AfD revives headscarf-ban push in German schools, timed to a run of state elections
Far-right party wants to copy Austria's ban on head coverings for girls under 14, experts say it is manufacturing crisis to fuel anti-Muslim sentiment ahead of elections
BERLIN (MNTV) — Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has renewed its demand for a ban on Muslim headscarves in public schools, proposing that girls under the age of 14 be prohibited from wearing them — a move experts say is designed to stoke anti-Muslim feeling in the run-up to a series of state elections.
The AfD parliamentary group said on Monday that Germany should follow neighbouring Austria, where a new regulation taking effect next month bars Islamic head coverings in schools for girls under 14.
AfD lawmaker Kerstin Przygodda described reports that some Muslim communities in Austria plan to defy the ban as “alarming,” and argued that Germany needed a similar measure to defend “Western values.”
She accused Germany’s mainstream parties of being “intoxicated by migration” and abandoning the girls in question, calling for the adoption of what she termed the Austrian model.
The proposal is not new. An AfD attempt earlier this year to introduce a similar ban sparked a heated parliamentary debate and drew strong criticism from across the political spectrum — from Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union, its Social Democratic coalition partner, and the opposition Greens alike.
Critics accused the party of distorting facts to fuel anti-Muslim sentiment and of using the issue as a campaign tool.
The timing is pointed: state elections are due in Saxony-Anhalt on September 6, and in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on September 20 — contests in which the AfD, riding high in national polling, hopes to make significant gains.
Opponents also challenged the premise of the AfD’s argument.
Its claims of widespread forced veiling within Muslim communities in Germany, they said, lack solid evidence.
Most young girls who wear headscarves, they argued, do so as a matter of cultural practice, family tradition or personal choice, rather than under coercion — undercutting the party’s framing of the ban as a measure to protect children.
The renewed push reflects a broader European current in which the headscarf has become a recurring political flashpoint, from Austria’s incoming school ban to France’s restrictions and Portugal’s newly enacted face-veil law.
For Germany’s roughly 5.5 million Muslims — already contending with a documented rise in anti-Muslim incidents — the concern is that a garment worn by schoolgirls is once again being turned into a symbol in a political contest largely about something else.
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