Discrimination against employing Muslim workers in Germany

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - The worst of these cases are always in the workplace because not getting a job on grounds of ethnical and religious background makes lives very difficult for these victimized Muslims. They are ambitious and well-educated… but jobless nonetheless.

I decided to analyze this scenario in a European country and I chose Germany because it has some of the worst cases and the number of Muslim victims there is growing every second. According to a 2010 nationwide poll by the research institute Infratest-dimap, more than one third of the respondents would prefer “a Germany without Islam.”

In Germany, a rising number of skilled Muslims are complaining of discrimination, especially women wearing a headscarf who feel excluded from the job market.

One such victim, Ismahen says, “My name is Ismahen Dabbach, I am 26 years old, I was born in Germany and I am a trained office clerk. I am very flexible, independent and open to everything that carries me further forward in life.”

This is how Ismahen Dabbach describes herself in job interviews. But Dabbach, whose parents are Tunisian, feels that since she decided to wear the Muslim headscarf four months ago, her search for a job has become extremely difficult.

“They put you on a waiting list, then they invite you and tell you that they will call you, but after three days you get a rejection letter. So you start asking yourself: did I make a mistake or is it the company's fault?,” Dabbach asks.

She has collected about 30 rejection letters. She says that she lost track of how many applications she had written in the last few months and adds that before she was covering her hair, she didn't have any difficulty finding internships, part-time jobs and her apprenticeship in a logistics firm.

“I want to have a normal eight-hour-job, from eight to five, five days a week, where I can wear my headscarf, like an ordinary citizen," she says. Dabbach lives in the western German town of Gütersloh, but for a good job she would move anywhere in Germany. Dabbach is not the only skilled Muslim woman having trouble finding a job in Germany.

In Dusseldorf, about 80 people gathered in a conference room where scientists, politicians, activists and Muslim social workers are discussing discrimination against Muslim women in the workplace.

One of the organizers is Erika Theissen, who converted to Islam in the 1980s and is now managing director of the Muslim Women’s Center for Encounters and Further Education (BFmF). It’s one of the biggest associations for Muslim women in Germany. Today, over 50 Muslim women, some of them highly qualified, work in her center.

“People think, the Muslim community doesn't want Muslim women to work. But most Muslim women are not discriminated against by the Muslim community, but by society. Society is not open enough to let us work,” she commented.

Mario Peucker, a social scientist at the University of Melbourne, has studied the integration of Muslims in the German job market. He says that examples of discrimination in the workplace are hard to uncover, and it has not been possible yet to identify religion - rather than race or country of origin - as the source of discrimination in Germany.

Peucker says there are no hard figures yet, but studies and interviews with Muslim migrants show that women who wear a headscarf have hardly any chance of getting a job where a certain prestige is involved.

Esma May, whose parents are from Turkey is Muslim, but she has decided not to cover her hair. May is also a politician with Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats.

As lives of Muslims across the Western World continues getting more difficult, we can but hope and pray that the human race learns to judge people by their abilities and potential, rather than ethnic or religious backgrounds and beliefs.

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