Baden-Württemberg became the first German state to ban the burqa and other Sharia-mandated full-face coverings from its schools, local newspapers reported on Wednesday. The southern German state already forbids teaching staff to wear such garbs.
The announcement comes as several other German states are considering a similar ban in their schools, German newspaper Die Tagesspiegel reported earlier this year. Unlike neighboring France and Austria, Germany does not have a nationwide ban on wearing a burqa, a move opposed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
In February, a Hamburg court ruled in favor of a Muslim girl after school authorities asked her to remove the burqa in the classroom. The court, in its ruling, said that the girl’s decision to wear a full-face veil in class was covered under the “right to unconditional protection of her freedom of religion.” Following the judgment, some German states mulled changing the state laws to enact the ban.
Germany’s state-run DW News reported the move by southern German state:
The government of the western German state of Baden-Württemberg agreed on Tuesday to ban full-face coverings, often known as burqa or niqab, in schools.
The new rule comes as the topic of Muslim face coverings has been hotly debated in Germany and follows a ruling by a court in Hamburg that reversed that city’s own ban.
Baden-Württemberg’s city council’s decision to ban full-face coverings, typically worn by ultra-conservative Muslim girls, matches the ban for teachers that is already in effect.
State Premier and prominent Green politician Winfried Kretschmann conceded that cases of full-face veiling in schools were rare, but said that nonetheless, a legal ruling was necessary for the rare cases.
Kretschmann said that full-face veiling did not belong in a free society. But he added that such a ban at the university level, where students are adults, was a more complex question. For now, the rule in Baden-Wurttemberg will only apply to primary and secondary education.
Like other German states, Baden-Württemberg has witnessed an increase in Islamic radicalization and migrant crime in the wake of mass-migration from Muslim-majority countries in recent years. In the city of Stuttgart, capital of the southern state, migrant gangs attacked police and looted shops, the German media reported last month. “The mob chanted Allahu Akbar,” German newspaper Bild Zeitung reported on June 22. “A trail of destruction runs through the inner city Stuttgart. 500 rioters turned the city into a battlefield — out of pure lust for violence.”
Six European countries, namely Austria, Denmark, France, Belgium, Bulgaria, and The Netherlands, have introduced some sort of burqa ban in government offices and public places. In Switzerland, several cantons, or districts, have passed similar prohibitions at the local level, but the Swiss government in 2018 rejected a nationwide ban.
While Western feminists celebrate the burqa, hijab, and other sorts of sharia-mandated coverings as an expression of diversity, they are used by the Islamic societies to suppress, suffocate and segregate women from public and social life. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, women are jailed, raped, and tortured by regime henchmen for refusing to wear these oppressive Muslim garbs. In West, migrant Muslim women live under the fear of honor killing, a practice imported from the Middle East, for similar defiance.
Trump: Illegal mass-immigration ‘has been bad for Europe’ (July 2018) [Cover image via YouTube]
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