Germany's top integration official mulls Austrian-style headscarf ban

Germany should think about banning headscarves for schoolgirls, the government's Integration Commissioner Annette Widmann-Mauz said last Friday, taking the lead from Austria's right-wing ruling parties. The parliament in Vienna amended the Austrian school law this week to prohibit primary school pupils from covering their heads for religious or ideological reasons.

Parents whose daughters repeatedly come to school with headscarves will face a fine of up to 440 euros.

"It's absurd if little girls wear headscarves: Most Muslims agree with that," Widmann-Mauz told the mass-circulation Bild newspaper. "We should consider and approach all measures to protect girls, from parent-school meetings to a ban," said the politician from Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

Several fellow German conservative politicians on Friday issued a joint statement in which they also called for a debate on banning headscarves for girls, not only in primary school, like in Austria, but also in middle school.

The text of the Austrian amendment says the new policy serves "social integration of children according to local customs, protecting constitutional values and educational goals, as well as gender equality."

Austria's Islamic Faith Community, a Muslim umbrella organisation, plans to fight the new law at the country's top court, charging that it is discriminatory.

Vienna's government coalition of the centre-right People's Party and the far-right Freedom Party has made clear that their new policy is designed to address Muslims, by banning the covering of most or all of the hair. Smaller caps and cloths worn by Jewish and Sikh boys are therefore exempt.

Majority-Muslim Turkey on Friday condemned Austria's decision as "discriminatory" and called on Vienna to stop "intervention against freedom of religion."

Anti-Islam movements and xenophobia have taken on "a systematic and institutional form against Muslims and Turkish society living in Europe, particularly in Austria," the Turkish Foreign Ministry said.    (dpa)