German Court Rejects Attempt to Enshrine Sharia Law
by Soeren Kern, Gatestone Institute:
Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court has ruled that the constitutionally guaranteed religious freedoms of Muslims can be curtailed if public displays of religiosity — in this case wearing Islamic headscarves in German courtrooms — endanger the ideological and religious neutrality of the state.
The court’s landmark ruling effectively smashes a backdoor effort to enshrine Sharia law into the German legal system.
The case involves a 38-year-old German-Moroccan law student who was born in Frankfurt and customarily wears a headscarf in public. In January 2017, she began legal training in the German state of Hesse, where the law bans any expression of religion in its courtrooms for judges, lawyers and legal trainees.
According to the law, legal trainees (Rechtsreferendar) are allowed to wear a headscarf — except when they are performing certain official tasks in which they serve as representatives of the judiciary or the state. This means, for instance, that trainee lawyers are not allowed to wear a headscarf when presiding over a hearing, taking evidence or representing the public prosecution office.
The complainant filed a lawsuit claiming that the headscarf ban interfered with her right to freedom of religion. She argued that she was being forced to choose between performing the intended tasks or fulfilling a religious clothing requirement that she considers imperative.
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