Headscarf Issue Research Articles

Головной платок в Турции: символ или политический инструмент?

Headscarves are quite a controversial subject in Turkish society. The article reviews the issue in the context of the confrontation between traditional religious and secular values from the perspective of law enforcement. It notes the substantial impact exerted by the headscarf controversy on the political atmosphere and the higher education system in Turkey. The issue is often debated in the context of the threat to the principle of secularism. The previously widespread practice of excluding women who cover their heads from public sphere, especially universities, has become a serious domestic policy problem in Turkey that has been largely securitised by the judicial authorities. (A securitised issue is any aspect of public life that is portrayed by the state as an existential threat and is perceived as such by the population.) The situation changed significantly following the rise to power of the Justice and Development Party in 2022: against a backdrop of sweeping Islamisation of society, the headscarf issue was re-interpreted and re-semanticised. Chronologically, the article covers the period from the emergence of the Turkish Republic to the “Justice and Development Party era” and includes the latest initiatives launched by the ruling elite in late 2022. The article consistently analyses the concept of secularism in republican Turkey, examines the historical context of the headscarf issue and its transformation into a social problem, and provides a description of specific laws and court rulings on the subject. The article ends with a summary of the authors’ conclusions.

Analyzing the Justice and Development Party’s changing discourse on the headscarf issue as the constitutive part of its drift toward authoritarian politics in Turkey

Despite its long history since the late Ottoman period in Turkey, this article focuses on the headscarf issue within a particular period; since 2002, when the Justice and Development Party has been in power. Women’s issues have always occupied a large space in the Justice and Development Party’s project(s), which articulate diverse narrative lines ranging from conservatism to liberalism. The article aims to unravel this diverse insight into the Justice and Development Party’s politics within the context of its recent political drift toward authoritarianism while particularly focusing on its headscarf discourses. It argues that the Justice and Development Party’s political drift toward authoritarianism resulted in the replacement of the earlier politics of consensus/‘non-defiance’, which refers to a conservatism that denies radicalism and avoids emphasizing controversial issues like the headscarf, with the politics of dissensus/defiance that reveal social tensions and political conflicts such as those between Islamic and secular sectors, through revitalizing the old debate on the headscarf issue. In this sense, the lifting of the headscarf bans in public institutions in 2008 can be read as a symptom, not of the Justice and Development Party’s earlier liberal stand, but of the beginning of its shift toward authoritarianism based on its religious-nationalist project, which made use of this liberal right of pious women in enhancing the gaps between oppositional groups and in consolidating its social basis. This earlier attempt has been followed by continuous use of the headscarf as a symbol drawing a border between ‘us’ and ‘them’ and signifying outrages and moral crisis for which the Justice and Development Party blamed the oppositional groups. Within this context, the article questions the ways in which the headscarf as a political symbol along with other conservative policies targeting female bodies and sexualities took a part in the constitution and consolidation of the Justice and Development Party’s radical right alliance and its authoritarian regime.

Political Climate and the Headscarf Issue in Turkey: A Perspective from the Labor Market

This article focuses on the relationship between the socioeconomic rights of headscarved women and the political attitude of governments towards the headscarf in Turkey. Taking the 2013 removal of bans against the headscarf in the public sphere as the reference point, we attempt to provide a before-and-after comparison of the status of headscarved professionals in the Turkish labor market, based on factors in the political climate. While focusing mainly on the changing outlook in the public sector, we also examine the consequences of this liberalizing move on the private sector and explore the likely futures of the headscarf issue from a labor market perspective. Findings from the qualitative research reveal the strong influence political attitude has on the headscarf issue, as evident in the employment of headscarved women in white-collar occupations. We discovered that the political climate is still expected to be the key dynamic in Turkey that shapes the future for professionals wearing the headscarf, primarily through the channel of the state job market. This study contributes to the vast literature on women’s social and economic rights by addressing a decades-long, divisive issue that concerns a substantial segment of Turkish society.

The Headscarf Issue and Islamic Feminism in Orhan Pamuk’s Snow

AI Publications is an open access peer review international journal to publish the article in the field of Agriculture, Horticulture, Food science, Rural Development, Environment and Health Research, Chemistry, Mathematics,Physics.

