Austria’s constitutional court has overturned a law which was prohibited Muslim girls to wear hijab at elementary schools.
The Constitutional Court has ruled that a law banning girls aged up to 10 from wearing headscarves in schools was discriminatory, overturning the measure introduced by the ruling conservatives while allied with the far right.
The programme was announced on January 1, 2020 by Austria’s parliament to ban Muslim girls from wearing the headscarf in primary schools. The bill was passed with the support of the governing centre-right People’s Party (ÖVP) and the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ). Almost all of the opposition voted against it.
The laws are discriminatory in nature and hence invalid. The law was formulated by the ruling conservative party along with the right organizations of the country, the court stated.
Practicing Muslim girls usually begin wearing a headscarf at puberty, and the governing parties have admitted the law is intended for Muslim girls.
The legislation did not specify that the ban referred to headscarves, instead forbidding the wearing of “religious clothing that is associated with a covering of the head”.
But the court found on Friday that it was clearly aimed at Muslim headscarves.
According to the ruling, the law went against the state’s duty to treat officially recognized religions equally, and the principle that singling out any one of them requires special justification.
“The selective ban … applies exclusively to Muslim schoolgirls and thereby separates them in a discriminatory manner from other pupils,” court President Christoph Grabenwarter said.
“There is a risk that [the law] could make it harder for Muslim girls to gain access to education, and it could lead to their social exclusion,” he added.
The IGGOe, the body officially recognised as representing the country’s Muslim communities, welcomed the judgement and said the court had ended “the populist politics of bans”.
IGGOe President Umit Vural said in a statement: “We don’t condone disparaging attitudes towards women who decide against the headscarf … and we also cannot agree with the curtailing of the religious freedom of those Muslim women who understand the headscarf to be a integral part of their lived religious practice.”
The Austrian authorities’ efforts to link the terrorist attack in Vienna that took place in early November to the Muslim community is a dangerous measure which points to the already existing political tendencies to dissolve Islamic associations or institutions, prohibit educational and political activities and programmes, and close mosques in Austria without real legal justifications.
Thus, several human rights organisations confirmed that these trends are “a form of collective punishment and political exploitation of terrorist attacks.”
Meanwhile, the court’s new order is indeed welcoming and full of hope that Muslims will get their due place and recognition in society.
