Reply #6: not unlike the move in France [View All]

[Kellanved]

But in France it's an older tradition. Basically the rule is one hundred years old in France; Germany hasn't got a secular tradition to justify it. It's a really difficult matter. Even more unlike in France however, thinks like that are a state affair in Germany. The federal Government has no say in it.

The move is not exactly a piggyback of the French move, the debate just came into the spotlight because of it. Originally it was a single case in a southern state, where a woman wasn't accepted as teacher because of her wearing hajib. That case got before the German supreme court, which ruled that the state had no right to deny her the job. To change that legal fact several states proposed legislation, which would ban teachers from wearing religious symbols there. Some of those state Governments have voiced their desire to make Christian symbols special and unaffected by those laws. It is safe to assume that all those laws will end up in the supreme court again.

Banning religious symbols for students as well is not (yet) really part of the debate.