Mansour Fahmy, Pioneer of Islamic Feminism in Modern Egyptian Thought

Mansour Fahmy (1886-1959), one of the dramatic figures in modern Arab philosophical and social thought. He was the reformist and enlightenment figure in modern Arab history. He is also the owner of a notable current that was subjected to a violent attack that silenced him for a long time and forced him to "hide" physically. However, this did not eliminate the new opinions and positions that came at the beginning of the twentieth century towards the issue of women. He is the first to write with a scientific methodology - from the point of view of sociology - on Islamic discourse and its dealings with women. he sought to differentiate between religion and the religious establishment, between the personality of the Prophet Muhammad and what later prevailed in the books of jurisprudence and others. When he discussed the headscarf issue, he concluded that it was the product of traditions and customs that the Hijab is not from the Islamic religion. Islamic law has nothing to do with the Hijab. Mansour Fahmy's creativity was at one of the sensitive stages in Egypt's modern history in which the political, social, national, cultural, and revolution clashed in each one. All this, in turn, identified the problem of Mansour Fahmy's intellectual personality in the battles of thought and politics. This research's main task is to redraw the features of his actual personality and the reality of his intellectual, social, and political positions. Besides, this study seeks to uncover the effect of philosophy on crystallizing Mansour Fahmy's critical personality and its role in laying the foundations of the critical vision with its practical, reformist, and enlightening dimensions.

The Islamic Headscarf: A threat to Secularity, Modernity, and Integration

No other piece of cloth has ever caused this much debate as the headscarf. This paper examines the headscarf debate in three European countries i.e., France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Firstly, the headscarf affair depicts different state policies developed and implemented by three countries, to integrate the Muslim immigrants. Secondly, an analysis of different approaches used by these countries regarding the headscarf issue highlights the place of Muslims and Islam in the European countries. Lastly, this paper contends that the headscarf controversy in France, Germany and the United Kingdom revolves around the issues of secularity vs. Islamic fundamentalism, gender equality vs. religious rights, modernity vs. backwardness and integration vs. assimilation. In this paper, we argue that contrary to the common perception that Muslims are intolerant, backward, and theocratic; the act of banning the headscarf by some of the European countries, in fact, proved these countries to be intolerant and authoritarian towards Muslims.

Civil society and state relations in Turkey: Opposing trajectories of two Islamist women’s civil society organizations

ABSTRACT The Islamic women's civil society organizations (CSOs) in Turkey entered a new phase with the lifting of the headscarf ban, which had long been the focus of Islamic women’s activism against authoritarian gender policies in the country. Based on research conducted in 2012 and 2018 on two Islamist women’s CSOs that have been active here during the last two decades, AKDER (Women’s Rights Organization against Discrimination) and BKP (Capital City Women’s Platform Association), this paper aims to understand these groups and their positions regarding the civil society-state relationship under an altered climate vis-à-vis gender. While AKDER represented a shift from an oppositional to a close relationship with the state from 2012 to 2018 respectively, the BKP in 2018 represented a more conflictual and oppositional stance towards the state compared to 2012. This paper argues that the combined impact of the revocation of the ban and an increasingly authoritarian climate in Turkey has led to a shrinking of space for struggle by the women’s movement in general and for the Islamist women in particular. When the headscarf issue disappeared, the solidarity that prevailed among Islamist women started to weaken and divergences emerged.

Emir Kaya. Secularism and State Religion in Modern Turkey: Law, Policy-Making and the Diyanet

