MUSLIM RELIGIOUS HOLIDAYS TO BE CONSIDERED AS PUBLIC HOLIDAYS IN GERMANY

Berlin, 12 Rabiul Awwal 1436/3 January 2015 (MINA) – Earlier, the German states of Bremen and Hamburg had arranged a ‘State Treaty’ with Muslim representatives and a similar treaty had been done with the city of Berlin.

Currently a similar treaty is being organised with Lower Saxony, Worldbulletin quoted by Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA) as reporting.

According to information in the German press a coalition between the social democrats and greens will sign a treaty with Muslim representatives of local Muslim organisations as of next year. Muslim religious holidays will be considered as public holidays and female Muslim teachers with the head covering, the hijab, will be permitted to teach with their hijab.

At present, in Lower Saxony, Muslim students are entitled to stay at home on their religious holidays. Once this agreement comes into force however, all citizens will also be entitled to have a public holiday on Islamic religious holidays.

After the agreement, three organisations representing |Muslims – the State Religious Affairs committee, Turkish Islamic Union for Religious Affairs, and the Council for Alevi community – will sign the new agreement. However the controversial issue that remains is whether these organisations represent all the Muslims of the State.

With the treaty that has been signed in Berlin, Berlin Islamic Federation Secretary General Burhan Kesici actually prevented Muslims from reaching their main goal with such agreements.

Kesici said that the Islamic organisations wanted to be officially recognised at the same level as other religious organisation representatives.

This way they would be entitled to other incentives from the government and be recognised as official organisations and therefore, such incentive issues would no longer be an issue as it is solved on a government level.(T/R04/P3)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)