BERLIN,
May 7, 2006 (IslamOnline.net) – The Muslim minority in Germany is
suffering from a growing religious discrimination with many Germans
wrongly associating Islam with terrorism, a federal minister admitted on
Sunday, May 7.
"Muslims
are lately being confronted with mounting rejection which feeds from
fear," Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries told the weekly Welt am
Sonntag.
She
said many Germans were not able to properly distinguish between Islam
and terrorism.
"As
a consequence many Muslims are faced with discrimination because of
their faith as some people link the Muslim faith automatically with
Al-Qaeda and terrorism," added Zypries.
The
Interior Ministry is sponsoring a mobile exhibition touring the country
to draw the line between Islam as a faith and the practices of some
Muslims.
It
aims to distinguish between Islam as a religion that preaches peace and
tolerance and parties condoning violence in the name of Islam, said the
Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the sponsor.
The
exhibition would visit universities, schools, parliaments,
municipalities and cultural centers in the different states.
European
officials said recently that the bloc is set to remove derogatory
terminology about Islam like "Islamic terrorism" and
"fundamentalists" in its new lexicon of public communication.
Uniform
The
minister proposed the introduction of school uniforms to avoid sparking
furor over Muslim students wearing hijab.
"All
school pupils should wear the same school uniform," she said.
The
minister believes such uniforms would also help prevent religious and
social discrimination in Germany.
The
constitutional court, Germany's highest tribunal, ruled in July 2003,
against a decision by the Baden-Wuerttemberg state to forbid a Muslim
teacher from wearing hijab in the classroom.
But
it said Germany's 16 regional states could issue new legislations to ban
hijab if they believe it would influence children.
A
number of states, including Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt
and Thuringia, still allow hijab at schools.
Others,
including Baden-Wurttemberg, Saarland and Lower Saxony, ban teaching
stuff in state schools from wearing symbols that express religious,
political, or ideological affiliation, including hijab.
Penalizing
The
German justice minister also called for enacting a law banning
discrimination against minorities in the country.
Zypries
asserted that recent statistics indicate a rise in crimes committed on
racial grounds.
She
noted that racist practices and discrimination were usually committed
for religious considerations.
After
months of debate, the German government agreed early in May on an
anti-discrimination law.
The
text, which has been approved in principle by Chancellor Angela Merkel's
conservatives and by the Social Democrats in her ruling grand coalition,
will be debated next week in the lower house of the parliament, the
Bundestag, where the coalition has a comfortable majority.
One
of the major aspects of the law would protect against discrimination in
hiring based on sex, age, religion or disability.
Islam
comes third in Germany after Protestant and Catholic Christianity.
There
are some 3.4 million Muslims in Germany, two thirds of whom are of
Turkish origin.
