German professor hurls racist insults at Muslim student

A Muslim student Gulsen Kurt has been racially insulted by a university professor in Germany because she was wearing a headscarf, her lawyer said.

"Article 4 of the German Constitution protects religious freedom, and a student can attend lessons by wearing a headscarf. The attitude of this professor is absolutely unacceptable," her lawyer Fatih Zingal said on Monday.

The professor used racist slurs and even compared the Muslim woman’s headscarf with the swastika symbol of neo-Nazis, Zingal said.

The incident occurred during an economics class at the campus of the Bonn-Rhein-Sieg university in northwestern Germany.

Twenty-three-year-old Kurt, who was shocked by the lecturer’s use of racist slurs, said most of the students reacted and left the class in protest.

"The professor said that he will not allow a student with a headscarf to attend the class, just as he would not allow a neo-Nazi wearing a swastika. He shouted at me, saying ‘you are an Islamofascist’, and that he will report me to the directorate," she said.

Kurt said the directorate had apologised over the racist slurs in class and underlined that the behaviour of the lecturer is not approved by the university administration.

Growing racism

It was the latest in a string of anti-Muslim incidents and hate crimes in Germany, particularly affecting women wearing Islamic covers.

A country of over 84 million people, Germany has the second-largest Muslim population in Western Europe after France. It is home to nearly 5 million Muslims, according to official figures.

The country had witnessed growing racism and Islamophobia in recent years, fueled by the propaganda of far-right groups and parties.

German police recorded 5,372 xenophobic incidents and 610 anti-Muslim hate crimes last year.

Experts say actual figures could be much higher, as many of them are not properly investigated or registered in the official statistics.