EURO-ECUMENISM

Teaching nuns hit by Muslim headscarf ban (Kate Connolly, The Telegraph, October 11th, 2004)

Nuns who teach in state schools in the Black Forest region of Germany are to be banned from wearing their habits in the classroom in line with a judgment on Muslim headscarves, a federal court has ruled.

The federal administrative court decreed that it would be unjust if a law passed this year in the southern state of Baden Württemberg prohibiting Muslim women teachers from wearing headscarves did not also apply to Christian symbols.

"There can be no exception. Any form of religiously motivated clothing in certain regions is not in question," said the written ruling from the court in Leipzig, eastern Germany.

Nuns who form an active part of the teaching staff in the predominantly Roman Catholic state will in future have to change from their habits into ordinary clothing before they enter the classroom, according to today's edition of Spiegel magazine, which has published details of the ruling for the first time.

Unlike France’s notorious across-the-board law prohibiting all religious garb for both students and teachers, this law only prohibited Muslim head scarves for teachers. Students could still dress as they pleased. In a free society committed to religious tolerance, many would agree the court should have struck down the law as discriminating against Islam. That instead it appears to have ordered the law extended to encompass Christianity and other faiths shows it is engaged in a religious war of its own and is quite prepared to be as discriminatory as is necessary to win it.