Reviewed by: Secularism and State Religion in Modern Turkey: Law, Policy-Making and the Diyanet by Emir Kaya Kristin E. Fabbe Emir Kaya. Secularism and State Religion in Modern Turkey: Law, Policy-Making and the Diyanet. London: I. B. Tauris, 2018. 232 pp. Cloth, $108. ISBN: 978-1786722294. With Secularism and State Religion in Modern Turkey, Kaya makes an important contribution to a growing literature in Turkish studies that questions the usefulness of standard tropes characterizing Turkish politics and society along a secular vs. religious divide. Deploying “descriptive methods of legal pluralist theory,” the book seeks to avoid “the vicious circles of ‘secularism talk’” that have convoluted the study of the relationship between state, religion, and society in Turkey for decades. Kaya deems the theoretical tool of secularism as “too scattered and speculative to be useful” and instead offers a book that he calls “a treatise on secularism—a treatise that treats a particular type and implementation of secularism, though often tacitly, not head-on” (pp. 6–7). The focus for Kaya is on how the coexistence of Islam and Turkey’s particular variety of secularism is actually manifest in the field of law, as well as the institutions and individuals tasked with maintaining a balanced coexistence. As such, the study is rightly structured around an exhaustive examination of Turkey’s Presidency of Religion Affairs (the Diyanet), and how this official body relates to both state and societal elements. Kaya asks: What is it exactly that the Diyanet is doing as an institution and, concomitantly, what is done by means of it? The book’s central hypothesis about the Diyanet is structured around relative appearances. According to Kaya, the Diyanet appears “deficient” from some vantage points and “fair and fitting” from others, thus eluding decisive answers to the often-asked question “is it any good?” Rather, the institution as depicted through Kaya’s research comes across as a “flawed and indispensable body at the same time” (pp. 3–4), both a product of historical legacies and a pragmatic necessity. My hunch is that future scholarship is likely to debate the book’s self-proclaimed “relativism” with vigor because, at various points in the text, relativism seems to slip towards contradiction. For example, Kaya states that the Diyanet “claims to represent a multitude of voices and perspectives” (p. 75), but a thorough explanation of how exactly the Diyanet supports this claim is lacking. Furthermore, in the conclusion Kaya describes Turkey’s approach to religion as “an open-minded pluralist solution” (p. 182). Such lines of argumentation seem like a bridge too far, especially when one considers that the Diyanet is a tax funded, state institution that does not offer representation or services to Turkey’s non-Muslim and Alevi communities. To its credit, the book addresses the Diyanet’s relationship with Turkey’s multitude of religious minority groups and other detractors—both pious and non-pious alike—at some length (see below). Thus, I believe that what Kaya may be attempting to argue is that the Diyanet has tried to embrace certain norms that are traditionally associated with secularism and others that are [End Page 252] indisputably religious, which is a type of pluralism unto itself. Either that, or that the Diyanet is pluralist in the sense that it strives to maintain an equilibrium between the various sources of law that emanate from the state, from religion, and from society, respectively. Yet even still, legal pluralist theory as a research methodology and pluralism as a description of the religion-state-society arrangement that Turkey has institutionalized do occasionally appear to be conflated in ways that will unnerve critical readers of the book. Still, Secularism and State Religion in Modern Turkey is a very useful scholarly exercise for three reasons. First, through a multifaceted examination of the legal underpinnings of the Diyanet the book opens a number of new portals for analysis that go beyond the tired and polarizing discussions—the headscarf issue being just one such example—that typically structure academic work religion-state-society relations in Turkey. Indeed, several chapters of the book, especially chapters two and three, are a valuable reference for those seeking to identify the actual nuances...

Limits of post‐secularism in Turkey: Comparing the attitudes of the Justice and Development Party towards the headscarf and Alevi issues

AbstractThe debate on post‐secularism indicates both the inclusion of religious voices into the public sphere and the rising importance of religion in international politics as well as in domestic politics of Western nation‐states. The term “post‐secular” firstly emerged to describe the Western societies where pluralism has been a vital concern for liberal democracy. Nonetheless, the very same concern is prevalent across non‐Western societies. In this respect, the Turkish case having a secular state in a predominantly Muslim society provides a vibrant example for the analysis of post‐secularism as Islamic‐oriented Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) has been ruling Turkey since November 2002. In this article, the success or failure of the AKP in representing a post‐secular moment in Turkish politics is analysed with reference to and in comparison of two issues. The first one is the Sunni‐Islamic demands on the visibility in the public sphere symbolised with the headscarf issue. The second issue is the demands of Alevis living in Turkey as they force the boundaries of the “secular” public sphere which has been dominated by the Sunni‐Turkish socio‐cultural identity.

The Turkish Constitutional Court, laicism and the headscarf issue

From 1989 onwards, the Turkish Constitutional Court justified the headscarf ban in universities by citing laicism. Interestingly, in 2014, the Court found the headscarf ban in courts unconstitutional and revoked it by again citing laicism as the main reason. How can this seemingly paradoxical practice be explained? This article traces the trajectory of the headscarf issue in Turkey by analysing and contextualising the Constitutional Court decisions. In order to explain how and why the Constitutional Court issued two opposing views of the headscarf ban, this article focuses on the changing political climate and legal developments that took place in Turkey between 2008 and 2014.

