The decision of Flemish public schools to ban the headscarf has led to fierce protests in Belgium. Dozens of Muslim girls refuse to go to school. Some of them have started a court case against the ban.

"This is about human rights, this is against the constitution!", says a demonstrating Muslim girl to a Belgian TV camera. "We have the right to live according to the requirements of our religion."

The Belgian headscarf controversy started at the beginning of this schoolyear when the Royal Atheneum of Antwerp, one of the last secondary schools in the city where the headscarf was still allowed, decided to join the ban that was already adopted by many other schools.

Catholic schools
In Belgium, schools are free to decide whether or not they allow the headscarf. In the past years, more and more schools opted for a ban. It started with Roman Catholic schools - about 80% of all schools in Belgium. But when, as a result of the ban in Catholic schools, rising numbers of Muslim girls started to seek refuge in Belgium's public schools, these schools too started to prohibit the headscarf. It was a process out of everyone' s control.

Karin Heremans is the director of the Royal Atheneum in Antwerp. Only a few years ago, she publicly rejected the headscarf ban. In her school, she said, she wanted to teach pupils of various cultural backgrounds universal values such as tolerance. But in the past four years, she saw the number of Muslims in her school rise dramatically, from fifty to eighty percent. An intolerant climate developed, in which girls who initially did not want to wear a headscarf were pressured to do so. This situation caused the director to reconsider her view and ban the headscarf. "In order to defend the same principles of tolerance, I now had to take this decision", she said on Dutch television. "In the interest of the pupils of this school."

Yarmulkas and crosses
The decision of the school in Antwerp led to fierce protests. One Muslim pupil filed a complaint with the Belgian Council of State. The Council suggested that a headscarf ban was only legal if it was jointly adopted by all Flemish public schools. The umbrella organization of Flemish public schools thereupon issued a ban on all religious symbols, not only headscarves but also Jewish yarmulkas and Christian crosses. This meant that even schools that had no intention to ban the headscarf were now forced to forbid their pupils to wear it.

The protests became grim, especially in Antwerp where Muslim girls who want to wear a headscarf had no school left to turn to. By way of protest, some sixty girls decided not to go to school anymore. Encouraged by the Antwerp imam Nordin Taouil, some of them have established informal groups to prepare themselves for their exams at home.

Segregation nightmare
Among the Belgian Muslim community, the headscarf crisis has led to a growing call for special Muslim schools. According to Belgian law it is very well possible to establish such schools, but Belgian politicians consider it a segregation nightmare.

A number of pupils have started a court case against the ban, which they believe is against the constitution. Also, the Flemish minister of education Pascal Smet has publicly expressed his doubt as to whether the ban is constitutional. The judge will give his decision in a few months' time.