Germany: Beret not allowed either

This is an example of taking things too far, probably because everybody is afraid of pointing out what they are really afraid of.  Wearing a hijab is more than covering your hair.  It's a political statement saying "I'm Muslim and I want you to know it".  Many young Muslims today don't wear a hijab because of traditional reasons.  In fact, in many cases their parents are flat out against it.  But they wear it because it's an anti-establishment statement, a provocation.  None of that could be said about a beret.

A Muslim woman teacher who was ordered to stop wearing a headscarf at school has gone to a labour tribunal in Germany to assert the right to wear a beret instead.


Her lawyer said Wednesday his client, 35, was not a religious extremist, but had a cultural reluctance to show her hair. She wears the French-style felt beret pulled down so her hair does not show.

The lawyer told judges that experts should give evidence that a beret is not a religious symbol and therefore cannot be banned in a secular school under laws requiring religious neutrality.

The woman trains behaviourally disturbed children at a secondary school in the western city of Dusseldorf, where authorities imposed a ban on scarves last year.

When she changed to a beret, the principal told her to remove it. She ignored the demand and received a warning from the education authority. She asked the labour tribunal to set the warning aside.

The lawyer said a beret was a way of reconciling western culture and the woman's Turkish origins. But a state lawyer argued it was being used to dodge North Rhine Westphalia's state regulation against religious symbols in public schools .

The case was adjourned to June 1.

Source: Monsters and Critics (English)

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