Shortly before February 12th, Berlin got another nice election campaign topic: How do we deal with the headscarf? After the Federal Constitutional Court rejected a complaint by the school administration against a judgment by the highest labor court, the appeals are likely to have been exhausted. Time, then, to deal with reality.
The situation is this: The neutrality law, with which the headscarf should be prevented in school work, is to be interpreted according to the guidelines from Karlsruhe. This means that a headscarf should not be banned without a concrete (!) threat to peace in schools and state neutrality.
These dangers are talked about politically, they never really existed. A report that the education administration once had drawn up to document such dangers is exhausted in clichés.
Jost Müller-Neuhof is a legal-political correspondent and is convinced that judges with headscarves can also render fair and correct judgments if they are allowed to.
The situation is similar in other federal states, where Muslim women are allowed to do what they are not allowed to do in Berlin. she is peaceful In modernist circles, the local discrimination is slandered as racism, but it is probably mainly a mixture of misogyny and cultural fears of being overtaken by foreigners. When the Neutrality Act was passed, feminism was not yet mainstream and diversity was a scientific term.
Incidentally, it was never as strict as the neutrality law works. It has always included exceptions for vocational schools and trainees. If the headscarf is supposed to be so dangerous, then there can be no exceptions that allow dangers. At the latest this contradiction – shown in the judgment of the Federal Labor Court in 2020 – could have moved politicians to act.
Of course, the state has to be neutral. humans don’t have to. They are allowed to show and live religion, also in public. This is a basic right that also applies to people who want to work in the civil service. You have to hold back. But you can’t and shouldn’t neutralize them.
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