Muslim teacher in Germany loses case over headscarf ban
A Muslim teacher who insisted on wearing her headscarf in the classroom lost her challenge to a state ban on religious symbols in schools yesterday.
Derek Scally, Irish Times, June 27, 2001

Ms Ferestha Ludin (29), maintained she had a right to wear her headscarf and that it was not a religious symbol.

However, the constitutional court in the state of BadenWürttemberg disagreed, ruling that Ms Ludin's headscarf was a Muslim symbol that contradicts state law banning all religious symbols in schools.

The "headscarf case" arose after Ms Ludin, who teaches in a private Muslim school in Berlin, was rejected for a job in a public school in Stuttgart because of her insistence on covering her head. Last year a lower court ruled that although Ms Ludin was suitably qualified for the job, she was rightly disqualified for wanting to wear "a religiously motivated head covering".

Ms Ludin alleged the decision infringed her right to freedom of religion, as guaranteed in the German constitution and said she was "disappointed" with the decision.

The end of the "headscarf case" came as church organisations and the opposition Christian Democratic Union mounted a case in Germany's constitutional court to return religious education to the curriculum in the state of Brandenburg, beside Berlin. In 1996 the state replaced religious education with a course called Civic Values, Ethics and Religion.

Brandenburg's minister president, Mr Manfred Stople, said religious education is necessary in schools to redress the "spiritual impoverishment" caused by the isolation of religion in East Germany.