Arendt Re-defines “the Political” in Turkey: A Theoretical Analysis of the Gezi Protests

INTRODUCTIONThe popular perception of in Turkish society and Turkish culture has always been problematic. The is usually identified with party affiliation-marking an equivalency between being and being ideological, both of which are associated with partisanship and manipulation. This understanding of leaves ability and capacity of determining in which context and by whom politics can be practiced to official discourse of state. Current developments in Turkey show that both government officials and opposition are embroiled in a constant battle of defining politics and how to be to public. When it comes to controversial issues such as civil-military relations, headscarf issue and judicial independence, official discourse adopts a negative attitude towards being political. Most newspaper headlines are full of quotations from officials warning Turkish citizens to shun active politics when it comes to these sensitive topics. Being is thus depicted as being inappropriate and untimely.1 Such an understanding reinforces a negative perception of politics and being political. Within this context, politics is seen as an illegitimate reaction to an already existing system and structure.One can observe aforementioned negative perceptions of being during Gezi protests in Turkey. At end of May 2013, a group of environmentalists staged a sit-in protest against an urban development project in Istanbul's Taksim Square. The brutal eviction of peaceful protestors by Turkish police led to further protests throughout country. Despite official declarations that park would remain in its present condition, continuing protests aimed instead at disproportionate use of police force that was persistently being carried out against protestors.The character of these events has been a controversial issue. Interestingly, even though protesters and government officials were on opposing sides in this context, they comprehended the from same perspective. At its very early stages, most of protestors denied character of their action. Instead, they believed they were protesting strictly out of a concern for environment and not as part of any party or organization. Government officials, however, attributed protestors' actions as ideologically and politically motivated. These officials cast doubt on motivations of protestors and argued that most were protesting against government itself, rather than acting out of environmentalist concerns. For both government officials and Gezi protestors, was equated with partisanship.Beginning with these perceptions of what it is to be political, this paper argues that Gezi protests epitomize action for very reasons employed to reject their character. Even though concept of often carries a negative connotation, there are more affirmative ways of defining what being is. While remaining cognizant of this, this paper takes an Arendtian approach to demonstrate character of these events. As a theorist of action, revolution and civil disobedience Arendt provides a resourceful theoretical context for analysis of social movements. I argue that concept of action, constitution of public sphere, and exclusion of violence from that same public sphere in Arendt's theory correspond to various protests during Gezi demonstrations. Moreover, denial or insistence that protesters are political ignores intermediate space of Arendtian politics that is neither environmental nor captured by party politics. I offer a brief account of Hannah Arendt's substantiation of political, action, public sphere and violence. While presenting Arendt's conceptualization, I will also illustrate how different forms of protest, such as sit-ins, organizing forums, and standing one's ground, correspond to being through exclusion of violence and acting spontaneously in a self-constituted public sphere, with condition of plurality of equals. …

Islamist Women and Feminist Concerns in Contemporary Turkey: Prospects for Women’s Rights and Solidarity

