Austria hijab school ban law is deja vu for marginalised Muslims

This month, Austria’s new centrist coalition government is preparing legislation to ban the hijab for girls under 14 in all schools, with harsher penalties and a requirement for teachers to report violations.

It feels like deja vu.

In 2018, shortly after the conservative Austrian People’s Party (OVP) formed a coalition government with the far-right Freedom Party (FPO), the leadership introduced a ban on the hijab for girls aged six to 10 in public schools. That law was implemented in 2019 and later struck down by Austria’s constitutional court in December 2020.

Now, the government is once again reviving the measure, expanding it with harsher penalties and a wider scope that will include both state and private schools – even Islamic schools.

Supporters of the ban insist it is not an act of discrimination, but is “necessary to free girls from subjugation”. Echoing the first ban, the government is again justifying the measure as a way to prevent “gender segregation” and “early sexualisation”, portraying the hijab as a political symbol and marker of “political Islam” rather than a religious choice.

But such arguments, devoid of empirical support, reflect a deeply ideological and Islamophobic reading of Islam and its practices.

At its core, Austria’s renewed attempt to regulate the religious expression of Muslims is about exclusion. It sends a chilling message that Muslim identity itself is unwelcome in public life, and exposes a broad political consensus that normalises anti-Muslim sentiment and is increasingly willing to sacrifice constitutional rights for political expediency.

A long trajectory

Austria’s preoccupation with Muslim dress is part of a longer trajectory.

In 2017, under previous OVP leadership, Austria introduced a full-face veil ban, making it one of the few Western European countries with such a law.

The following year, the federal government and state governors quietly agreed to extend the hijab ban to kindergartens – despite the practical irrelevance of such a move, given that almost no girls of that age wore the hijab.

The lack of resistance at that stage helped normalise such measures, creating a precedent for further restrictions.

Even the original school-age ban affected very few children directly. But as then-Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache made clear, it was only the beginning.

They envisioned wider restrictions on the hijab, extending it to high school, universities, and even to adult women in public service – a measure now proposed by the FPO governor in Styria, who has called for banning religious clothing among state employees.

Political expediency

In 2019, two Muslim families filed legal challenges to the school ban, which was overturned by the constitutional court in 2020. The court ruled that the law was unconstitutional, finding it discriminatory for explicitly targeting Muslim girls while exempting Jewish boys wearing a kippah or Sikh boys wearing a turban.

The stated goal of the law had been to promote “social integration in accordance with local customs”, uphold “fundamental values” and foster gender equality. Yet the court affirmed that schools should be spaces of “openness and tolerance”, and concluded the law was inherently unequal in its application.

Despite Kurz’s downfall amid corruption scandals, the OVP has continued to champion these policies under successive leaders. After poor results in national elections, the party formed a coalition earlier this year with the Social Democrats and the liberal Neos party.

While the Social Democrats have been ambivalent on Islam-related issues, the Liberals have long pushed to extend the hijab ban. As a result, the new coalition agreement includes a renewed hijab ban for girls up to 14, reviving a measure previously floated during the OVP’s coalition with the Greens but halted after the constitutional court ruling.

Legal scholars question whether the new regulation can withstand another constitutional challenge, especially given that a higher number of girls between 10 and 14 wear the hijab. Constitutional law professor Heinz Mayer noted that the court “drew very narrow boundaries in its 2020 ruling”, expressing doubt about how these could be overcome.

But the policy may serve another function: political distraction. Austria is facing severe economic pressures, with a budget deficit of 4.7 percent of GDP – well above the EU limit and with little prospect of improvement.

In this context, debate over the hijab offers a convenient way to divert attention from deeper fiscal problems.

A chilling message

Political leaders from the OVP and their allies, backed by far-right media outlets, have already begun ringing alarm bells – calling the hijab for young girls a “symbol of oppression” and linking it to “extremist tendencies”.

Politicians are even circulating invented figures about how many girls wear the hijab, stoking paranoia about Islamism allegedly taking hold among children. Integration minister Claudia Plakolm went so far as to declare that “wherever radical Islam is gaining ground, underage girls wear a headscarf”.

This time, the penalties are set much higher, ranging from several hundred euros to 1,000 euros ($1,080) for repeat offences. Teachers are also required to report their students, turning classrooms into sites of surveillance and punishment, and pressuring both pupils and teachers to conform to the state’s policy.

Yet when the first ban was in force, not a single fine was imposed – underscoring that the policy was symbolic, aimed at rallying support by stigmatising a vulnerable minority, rather than practical.

What is already clear, however, is that the OVP has succeeded in drawing every major party into supporting its anti-Muslim policies. From the OVP to the Social Democrats, the Greens, the Liberals, and, predictably, the FPO, every party has endorsed this discriminatory agenda since 2018.

Despite Muslims comprising nearly nine percent of Austria’s population, few hold citizenship or voting rights, leaving them politically marginalised.

Even if the constitutional court overturns the ban once again, the damage will already have been done.

It sends a chilling message to young Muslim girls and boys: that their faith, and by extension their identity, is unwelcome in Austrian society. Muslim families reported a heightened sense of insecurity after the first ban, with some teachers emboldened to pressure students into removing their hijabs even before the law was enacted.

Austria’s fixation on legislating against the hijab is not about safeguarding children but about entrenching exclusion, normalising Islamophobia as mainstream politics, and signalling to a new generation of Muslims that their place in Austrian society will always be precarious.