Austria: Muslim Mother forced a burqa on Viennese teacher

The Islamic faith is increasingly becoming a headache in schools, as a current example from everyday life at a Viennese primary school clearly demonstrates. Teachers are often powerless.
It is not only the ever-increasing number of non-German-speaking children that poses challenges for teachers at Viennese schools, cultural differences also often lead to disputes in the classroom.
This is also the case at the Felbigergasse primary school in Penzing, where the majority of the children’s families are Muslim. On parents’ consultation day, something very strange happened to a teacher: the mother of one of her pupils handed her a burqa! The young teacher had not expected this action, but she did not want to start a dispute and reluctantly accepted the “gift”. She will certainly not be wearing it and covering herself up. Unfortunately, this is not the first negative encounter with the Islamic faith. Not so long ago, one of her pupils, who is older than the rest of the class, created a group of pupils during the break and read aloud from a book to his classmates. “At first I was pleased that the children were reading voluntarily. Then I heard Arabic words,” says the class teacher.

Unfortunately, her initial delight at the exemplary behaviour quickly turned to suspicion when she took a closer look at the spine of the book. The boy was reading from the Quran! Alarmed, the teacher confiscated the book. A very courageous action by the young woman, considering that a whole family clan had once stood outside the teachers’ room and tried to intimidate her.

Islam im Klassenzimmer – Mutter überreicht Volksschullehrerin Burka | krone.at