Islamist Women and Feminist Concerns in Contemporary TurkeyProspects for Women’s Rights and Solidarity Yeşim Arat (bio) “Until the lions claim their own history, the hunter stories will always praise the hunters.”1 This is the African proverb that the headscarved Islamist lawyer Sibel Eraslan used to preface an article she contributed to a secular feminist collection of essays. Eraslan was one of the most important names behind the success of the Islamist Refah (Welfare) Party in Istanbul, in the 1994 municipal elections.2 As a religious woman writing her own story, she thus underlined the significance of what she was doing, namely, rewriting women’s history from the perspective of headscarved women and seeking legitimacy in the process. She had been a prominent leader, a “lion” in this struggle, and she was now ready to write the “lion’s history.” Her essay was part of an important collection in which two secular feminist editors traced feminism in Turkey in the 1990s. Sibel Eraslan was influenced by and in dialogue with these feminists, as her story attested. Lions and hunters had some shared histories. Eraslan’s struggle was part of a larger sociopolitical movement to shape a more religious, conservative Turkey within the parameters of a secular republic. In 2002 the Islamically rooted Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (akp, Justice and Development Party), a liberal offshoot of Refah, came to power through regular elections with the promise of further democratizing the country. akp remained in power through the 2007 and 2011 elections. After its third term in power the party’s rule devolved into majoritarian authoritarianism, restricting civil liberties, undermining separation of powers in the country, and polarizing the citizenry. In its effort to cultivate a pious generation, the government began to contest women’s rights, through both its discourse and its policies. Under changing circumstances where power was transferred from secular groups to an Islamically rooted one, the government helped pro-government newspapers to emerge where Islamist women began writing as columnists. In this article I focus on Islamist women such as Sibel Eraslan who now [End Page 125] write opinion columns in daily Islamist newspapers. By the phrase Islamist women I refer to a heterogeneous group who prioritize shaping their lives according to Islamic dictates and are vocal on this choice.3 In the Turkish context, Islamist women have primarily sought the right to cover their heads in universities and public institutions since the 1980s. They were recognized as part of the Islamist opposition fighting to expand religious rights. Now they are in positions of power as columnists in pro-government dailies, under an increasingly authoritarian conservative government. As columnists who address a conservative community, they are visible and publicly prominent, engaging in public debate and making claims about the daily agenda of the country. What do they think about women’s problems besides the headscarf issue? Only a few of these women define themselves as feminist. How do they relate to feminist concerns? How do they relate to the party in government, which at times threatens women’s rights? Do they approve of, accommodate, or criticize its attitudes toward secular women’s rights? Bhikhu Parek argues that all cultural groups are internally plural rather than monolithic and that this heterogeneity helps the internal transformation of these groups. “Each [culture] carries bits of the other within itself and is rarely sui generis. This does not mean that it has no powers of self-determination and inner impulses but rather that it is porous and subject to external influences which it interprets and assimilates in its own autonomous way,” Parek writes.4 In this article I explore the “external influences” on Islamist women who are part of the larger Islamist community in Turkey and examine how far their columnists share feminist concerns that have been articulated by secular women since the early 1980s in Turkey. In a country where about 70 percent of women cover their heads, Islamist women exposed to feminist goals are potentially an important group to expand women’s opportunities, if not to precipitate an internal transformation in the Islamist community.5 Their opinion leaders thus deserve to be studied. Much has been written...

Book Review: European Non-Discrimination Law: A Comparison of EU Law and the ECHR in the Field of Non-Discrimination and Freedom of Religion in Public Employment with an Emphasis on the Islamic Headscarf Issue. Cambridge: Intersentia, 2012. 378 pages. ISBN: 978-1-78068-126-9. EUR 75.

Book Review: <i>European Non-Discrimination Law: A Comparison of EU Law and the ECHR in the Field of Non-Discrimination and Freedom of Religion in Public Employment with an Emphasis on the Islamic Headscarf Issue.</i> Cambridge: Intersentia, 2012. 378 pages. ISBN: 978-1-78068-126-9. EUR 75.

Sarah Haverkort-Speekenbrink: European Non-Discrimination Law – A Comparison of EU Law and the ECHR in the Field of Non-Discrimination and Freedom of Religion in Public Employment with an Emphasis on the Islamic Headscarf Issue

Sarah Haverkort-Speekenbrink: European Non-Discrimination Law – A Comparison of EU Law and the ECHR in the Field of Non-Discrimination and Freedom of Religion in Public Employment with an Emphasis on the Islamic Headscarf Issue

The Making of a State-Centered Public Sphere in Turkey: A Discourse Analysis

Why has the state-centered recognition of the public sphere prevailed in Turkey over the last decade? A frame analysis of the public sphere discourse for 2002–09 reveals that the contingency of the discourse on the Islamic headscarf issue discouraged an essential understanding of the authentic public sphere. The dominant frame espoused by secularists claimed that the state banned headscarves in the public sphere were to preserve the neutrality of the public sphere. By contrast, pro-Islamists initially adopted an alternative counter-frame based on the Habermasian perspective, portraying the public sphere as tolerant of various ideas. Yet, in the face of stiff opposition from secularists, the pro-Islamists came to use a negative counter-frame with increasing frequency, implying that the state-centered public sphere impinged on the freedom to wear a headscarf. As a result, both the secularists' and pro-Islamists' frames helped entrench the recognition of the state-centered public sphere in Turkish society (Earlier and longer versions of this paper have appeared as IDE Discussion Paper Series No.262 (November 2010) and in Japanese in Ajiakeizai, Vol 52, No. 4 (April 2011)).

