Fereshta Ludin (born 1972 in Kabul) is a German teacher of Afghan descent. She was a symbolic figure in the headscarf dispute in Germany from the late 1990s to the early 2000s.
Ludin comes from an upper-middle-class background and is the youngest of five children. Her mother was one of the first women in Afghanistan to go to university in the 1950s. After graduating, she worked as a teacher. Her father was an engineer, worked as a counsellor and later as a minister in the Afghan government. When Fereshta Ludin was four years old, her father became ambassador in Bonn. After the Invasion of Afghanistan by Soviet troops in 1979, the family went into exile in Saudi Arabia. Her father worked there as an engineer. The family lived in Riyadh. Fereshta Ludin had to wear a headscarf from the fifth year of school there. After her father's death, the family moved to Germany in 1986 and applied for asylum. After graduating from high school, Ludin studied to become a teacher of English, German and social studies. She studied at the Pädagogische Hochschule Schwäbisch Gmünd. She was granted German citizenship in 1995. She completed her traineeship with a grade of 1.3. [1] From 1997 to 1999, she was a member of the board of Muslim Youth in Germany.
Ludin has been refused employment in the Baden-Württemberg school service by the authorities and courts since 1998 because she did not want to wear a headscarf in class for religious reasons. Her lawsuit before the Federal Constitutional Court was successful in 2003, as there was no legal basis for a headscarf ban in state law. [2] During her legal battle, she frequently appeared on talk shows and there was intensive media coverage. In January 2015, the Federal Constitutional Court once again ruled on the wearing of headscarves by female teachers, this time in the case of a teacher and a social education worker in North Rhine-Westphalia. A blanket ban on headscarves has now been rejected, as it is not compatible with the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion. Only if there is a concrete danger to school peace or state neutrality, for example through proselytising, can the wearing of a head covering be banned as a fulfilment of religious duty. [3]
After the headscarf ruling, Ludin taught at a state-approved Islamic primary school in Berlin. [4] Ludin was one of the organisers of the first Berlin Ramadan peace march in June 2017. [5]
A burqa or a burka is an enveloping outer garment worn by some Muslim women which fully covers the body and the face. Also known as a chadaree or chaadar in Afghanistan, or a paranja in Central Asia, the Arab version of the burqa is called the boshiya and is usually black. The term burqa is sometimes conflated with the niqāb even though, in more precise usage, the niqab is a face veil that leaves the eyes uncovered, while a burqa covers the entire body from the top of the head to the ground, with a mesh screen which only allows the wearer to see in front of her.
The French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools bans wearing conspicuous religious symbols in French public primary and secondary schools. The law is an amendment to the French Code of Education that expands principles founded in existing French law, especially the constitutional requirement of laïcité: the separation of state and religious activities.
Islamic clothing is clothing that is interpreted as being in accordance with the teachings of Islam. Muslims wear a wide variety of clothing, which is influenced not only by religious considerations, but also by practical, cultural, social, and political factors. In modern times, some Muslims have adopted clothing based on Western traditions, while others wear modern forms of traditional Muslim dress, which over the centuries has typically included long, flowing garments. Besides its practical advantages in the climate of the Middle East, loose-fitting clothing is also generally regarded as conforming to Islamic teachings, which stipulate that body areas which are sexual in nature must be hidden from public view. Traditional dress for Muslim men has typically covered at least the head and the area between the waist and the knees, while women's islamic dress is to conceal the hair and the body from the ankles to the neck. Some Muslim women also cover their face. However, other Muslims believe that the Quran strictly mandate that women need to wear a hijab or a burqa.
The abaya, sometimes also called an aba, is a simple, loose over-garment, essentially a robe-like dress, worn by some women in the Muslim world including most of the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of the Horn of Africa. Traditional abayas are usually black and may either be a large square of fabric draped from the shoulders or head or a long kaftan. The abaya covers the whole body except the head (sometimes), feet, and hands. It can be worn with the niqāb, a face veil covering all but the eyes. Some women also wear long black gloves, so their hands are covered as well. It is common that the abaya be worn on special occasions, such as mosque visits, Islamic holiday celebrations for Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, and also during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
A niqāb or niqaab, also known as a ruband, is a long garment worn by some Muslim women in order to cover their entire body and face, excluding their eyes. It is an interpretation in Islam of the concept of hijab, and is worn in public and in all other places where a woman may encounter non-mahram men. Most prevalent in the Arabian Peninsula, the niqab is a controversial clothing item in many parts of the world, including in some Muslim-majority countries.
A headscarf is a scarf covering most or all of the top of a person's, usually women's, hair and head, leaving the face uncovered. A headscarf is formed of a triangular cloth or a square cloth folded into a triangle, with which the head is covered.
