Frankfurt No burqa in local government offices

The 39 year-old has worked for Frankfurt city council for several years and through her work in the citizen advice centre has close contact with the public. At the end of her parental time, on the 1 February, she wanted to return to work and to carry on wearing a burqa in the centre.

However, following the advice of the head of personnel at the council Markus Frank (CDU) she has initially stayed away from work. Frank justified his decision with the expected media circus. If the woman had come to work wearing a burqa, she would have been sent home again. Her salary payments are suspended so long as she remains at home.

The woman, who has already had three children, wore a head scarf before she had her fourth child and took parental leave. Now, she has insisted on being able to wear a burqa at work.

According to Frank, this is the first time that a large German city council has been confronted by such a case. “We cannot condone a woman employee fully-masked,” working in a contact position with the public. "Our members of staff show their faces, in most cases a friendly one”, said Frank. The Burka hinders contact with the public and is incompatible with female emancipation.

The local body representing foreigners, the Kommunale Ausländervertretung (KA) welcomed the approach of the city in forbidding public workers to wear a Burqa. “Each citizen has the right to be able to see the face of those who represent the city” said the chairman of the body, Enis Gülegen. In addition the Burqa represented “a violation of human dignity”: “It degrades the woman who wears it.” The wearing of a Burqa cannot in anyway be religiously justified, but stems from patriarchal societies, which reduce women to a piece of property.

The United Kingdom

In the UK, there is no official ban on the wearing of a burqa, but women wearing them have produced controversy. Most memorable was the refusal of the former leader of the House of Commons under the last Labour government, Jack Straw, to meet a woman wearing a Muslim veil at his constituency office. He said he had asked the woman to remove her veil because he thought wearing a veil would make relations with the public difficult.

Another leading Labour government minister, Ed Balls, later said banning the veil and telling people what they could wear in the street would not be British . Recently a Conservative member of parliament in the UK was warned that he could be breaking the law by refusing to meet women wearing a veil.