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Mrs. Beck said anti-hijab laws would hold in contempt religion-related article in the constitution
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By
Khaled Schmitt, IOL Correspondent
BERLIN,
December 4 (IslamOnline.net) - Seventy of Germany’s woman
intelligentsia, all non-Muslims, have launched Wednesday, December 3,
a counter-campaign against draft laws banning hijab in public
institutions in a number of German states.
They
signed a statement warning of the grave consequences of such
discriminatory laws on the German society.
Chief
among the signatories are Federal Minister of Consumer Protection,
Food and Agriculture Renate Künast, Federal Government Commissioner
for Migration, Refugees and Integration Marieluise Beck and Federal
Government Commissioner for Human Rights Policy and Humanitarian Aid
Claudia Roth.
Others
include former speaker of the German parliament Rita Suessmuth;
Berlin's point woman on immigration Barbar John and former justice
minister Sabina Shnarrengerger.
The
statement was also inked by the Archbishops of the Protestant Church
in Hamburg and Luebeck, Maria Jepsen and Baerebel Wartenberg and famed
actress Katja Riemann.
The
mass-circulation Der Spiegel said that Mrs. Beck snapped at
plans by a number of German states to ban hijab in public
institutions.
She
said that such laws, if ratified, would hold in contempt
religion-related articles in the German constitution, which state that
all religions should be treated on equal footing.
Seven
states backed last October a
legislation barring hijab at a meeting of 16
regional ministers for culture, education and religious affairs in the
western German city of Darmstadt while eight opposed such laws.
She
further said that placing restrictions on Muslim women inside state
schools and government jobs is a kind of racial discrimination and
flagrant injustice that would leave them psychologically scarred.
Mrs.
John, for her part, said the driving force behind the draft laws want
to entrench the stereotypes on Muslims and stir up anti-Islam
sentiments among Germans.
If
he German government passes such laws, she added, it would fan
extremism and add more "Muslim extremists" to society.
The
campaign came one week after a German Muslim woman, who was fired by a
German school for refusing to remove her hijab, complained she was
greatly discriminated against when the school defied a court ruling on
reinstating her to her job.
Germany's
highest court ruled last month
that the state was wrong in banning Afghan-born Fereshta Ludin from
wearing hijab in the classroom.
Ludin,
31, applied for the job of English and German teacher at a school in
the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg.
But
the state's education committee refused to appoint her, arguing that
her hijab contradicted with the schools' neutrality.
The
Muslim teacher maintained in the case that her religious beliefs posed
no threat to Western values.
Ms.
Ludin is not the only Muslim woman to be refused employment at a state
school because of her hijab.
In
September, the constitutional court ruled that a Muslim shop assistant
had been wrongly sacked by her employers for wanting to wear hijab at
work.
German
President Johannes Rau admitted in a congratulatory message to the
Muslim community on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr that the controversy
over hijab has cast a pall over their everyday life.
The
president welcomed the employment of hijab-wearing Muslim teachers in
state schools as long as they did not take sides.
