The German courtroom has become an unexpected site for violence against Muslim women—material, psychological, and physical. Several significant cases in the past five years, though substantively unrelated, have nonetheless sent a unified, clear signal to Muslim women who would consider seeking justice through the German legal system: you will find no support or safety here.

In September 2003, the Federal Constitutional Court effectively relinquished its authority to determine whether the headscarf, worn by many Muslim women, could be donned by civil servants on the job. They placed the burden on state legislatures to decide—signaling that state laws not permitting the headscarf in the public sector would not violate German Basic Law. A constitutional issue was thus abdicated to the political; the masses now debate the material possibilities available to Muslim women who wear the scarf, shaping their career choices, tangibly closing them out of certain life chances. The woman sought a legal resolution, a bulwark against the prejudices of the political. The court said: no, you won’t get it here.

In January 2007, a court in Frankfurt told a woman who had sued for a speedy divorce* on grounds that her husband abused her and threatened her life, that her request would not be granted because in their religion (Islam) and cultural milieu (Moroccan), disciplining wives in this way was conventional. The woman sought physical protection and psychological peace of mind from the menace of her husband through the courts. The court said: no, you won’t get it here.**

In July 2009, a woman was stabbed to death in a court in Dresden as she sat on the witness stand, testifying against the man who would, moments later, murder her. He was appealing charges already brought against him precisely for his prior Islamophobic verbal abuse; she was murdered precisely for her religious identity. For thirty seconds the man stabbed her and the fetus she carried within her, 18 times. Her husband ran to her, and was injured by the perpetrator, and shot by the court security. Though the woman successfully exercised her legal rights, the absurd chain of events that took place in that courtroom, and the relative silence that followed in civil society, announced: your very body is vulnerable in the courts, your life is not valuable enough to stir us.

Perhaps it's just that German courts have been recklessly ineffective in making real the judicial support that could work for Muslim women against the violence that operate upon them, whether material, psychological, or biological.

It is more true to say, however, that German courts have been the very locus of these violations, not merely an enabler or passive accessory. The severity of these acts is made possible by the fact of their collective convergence in a courtroom. The injustice of these events is radical because of the court’s promise as a purveyor of justice, which it fails to live up to, again and again, in increasingly absurd ways.

The ramifications of this unseemly pattern are as predictable as they are inevitable: that rope which has motivated Muslim women to turn to the German legal system for justice may slowly unfurl. The trust that “when all else fails, the law will be my on my side” is depleting. This is an alarming state of affairs, and it ought to be a cause of concern for all those who have a robust understanding of a functioning civil society.

It is critical to note that the starting point of the concern these cases draw out is not necessarily that they share some common source (like some grand conspiracy, or Islamophobia), but rather the effects that together these three events work to bring about: a loss of trust in the legal system’s ability to mete out justice. Ultimately, this is not just a loss for Muslim women, but for all those who trust and depend upon the promise of the judiciary in a liberal constitutional democracy.

With these damaging effects as our starting point, how could we not be motivated to investigate the causes of such unjust reiterations?

* In German law, couples are required to wait a year after separation to make their divorce official.
** Though the judge was removed from the case, and the woman’s request eventually granted, the judge was never disciplined for this outrageous breach.

(Photo: Luhai Wong)

Sara Ludin grew up in Aurora, Colorado. She graduated with a bachelors degree in Philosophy from Dartmouth College in 2008, and spent the past year in Berlin, Germany, as a Fulbright Scholar.