The headscarf ban in public service must not be overturned

By Gunnar Schupelius

The neutrality law is not intended to discriminate against anyone, but to protect as many as possible from religious ideology. The accusation of racism is beside the point, says Gunnar Schupelius.

The “Commission of Experts on Anti-Muslim Racism” has called for the headscarf ban in Berlin to be lifted.

This refers to Berlin’s “Neutrality Law” of 2005, which prohibits teachers, police officers, prosecutors and judges from wearing “religious or ideological symbols and clothing” on duty.

The expert commission was appointed in February 2021 by the then Justice Senator Dirk Behrendt (Greens) and currently consists of five members.

In a “recommendation for action for the Senate, they claim that the neutrality law is a “systematic and institutionalized discrimination against women with headscarves”. It is an example of the “institutional and structural practice of anti-Muslim racism”.

With this assessment, the Commission strengthens the position of the Greens, who decided at a party conference in 2017 to scrap the neutrality law.

The Berlin SPD, however, stuck to it adamantly, even when the Federal Labor Court in the summer of 2020 agreed with a computer scientist who wanted to start working in schools in Berlin wearing a headscarf.

The federal judges summarily questioned the neutrality law. Then the then school senator Sandra Scheeres (SPD) went before the Federal Constitutional Court. A decision has not yet been made there.

The Greens are now demanding that the neutrality law be suspended until the constitutional court has decided. They will have no luck with the current school senator Astrid-Sabine Busse (SPD).

Before Busse was promoted to senator in 2021, she headed the “Interessenverband der Berliner Schulführungen” (IBS). At this point, she vehemently advocated the neutrality law.

School operations were at the center of the headscarf debate right from the start. Heads of schools with a Muslim majority fear the obligation to confess that Muslim girls who do not wear a headscarf will be pressured if the teacher, as her authority, wears the headscarf in class.

The Greens ignore this concern and declare the headscarf a symbol of “diversity and tolerance”. They don’t ask whether it could become a threat to the tolerant society.

And that’s what it looks like. The headscarf stands for a conservative or even reactionary and compliant view of Islam that does not allow for diversity.

The neutrality law does not ban the headscarf as a matter of principle, but only where the state acts as an authority that must remain neutral towards all religions.

The law is not intended to discriminate against anyone, but to protect as many as possible from religious ideology. The accusation of “anti-Muslim racism” is completely far-fetched. The expert commission has thus disqualified itself.

Is Gunnar Schupelius right? Call: 030/2591 73153 or email: [email protected]

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