Publican excludes niqab-wearing woman

Germany debated face-obscuring clothing further Thursday after a publican - accused online of being racist - replied that he had been exercising his rights as host in asking the niqab-wearer to show her face last Saturday evening.

"Instead, she immediately began to rant," and then left the grounds, said Schulz, who reportedly employs cooks from Nigeria, Ghana, Pakistan and Portugal.

More than a thousand guests were visiting the "Seekrug," a rural lakeside venue with outdoor catering, just north of Bielefeld in North Rhine-Westphalia state.

Neo-Nazis also evicted

Schulz told regional newspapers, including Bielefeld's "Neue Westfälische" and Düsseldorf's "Rheinische Post," that in the past he had also evicted guests wearing "Thor Steinar" clothing, a label worn within the neo-Nazi scene.

"Massive" insults in social media, also directed at staff, followed Saturday's incident, but there was also praise from regular guests for Schulz' intervention.

One wrote in a commentary: "The publican has personnel with migratory backgrounds and is being insulted. That's not on at all."

The wearing of niqabs, leaving only the eyes visible, or burqas obscuring the face remains lawful in Germany, but controversial, and echoes debate in France, where municipal bans were recently reversed by a top court ruling that cited personal freedoms.

'Simplistic solutions' won't work

Chancellor Angela Merkel, addressing a Berlin conference on religious freedoms attended by parliamentarians from 80 countries Wednesday, warned against bids to find "seemingly simplistic solutions to turn back the wheel" of time.

The burqa and niqab were, however, a "major obstacle to integration," she said, adding that precise guidelines on wearing both were needed, for example, in public institutions or in courthouses.

Merkel also recalled how past religious differences had left scars in German history.

Bielefeld lies in the region where in 1648 the Treaty of Westphalia was signed to end that century's Thirty Years' War, one of Europe's most destructive conflicts.

Niqab-shops 'alarming'

The ARD public broadcaster on Wednesday carried a report on so-called niqab shops in Germany.

Susanne Schröter, who heads the Center for Global Islam at Frankfurt am Main University, told ARD's weekly investigative program "Report Mainz" that such shops were "not just fashion outlets but also parts of a Salafist infrastructure."

"The scene is clearly extremist, it is alarming and it requires the need for action," Schröter said.

Hysterical debate, says Kässmann

Late last month, the former chairperson of Germany's combined Protestant churches, Margot Kässmann, described Europe's current debate on burqas and "burkini" swimwear as hysterical.

She still "well remembered" the post-war period when the bikini was seen as a threat to Western values.

"Back then, women were supposed to put on more clothes; now they are supposed to take more off," Kässmann said, adding, however, that she felt sorry for women who felt they had to conceal themselves under cloth.

"As a Christian, it would never occur to me that that would please God," she said.

ipj/kl (AFP, epd, KNA)