Ethnic minority religious education and the right of female students and teachers to wear a headscarf have been some of the most persistent and often prickly claims raised by Muslim immigrants in Europe. Minority religious education is nowadays incorporated in the public education curricula of all Western European countries but France and the number of Islamic schools is increasing. Instead, various studies show that there has been a converging trend in restricting the veil in schools across countries, most often justified under the framework of gender equality and the right of female students and teachers not to be imposed upon religious dress code rules. A puzzle that still remains to be solved is why gender issues played a marginal role in the debates related to minority religious education and the establishment of Islamic schools. In order to answer this question the paper analyses the relationship between religious education policies and headscarf regulation in fifteen European countries. For a better grasp of the gender dimension, the paper focuses on the in-depth study of parliamentary debates and media claims on religious education and Islamic dress codes in public schools in Germany, Belgium, France and the UK.
