The mother of a student at the Joseph Beuys Comprehensive School in Kleve, North Rhine-Westphalia, describes the “Picture” the background to the dispute: “The Muslim children told my daughter and her friend: We have Ramadanyou have to fast now and throw your bread in the bin! When the girls went to the teacher, he told our children to turn away while they ate.”

It’s probably about too Bullying and exclusion, as another mother describes. According to parents, students with a migrant background made “choking and vomiting noises” when other children ate their lunch.

“In conversation with the teacher, my daughter tearfully described that she felt excluded and discriminated against in the class. Especially during breaks, her classmates excluded her on the grounds that she was ‘German’. Asking our daughter to turn away while eating and drinking or to hide this represents a restriction of her personal freedom,” the mother told “Bild”.

District government is investigating the matter

At the same time, the school responded in response to a complaint from parents that the children who were not fasting were provoking their Muslim classmates with their food: “We talked together about the fact that drinking and eating during breaks is still perfectly fine, but that the children who are not fasting should not provoke people with their food or similar, since that has also happened. In the best case, the children should not observe each other when they are eating or not eating, so that the ‘rule’ of turning away applies to all children.”

When asked by “Bild”, the Düsseldorf district government confirmed that the case was being examined: “Students must not be restricted in their personal behavior. Cases in which students try to impose religious rules on their fellow students are consistently investigated in schools.” The authority is therefore in contact with the school management.