Just a Piece of Cloth: The Headscarf Confounds Germany

[Last week, Germany's constitutional court ruled that female Muslim teachers may wear headscarves in the classroom, but it also held that states may pass legislation banning them. Several German states have since announced that they plan to enact such bans. -- ed.]

By Camilla Sayf

I was the only woman to wear a scarf that covered my hair, neck, and shoulders. In this small town in Western Germany I was the only Muslim woman to freely walk down the tidy neat streets, carelessly look around, stare at bright windows of private shops, smile to passers-by and be childishly happy to see horses, cows, sheep and dogs at farms nearby. Everything looked perfect here.

I saw faces darken and backs shrink while I was walking by. I noticed tense and judging looks of ladies who were doing shopping and were seemingly in no hurry. I couldn’t help hearing too carefully pronounced phrases of the shop assistant. She named the price and her eye-brows jumped up at my native German, “it’s a wonderful day today, isn’t it?” Everything was as usual and monotonous as it had been for many years. Houses were hiding behind rich vegetation and only tall towers of two churches—Catholic and Evangelic—were outlining the sky. My presence was clearly too disturbing for this idyll.

Patiently stretched smiles and ice-cold eyes were sending me a distinct message that I was out of place here.

It felt as if they hanged a wooden board on my neck with the inscription, “asylum seeker” (that’s how the majority in this country sees foreigners). The events of the twentieth century that brought catastrophe to Germany have made this into a land of “locals” and “strangers.” Unfortunately, the lessons of the past have gone by barely noticed.

After the September 11, 2001 disaster, a wave of arrests overwhelmed large German cities, and everything non-German suddenly came under suspicion. Islam was pulled to the “other” side. Misunderstandings and misconceptions that existed before turned into mistrust and hostility. Overcoming these obstacles will be harder than breaking the bricks of the Berlin Wall.

Thousands of Muslims became hostages in their own homeland. Germans by blood and others whom various reasons brought to German soil were now joined in a harsh reality.

Without my scarf, I could easily blend in in this diverse German society, but the moment I put it on and dressed into a bit longer clothes, I was immediately labelled a ‘stranger’ who required no respect. Just a piece of cloth—it became crucial in choosing friends, colleagues, neighbours, and it gave me some food for thought.

Today, the Bundestag, the German parliament, is deciding the question of whether to allow Muslim teachers to wear headscarves. Meanwhile, opinion polls reflect a distinct division in German society according to social group, not good news for strengthening the integration process in the country.

The scarf on a woman’s head creates so much fuss that it made all the way into the federal parliament. The country of Marlene Dietrich seems to have so much hatred towards this element of clothing that it regards it as a religious symbol. For those who do not know or do not understand the inner character of Islam, the scarf represents threat, brings distress and fear to people’s minds, makes them prohibit it and cast it aside, like a weapon of mass destruction.

What is it about the way a Muslim woman decides to dress up that puts her life at stake? Is her scarf indeed more than just a piece of fabric? More likely, it’s the banner of her faith that she carries in her heart.

So tomorrow I’ll take my banner and go down the tidy streets of this small town, and I will smile to passers-by with a naïve hope that my smile can help melt the ice, and that Germany will stop being the country of locals and strangers.