'The hijab is a swastika-type symbol'

Germany struggles with the presence of minorities and its treatment of foreigners

"I still cannot imagine a black on the German Olympic team," a German student admitted recently over dinner. The sentiment is widespread as Europe's most populous nation struggles with the presence of minorities and its treatment of foreigners - mostly Muslims. The message to German Muslims, reports Taris Ahmad, is: Assimilate or suffer the consequences.

If the political rhetoric of the Social Democrats (SPD) and Christian Democrats (CDU) is anything to go by, integration in Germany now means assimilation. The upper echelons of the Conservative opposition party recently attempted to define German leitkultur as a mix of humanism, Roman law, Judeo-Christian tradition, ancient philosophy and Enlightenment thinking. There is no mention of the Islamic philosophy, theology and spirituality that profoundly influenced German Romantics like Goethe and Lessing.

German intelligence officials tackled the question of integration in a more practical way by declaring in July 2004 that a local Muslim boys' group was a threat to the Constitution because they were inviting their peers for a swim in "Islamic swimming trunks." Bermuda shorts worn for religious purposes are apparently a threat to the Federal Republic.

Parliamentary Secretary Thomas Goppel went even further and suggested deporting all foreigners who are not willing to "integrate." Perhaps integration will soon require Muslims to wear Speedos and get drunk in beer halls.

Professor Dr. von Thaden, director of the Evangelische Akademie, proudly boasted on German news Channel Phoenix: "Let us be honest. We feel closer to our fellow secular European citizens than to a religious Muslim. The God of Islam is not our God."

Germany, it seems, is in a Kulturkampf. The debate over the headscarf has catalyzed German popular opinion about Islam. In September 2003, addressing the case of a Muslim teacher wearing the hijab in school, Germany's Federal Constitutional Court held that a ban of religious symbols in schools, such as the headscarf, must mean a ban for all religions indiscriminately - no to hijab means a no to the crucifix and the kippa.

The court held that the prohibition, in this particular case, simply did not have a legal basis. Parliament was allowed to enact a prohibition, but the court did not see such a ban as mandatory.

Germany's Constitution leaves open the option to ban the hijab. Politicians get to make the choice. Seven states including Bavaria and Baden-Wuerttemberg are now independently passing laws to forbid religious headwear.

Lower-Saxony's Culture Minister Bernd Buseman proposed introducing a ban on the hijab, while allowing Christian symbols. Former constitutional judges Ernst Gottfried Mahrenholz and Dr. Bertolt Sommer, however, insist that the ban should not be one-sided, that is banning the symbols of one religion but not another. As a result, Christian nuns are now also forced to abandon their habit.

Culture Minister Annette Shavan attempted to declare the Christian headscarf as "work clothing" in order to evade the ban. Perhaps the Federal constitutional court should have learned from the decision in the Iyman Alzayed Case in 2002 which ruled that the hijab had no adverse effect on the neutrality of the teacher. Only a few hundred women of Islamic faith were teaching with the headscarf.

German Embassy spokesman in London, Ludwig Linden, says "unlike in France, where the controversy is about pupils wearing headscarves, in our country it is limited to teachers in state schools." That could change. The daily Die Welt quotes Mr. M. Braun, CDU-Berlin's spokesperson on legal affairs, demanding a hijab ban for pupils.

Conservative states such as Bavaria, Baden-Wuerttemberg, Hesse and the Saarland drafted a bill to bar women in hijab from all public services, implying that female Muslims such as judges, prosecutors, politicians, and hospital doctors would be acting illegally if they wore a headscarf.

The press is largely undisturbed by this. Quite rightly the Jewish German newspaper Junge Nachrichten harshly criticized the ban of the hijab knowing what religious discrimination led to 60 years ago. Professor Dr. Christian Pfeiffer, justice minister of Lower-Saxony, invoked Germany's past in a more disturbing way. He declared that "the hijab is a swastika-type symbol." Nobody went on record to decry his statement.

Politicians win elections bashing foreigners and Muslims. The German radical right Deutsche Volksunion party (DVU) won a historic 17 percent in Eastern Germany in the 1990s. In 1999, the state elections in Hesse were won on a purely xenophobic platform. The party collected signatures asking people to sign up en mass "against the Turks."

The recent signature campaign against Turkish EU membership is perhaps an attempt to repeat the successful signature campaign.

The 2002 local elections in Hamburg were won by the radical right Schill-party founded by a former judge on a platform that promoted a crushing crack down on "criminal" foreigners. The neo-Nazi electoral success of DVU and the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD) in Autumn 2004 reflected growing German xenophobia. However, it is not the far right, or the CDU alone who are propagating xenophobia or limitation of religious rights. In 1998, the SPD culture minister, Hartmut Holzapfel, was in fact the first minister to announce that he would join a hijab ban. This year the extreme left Partei des demokratischen Sozialismus backed a hijab ban in coalition with the Social Democrats.

"People talk to us in broken German," a German female convert told me. Germany is

the only home she has ever known. Her grandfather fought during World War II. "Because I am now wearing the hijab people think I am Turkish." Germany's converts are made foreigners in their own home country. Carrying a pram in Germany's public transport can be tricky, because nobody will help you on and off the bus. Experiences range from being spat at, receiving rude comments to simply receiving scornful looks. Daily harassment on the streets and shops is normal for many scarf-wearing women.

Young women born and bred in Germany want to be active, work, live and be an integral part of society. Naturally, Muslim women sense a double standard. On the one hand, politicians claim the Muslim woman is facing domestic oppression and on the other, the same politicians deny her a job and defame her faith. Politicians act as if they know better: "The problem is your husband and your God."

Twenty-three-year-old S. Bahtiyar fled from Turkey to Germany in the search of religious freedom. The Turkish government declared her degrees invalid because she decided to wear the headscarf. In Germany she had to study all over again. Now she faces social exclusion again for her religious conviction.

"Where in the world can a woman be free to live her faith if not in Europe?" she asks quite rightly. Feminist authors like Alice Schwarzer maintain that Muslim men impose the hijab on women. This prompted a Muslim female demonstration in Hesse, with protesters carrying banners that read "Alice Schwatzer, wir sprechen fur uns selber" - "Alice the Waffler - we can speak for ourselves."

A failure to achieve understanding at this critical point in German history will only cement the feelings of xenophobia and further push Germany's significant Muslim minority to the margins of society - leading to polarization and social division. It is a dangerous course for a Germany that just a decade ago was set to embody the spirit of a new, inclusive Europe. Now, the future of Germany and Europe will be tested by how well it is able to make citizens out of its "foreigners." The track record so far leaves the future of the German national project in serious doubt.

Taris Ahmad is a former member of the German regional Parliament and former member of the Advisory Council at the Council of Europe.