Women with headscarfs (credit: wikipedia commons David Stanley from Nanaimo, Canada – Iraqi Women)

By Gary Raynaldo     DIPLOMATIC  TIMES

Austria’s Constitutional Court struck down a law banning headscarfs in elementary schools, ruling it is unconstitutional. The  law had prohibited girls from wearing “ideological or religious clothing that is associated with covering the head until the end of the school year in which they turn 10. Two children and their parents opposed the  regulation as being discriminatory on basis of religion.  The children are raised religiously in the sense of the Sunni or Shiite legal school of Islam. 

“Headscarf ban” violates the principle of equality in connection with the right to religious freedom

“A regulation that only affects a certain group of female students and that remains selective in order to ensure religious and ideological neutrality as well as gender equality misses its regulatory goal and is irrelevant. § 43a SchUG therefore violates the principle of equality in connection with the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.”

-The  Constitutional Court of Austria

The Court in its ruling stated that  it understands the requirement of “covering the head” as a form of covering according to Islamic tradition, as it is done in particular by the hijab.  “The principle of equality, in conjunction with the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, establishes the state’s religious and ideological neutrality. When designing the school system, the legislature is required to comply with this requirement by treating various religious and ideological convictions based on the principle of equality. The school is based, among other things, on the basic values ​​of openness and tolerance,” the Court ruled. 

“A regulation that selectively picks out a certain religious or ideological conviction by deliberately privileging or disadvantaging such convictions requires a special objective justification with regard to the requirement of religious and ideological neutrality. The selective prohibition regulation according to § 43a SchUG, which only applies to girls and prohibits them from wearing an Islamic headscarf until the end of the school year in which they reach the age of 10, is not suitable from the outset to meet the goals formulated by the legislature itself to reach. Rather, the selective ban can also have a detrimental effect on the inclusion of affected schoolgirls and lead to discrimination because it carries the risk of making it difficult for Muslim girls to access education or of marginalizing them from society . The regulation of § 43a SchUG excludes Islamic origin and tradition as such.”

-The  Constitutional Court of Austria

FAR RIGHT Anti-Immigrant Movement Growing in  Austria 

Austrian Conservative Chancellor Sebastian Kurz  /   (Foto: Arno Melicharek /wikipedia commons)

Austrian Conservative Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has taken a hard line on immigration, in line with that of the far-right Freedom Party (FPO), which says Islam has no place in the Austrian society.