Freedom of religion in Germany is guaranteed by article 4 of the German constitution. This states that "the freedom of religion, conscience and the freedom of confessing one's religious or philosophical beliefs are inviolable. Uninfringed religious practice is guaranteed." In addition, article 3 states that "No one may be prejudiced or favored because of his gender, his descent, his race, his language, his homeland and place of origin, his faith or his religious or political views." Any person or organization can call the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany for free help.
In France, there is an ongoing social, political, and legal debate concerning the wearing of the hijab and other forms of Islamic coverings in public. The cultural framework of the controversy can be traced to France's history of colonization in North Africa, but escalated into a significant public debate in 1989 when three girls were suspended from school for refusing to remove their headscarves. That incident, referred to in France as l'affaire du foulard or l'affaire du voile, initially focused the controversy on the wearing of the hijab in French public schools. Because of the wide-ranging social debates caused by the controversy, l'affaire du foulard has been compared to the Dreyfus affair in its impact on French culture.
According to halacha, married Jewish women are expected to cover their hair when in the presence of men other than their husband or close family members. Such covering is common practice among Orthodox Jewish women.
Hijab and burka controversies in Europe revolve around the variety of headdresses worn by Muslim women, which have become prominent symbols of the presence of Islam in especially Western Europe. In several countries, the adherence to hijab has led to political controversies and proposals for a legal partial or full ban in some or all circumstances. Some countries already have laws banning the wearing of masks in public, which can be applied to veils that conceal the face. Other countries are debating similar legislation, or have more limited prohibitions. Some of them apply only to face-covering clothing such as the burqa, boushiya, or niqab; some apply to any clothing with an Islamic religious symbolism such as the khimar, a type of headscarf. The issue has different names in different countries, and "the veil" or hijab may be used as general terms for the debate, representing more than just the veil itself, or the concept of modesty embodied in Hijab.
In Turkey, secularism or laicism was first introduced with the 1928 amendment of the Constitution of 1924, which removed the provision declaring that the "Religion of the State is Islam", and with the later reforms of Turkey's first president Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, which set the administrative and political requirements to create a modern, democratic, secular state, aligned with Kemalism.
The headscarf controversy in Turkey was a 20th and early 21st century controversy about women wearing Islamic headscarves. The Republic of Turkey had been a secular state since the constitutional amendment of 1937. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk introduced the secularization of the state in the Turkish Constitution of 1924, alongside his reforms. Over 90% of Turkey's population is Muslim, and the suppression of hijab/headscarves and other prominent religious symbols in government institutions and public schools, led to heated controversy at times in Turkey. Specifically, it resulted in a clash between those favoring the secular principles of the state, such as the Turkish Armed Forces, and religious conservatives, including Islamists. In the early 21st century, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reversed this, and worked to "raise a pious generation" in Turkey.
Leyla Şahin v. Turkey was a 2004 European Court of Human Rights case brought against Turkey by a medical student challenging a Turkish law which bans wearing the Islamic headscarf at universities and other educational and state institutions. The Court upheld the Turkish law by 16 votes to 1.
Various styles of head coverings, most notably the khimar, hijab, chador, niqab, paranja, yashmak, tudong, shayla, safseri, carşaf, haik, dupatta, boshiya and burqa, are worn by Muslim women around the world, where the practice varies from mandatory to optional or restricted in different majority Muslim and non-Muslim countries.
Gertrude Lübbe-Wolff is a German academic and senior judge. She served as a justice of the second senate of the Bundesverfassungsgericht from 2002 to 2014, having succeeded Jutta Limbach in this position.
Susanne Baer, FBA is a German legal scholar and one of the 16 judges of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany. Baer has been the William W. Cook Global Law Professor at the University of Michigan Law School since winter 2010 and is also a professor of public law and gender studies with the law faculty at Humboldt University of Berlin and its dean of academic affairs.
The Federal Constitutional Court is the supreme constitutional court for the Federal Republic of Germany, established by the constitution or Basic Law of Germany. Since its inception with the beginning of the post-World War II republic, the court has been located in the city of Karlsruhe, which is also the seat of the Federal Court of Justice.
Transgender rights in the Federal Republic of Germany are regulated by the Transsexuellengesetz since 1980, and indirectly affected by other laws like the Abstammungsrecht. The law initially required transgender people to undergo sex-reassignment surgery in order to have key identity documents changed. This has since been declared unconstitutional. The German government has pledged to replace the Transsexuellengesetz with the Selbstbestimmungsgesetz, which would remove the financial and bureaucratic hurdles necessary for legal gender and name changes. Discrimination protections on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation vary across Germany, but discrimination in employment and the provision of goods and services is in principle banned countrywide.
Hijabophobia is a type of religious and cultural discrimination against Muslim women who wear the hijab. The discrimination has had manifestations in public, working and educational places.
The burqa is worn by women in various countries. Some countries have banned it in government offices, schools, or in public places and streets.