Ümit Vural, chair of the Islamic Religious Community of Austria, announced that they would once again challenge the regulation banning girls under 14 from wearing headscarves or traditional Islamic head coverings at school. Vural said the ban had been introduced without genuine dialogue with families.
New legal challenge to the headscarf ban
In December 2025, the Austrian Parliament adopted a law banning girls under 14 from wearing headscarves in public and private schools. The regulation entered into force on September 1, with the start of the new school year.
The government defends the ban on the grounds that it protects gender equality. If the violation is repeated, parents can be fined between 150 and 800 euros.
Vural said the Islamic Religious Community had previously petitioned the Constitutional Court against the regulation, but the application had been rejected on procedural grounds because the law had not yet entered into force. He said the new application would be submitted together with a report prepared by a law professor who concluded that the law conflicted with the Constitution.
Vural said protecting children should be the priority in the headscarf debate and stated that no child should be forced to wear a headscarf. He said that if there were suspicions of pressure or coercion, or if a child's health and safety were threatened, the authorities should first meet with the family and assess possible interventions.
Vural said it could not be claimed either that all children wore headscarves by force or that all children chose to do so of their own free will. He said the children viewed Islam as a religion legally recognized in Austria and the headscarf as a religious obligation, and therefore questioned the grounds for the ban.
Debate over “political Islam”
Debate over the concept of “political Islam” in Austria intensified from the end of August. Chancellor Christian Stocker called for a constitutional ban on the concept, while Integration Minister Claudia Bauer announced that they were preparing a legislative proposal on the issue.
Vural said the concept of “political Islam” had been debated for more than 10 years and had no clear, legally applicable definition. He said the scope and boundaries of the concept had also not been determined at a workshop organized by the Islamic Religious Community in 2019.
Vural called on the government to explain which activities it was targeting and precisely what it wanted to ban. He said activities that threaten the constitutional order and democracy were already prohibited under existing legislation, which also provides criminal sanctions for such acts.
Vural said the state should protect society and the constitutional order from threats, arguing that this should be done by directly targeting small groups that pose a danger. He stated that presenting Islam or all Muslims as a problem was not the right approach.
Threats against Muslims
Vural said online threats against Muslims and hostile rhetoric had increased in Austria. He said the Islamic Religious Community had received threatening emails and that hostile posts had appeared on social media following debates about Islam or the headscarf.
Vural said what was seen on social media reflected only part of the threat and that other threats had not reached the public or the media. He said these threats harmed Muslims' sense of security and belonging in the country and called for threats against Muslims to be addressed with the same seriousness as threats directed at other communities.
Vural said Muslims were part of Austria, worked in the country and contributed to society. He said the Islamic Religious Community was working so that children could see themselves as both Muslim and Austrian, and called on security services to monitor people or groups moving toward extremism through social media and apply the necessary legal sanctions.
Vural said Muslims expected their contributions to Austria to be recognized and to be accepted as equal citizens.