Europeanization and tolerance in Turkey: the myth of toleration

1. Multiple Modernities and Turkish Modernity: A Continuous Journey of Europeanization 2. Tolerance and Cultural Diversity Discourses in Turkey 3. Kurdish Question: A Hundred Years of Solitude 4. AKP's Alevi Initiative: Limits of Tolerance 5. Headscarf Issue 6. Nation, Europe and Modernity: Social Critic of the 'Holy Trinity' (Sunni-Muslim Turk)

Turkish civil society divided by the headscarf ban

The headscarf ban at universities and public offices in Turkey caused many debates over women's rights and freedoms. Civil society organizations, which are known as agents of democratization, have been an important part of these debates. Drawing on the literature on the relationship between civil society, democracy, and Islam, this article investigates how Islamic, Kemalist secular, and non-Kemalist secular organizations support their stance towards the headscarf ban and react to critical developments regarding the ban. The discourse of the organizations is analysed using their press releases and in-depth interviews with the presidents of the organizations. By declaring the headscarf as anti-secular, anti-modern, and oppressive, Kemalist secular organizations reproduce official state ideology. The various ways in which Islamic organizations frame their stance on the headscarf issue on the other hand suggest that Islamic organizations could be just as democratic as many other secular movements. Furthermore, the fact that non-Kemalist secular organizations are critical of the headscarf ban makes them much closer to Islamic organizations than Kemalist secular organizations.

THE PROHIBITION OF THE MUSLIM HEADSCARF: CONTRASTING INTERNATIONAL APPROACHES IN POLICY AND LAW

Law and state policy towards the Muslim headscarf differs widely from country to country.1 Western states in which the wearing of the headscarf is, or has been, a contentious issue, tend to follow one of two broad theoretical approaches: assimilationalist or culturally pluralist, although rarely in a pure form. Often policy will be made up of one, whilst containing threads of the other. This article will focus on the law and state policy predominantly in six countries where the headscarf issue has arisen, and where different political or legal approaches have been adopted, giving rise to different results or consequences. Often the veil debates in each country will give rise to the same broad issues. For example, integration, religious freedom, secularity and health and safety are all debated in respect of the Muslim headscarf. However, it is often the case that one issue will be more important or prevalent in one particular country than in another. For example in the UK integration has been highlighted in the recent debates, but in the US the concerns rest with the concept of religious freedom, per se. In France and Turkey there has been a need to protect secularism, where the veil has been particularly attacked as a form of pressure by Muslims on others or else regarded as a symbol of the oppression of women. Bans on the headscarf have been attempted in Germany based on employment law and in Canada on health and safety grounds. In other European countries concerns have centred on immigration issues or public security. State policy tends to be driven by various factors including the particular state’s historical makeup, immigration and demography, public opinion and political pressure, as well as the theoretical issues which underlie and inform the debate.

Speaking of Women? Exploring Violence against Women through Political Discourses: A Case Study of Headscarf Debates in Turkey

This paper explores the production of violence against women through political discourses in Turkey. Since the foundation of the Republic (1923), women’s bodies have been on the agenda as the markers of secular Turkish modernity. With the rise of political Islam as of the 1970s, the image of the headscarved woman has challenged the construction of “modern Republican woman” and the association of women’s bodies with secularism. Especially after the 1980s with the introduction of bans, “the headscarf issue” has intensified and become the embodiment of the clash between political Islam and the official secularist ideology. By drawing on the sexualizing aspects of the headscarf and its significance in the construction of female honour, I will demonstrate how women’s bodies are turned into readily available topics for consumption in politics. I argue that headscarf debates have factored into patriarchal discourses, which inflict violence on women on both discursive and material levels. By analysing a few cases on media reflections and art projects on the “headscarf debate”, I aim to show how women’s bodies become vulnerable to violence through political discourses.

Von offener Neutralität zu (unintendiertem) Laizismus

The Federal Constitutional Court’s decision in the “headscarf case” gave the federal states the opportunity to redefine the complex relationship between state and religion in Germany. This paper examines the results of the interaction between politics and judiciary concerning the headscarf issue and tries to explain why the federal states passed quite diverse regulations. It demonstrates the relevance of the hypothesis of party difference for this question and shows that under the terms of a liberal democracy unequal treatment of religions—as it was intended by some political actors—cannot be enforced. Moreover, the paper shows an undesired outcome of this attempt of unequal treatment: The dominant German state-religion-paradigm has shifted towards laicism.