Contentious Headscarves: Cleaning Woman, Forbidden Schoolteacher, Hijab Martyr

Abstract

The immense and ongoing attention received by Sürücü’s murder stands in stark contrast to coverage of the xenophobically motivated murder of another Muslim woman, Marwa el-Sherbini, in a German courtroom in 2009. The incident began when el-Sherbini, wearing a hijab, asked Alex Wiens to make space for her three-year-old son on a playground swing. He responded by accusing her of being an Islamist. She brought charges, and Wiens was subsequently fined by the local authorities for xenophobically motivated speech. Upon appeal, el-Sherbini testified again against Wiens, who demonstrated in court that he was an open sympathizer of the right-wing party, the National Democratic Party. Immediately after her testimony, Wiens stabbed el-Sherbini to death in front of her husband and son. Media coverage of and political response to el-Sherbini’s death in the Dresden courtroom were notably muted. Although the murder quickly gained attention in Egypt (el-Sherbini’s home country) and Iran, followed by stories published in the United States and the UK, German officials and press did not react to the case for nearly a week. By the time they responded, el-Sherbini was being referred to as a “hijab-martyr” in the Islamic world, and her death was acknowledged as the first Islamophobic murder in Germany. Once a governmental and media response finally appeared, it was short-lived, and el-Sherbini’s murder quickly disappeared from the public eye.

In particular, external behavior that would evoke the impression by students or parents that the teacher is against human dignity, the equal rights of people according to Article 3 of the Basic Law, basic freedoms, or the liberal democratic order, is not permissible. The fulfillment of the educational mandate […] of the constitution, and the relevant representation of Christian and Western educational and cultural values or traditions, do not infringe on [this] dictate.

—Text of the Baden-Württemberg Law Instituting a Provincial Headscarf Ban (Drucksache 13/3091. Gesetz Zur Änderung Des Schulgesetzes)