect the freedoms of malleable young children.

The court ruled in 2001 that it seemed difficult to reconcile the wearing of a hijab "with the message of tolerance, respect for others, equality and non-discrimination that all teachers in a democracy should transmit to their pupils."