COLOGNE – A proposal to ban hijab for girls under 14 in Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine Westphalia, has sparked mixed reactions, drawing a dividing line between Muslims’ opposition and teachers support.
“The idea that Muslim girls are forced to cover their hair was outdated,” Burhan Kesici, the chairman of Islamrat, told Deutsche Welle.
“Compulsory headscarves and a headscarf ban are in the same vein; they both harm Muslims.”
The ban proposal comes after the German-based feminist organization ‘Terre des Femmes’ expressed concern over “a growing number of veiled girls at elementary schools.”
“Young children shouldn’t be made to cover their hair for religious reasons,” North Rhine Westphalia Integration Minister, Joachim Stamp, said.
As a matter of fact, Islamic Shari`ah already doesn’t designate hijab as a mandatory aspect for females before the age of puberty.
Kesici admitted that “although there may be a small number who are forced to wear headscarves, it was disproportionate and unconstitutional for the state to limit the religious freedom of all Muslim women because of a suspected minority.”
The head of the German Philological Association, Susanne Lin-Klitzing, supported the ban.
“In a democracy, no sex should be subordinate to another. A headscarf can be seen as a symbol of that, and so there’s no place for it in the classroom,” she told the Bild newspaper.
On the other side, the head of the Conference of Ministers of Education, Helmut Holter, rejected the ban saying “there should instead be a greater focus on strengthening democratic education at schools. All children should be able to develop into free and self-determined individuals.”
According to some 2011 studies conducted by Ruhr University Bochum, 2.8% of the population of North Rhine Westphalian was Muslim.