The city government of Berlin has agreed to abolish a law which forbids schoolteachers from wearing Islamic headscarves in school.
On June 22, the ruling coalition of Conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Social Democratic Party (SPD) agreed to rewrite the city’s “neutrality act”. That currently banned teachers at public schools from wearing “visible religious or ideological symbols … and noticeable religiously or ideologically influenced garments”.
The decision ended a two-year hiatus during which the ban was still law but not enforced following a decision by the German Constitutional Court.
In 2015, the court had ruled that a blanket ban on headscarves was unconstitutional. In 2023, the same court declined to accept a complaint against the decision of the City of Berlin, effectively confirming its 2015 ruling.
“We are now becoming honest,” SPD speaker Raed Saleg, a Palestinian-born naturalised German, told local newspaper Berliner Morgenpost.
Dirk Stettner, deputy leader of the Berlin CDU, said the government was effectively forced to change the law. “We had to change this, we wanted to change this and we are happy that we have changed this”.
The CDU and SPD had already agreed to adapt the city law when they formed their coalition government in 2023.
A ban on Islamic headgear would, though, remain in place for the Berlin police and courts.
“What we have decided now is that this [end of the ban] will not apply to the police and the judiciary,” said Burkard Dregger, a CDU city councillor.
“We want that people who are facing a judge, a public prosecutor or a police officer can be sure that he acts in the name of the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany and not in the name of a religion or other personal preferences.”
In schools, the Islamic headgear would only be banned on a case-by-case basis if “based on objectively verifiable and comprehensible facts, a sufficiently concrete threat to or disturbance of school peace or the neutrality of the state can be proven”, the new agreement read.
The end to the ban has shocked Conservative commentators.
Laura Sachslehner, an author and former Austrian politician, wrote in a post on X on June 24: “Once again, the headscarf being trivialised. It is not just any piece of clothing, but a political-religious symbol that de facto degrades women to an object.”
Conservative columnist Anabel Schunke accused the CDU of “once again” betraying its voters, writing on X on the same day: “The CDU has become an unspeakable party. Crazy.
“I am ashamed that I was once a member.”
