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.