Government education reforms to overhaul religious instruction and modernize curriculum are sparking debate in Romania, concerning the role of religion in schools. “Religious education here indoctrinates, fuelling prejudice against other faiths and against sexual minorities,” said Smaranda Enache, co-president of human rights group Liga Pro-Europa. However, Enache voiced her concern that teaching children to discriminate…
The Municipal council of Lier, a city in the Antwerp province of Belgium, approved a ban on the wearing of religious symbols for counter personnel. The approval of the disputed proposal caused angry reactions by many immigrants who followed the meeting. After the Vlaams Belang party retracted the proposal for a total headscarf-ban for city…
A Muslim teacher who was fired from her job for wearing a headscarf has been allowed to return to her job. The Council of State declared her dismissal unlawful, saying that an individual public school or district may not impose a general ban on religious symbols. In early 2006, a Brussels school district began imposing…
Religion has found its way back into German society. Yet though church and state are kept separate, many Germans are asking themselves how much religious symbolism should influence their daily lives. The renaissance of religion is a phenomenon currently growing across the globe. In Germany, this development has raised many difficult questions, for example to…
A top anti-discrimination body has ruled that French schools were violating the rights of headscarf-wearing Muslim mothers by preventing them from taking part in their children’s outings. A group of Muslim women petitioned the French anti-discrimination authority HALDE after they were barred from accompanying school trips or extra-curricular activities. The school invoked a 2004 French…
