(Reuters) The organization representing Austria’s Muslims said on Thursday it would ask the Constitutional Court to reverse a ban on headscarves in primary schools a day after it was passed in parliament.
There were an estimated 700,000 Muslims living in Austria in 2017, or roughly 8 percent of the population, partly an outgrowth of the many Turks who came to Austria to work in the 1960s and 1970s and stayed on.
Lawmakers from Austria’s two ruling parties — Chancellor Sebastian Kurz’s conservatives and the far-right Freedom Party — approved a bill including the headscarf measure late on Wednesday.
“The ban on headscarves in primary schools will only lead to segregation and discrimination of Muslim girls,” the Islamic Faith Community in Austria, a government-recognized body, said in a statement. “We will … bring this discriminatory law before the Constitutional Court.”
