Bavarian court upholds hijab ban in the judiciary

Germany’s long-running judicial wrangling over the ability of Muslim women to wear the hijab in public employment has been enriched by a further episode. The Bavarian Administrative Court in Munich decreed that prohibitions banning court personnel from wearing the Islamic headcovering were permissible. Decisions based on formal criteria The case concerns a legal trainee who,…

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Jesuit college’s decision to appoint hijab-wearing teacher makes headlines in Germany

The Canisius-Kolleg, an elite Catholic secondary school in Berlin has made national headlines in Germany by appointing a Muslim teacher wearing a hijab. The school is run by the Jesuit order and is located in the calm and upmarket diplomatic district of the German capital. Long-standing court battles Teachers with Islamic headscarves have for years…

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Debating ‘neutrality’: Conflict surrounding Berlin’s controversial law on religious symbols enters new round

In flashy advert campaigns, Berlin, Germany’s capital city, vaunts itself as the world’s “capital of freedom” defined by the coexistence of the widest possible array of diverse lifestyles.1 On a more mundane level, however, successive city administrations have struggled to come to terms with the implications of ethnic and religious diversity. Berlin’s ‘laic exceptionalism’ Unsurprisingly,…

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The hijab in German public schools: New court case lets old questions resurface

The protracted German debate on Muslim teachers’ right to wear the hijab when working in the public sector has received its newest episode. The State Labour Court (Landesarbeitsgericht) of Berlin and Brandenburg decided in favour of a Muslim teacher who had sued the state of Berlin for barring her from exercising her profession because of…

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Veiled women protest against exclusion

Liberation Veiled Muslim women protested on Saturday in Central Paris against the exclusion of mothers who wear veils (hijab) from public institutions. The Muslim women joint together with the ‘Mamans toutes égales’ (Mothers are all equal) collective, which was founded in 2011 by Muslim and non-Muslim parents in Montreuil, following the exclusion of a Muslim…

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