Why Is a Berlin School Fighting So Hard to Prohibit Muslim Prayer?
For almost two decades, one Wedding high school has been intent on prohibiting Muslim prayer on school grounds, despite protests from students and parents. Now, a Berlin court has upheld that ban.
Image: Wikimedia commons: Muhammad Rehan, CC BY-SA 2.0
One Berlin secondary school has been fighting a long legal battle to continue to prohibit open prayer by its Muslim students – and last Thursday, they seem to have won their case. The Berlin Administrative Court upheld the ban, stating that the school was permitted to forbid “demonstrative” prayer in the interest of maintaining “peace within the school environment”.
To its critics, including the Society for Civil Rights (GFF), who brought the legal challenge, this appears to be a clear case of discrimination by the school against its largely Muslim student body. And the details are quite remarkable:
Muslim teenagers need to hide in stairwells to pray, or seek out remote corners
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