Austria’s Islamic headscarf ban in force as under-14s go back to school

Some teachers have expressed concerns about having to enforce the ban.

The Green Party’s Sigi Maurer accused Education Minister Christoph Wiederkehr, from the liberal NEOS, of “creating new conflicts and offloading them onto the teachers”.

She said teachers were “already under enormous strain” and that Wiederkehr wanted to “foist the role of police officers onto them” on top of their other duties.

The opposition far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) says the current ban doesn’t go far enough. It is calling for a general prohibition on headscarves and face coverings in schools for students and teachers alike.

The FPÖ’s Ricarda Berger said there was “no place for political Islam in Austria, and certainly not in our schools”.

Austria’s Chancellor Christian Stocker, leader of the ÖVP, recently called for a constitutional ban on political Islam, telling Austrian public broadcaster ORF he did not “want to live in an Islamic state”.

In France there has been a ban on wearing any conspicuous religious symbols, including headscarves, turbans and kippas, in schools for more than 20 years.

The Austrian law differs from French legislation in that it specifically targets head coverings worn by Muslim women.

Austria, like several other European countries including France, Belgium and Denmark, bans the full face veil (niqabs or burkas) in public.

Baghajati said the IGGÖ was concerned about “a troubling trend” across Europe “in which complex social challenges are reduced to symbolic measures aimed at minority groups.”

“Such approaches may generate political attention, but they rarely solve the underlying problems,” she said.