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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