When Faith is More Important than School

With her flawless German, good grades and ambition to study towards a career, Ayse Yilmaz seems a model of Muslim integration at her Berlin high school.

She considers herself part of a growing group of young, educated Muslims who have "a modern understanding of Islam," as the 18-year-old student of Turkish-Kurdish origin puts it. But Yilmaz --whose name has been changed here to protect her anonymit -- has angered school authorities by refusing to take off her headscarf during sports class and going on school trips with her classmates.

“I felt uncomfortable about the alcohol, partying and fooling around that takes place there,” said Yilmaz of the trips. As for her headscarf, Yilmaz says, "There is no question of me taking it off just for sports or something. It's just part of me."

Yilmaz’s arguments are becoming familiar ones to school authorities across Germany, as Muslim students and their parents clash with schools over whether the tenants of their faith should be allowed to bend the rules of Germany's secular school system. Though no reliable statistics are available, school authorities across the country say that an increasing number of Muslim parents are demanding exemptions for their daughters on religious grounds from co-ed swimming, sports and biology classes.

Thwarting integration efforts?

The issue has turned into a potent flashpoint in German schools struggling with Muslim integration.

“It’s a difficult situation,” said Marion Berning, director of the Rixdorfer primary school, one of the largest in Berlin’s Neukölln district, where girls with headscarves are a common sight. “We have Muslim girls who say they don’t want to swim with the boys. It’s obvious the parents exert pressure on them, but they (the parents) have to accept that co-education is part of German schools."

At another school in Berlin's Turkish-

Sex is "absolutely taboo at home."