German citizenship denied to Lebanese migrant as he refuses to shake hands with women

According to a court ruling, anyone who refuses to shake hands with women because of fundamentalist values ​​may not be naturalized. The administrative court of Baden-Württemberg has therefore rejected the corresponding application by a Lebanese.

The crazy story began before the Covid-19 period, when it was still everyday life to shake hands.

The man, now around 40 years old, has been living legally in Germany since 2002. He studied medicine here and is now a senior physician at a clinic. His behavior at the handover of the naturalization certificate in 2015 was his undoing.

The Lebanese had signed the leaflet on compliance with the constitution and against all forms of extremism. He had also achieved the maximum number of points in the naturalization test. But then he refused to shake hands with the responsible clerk at the planned handover!

The District Office then refused naturalization. The Lebanese moved to the Stuttgart administrative court. 

In the next instance, the administrative court of Baden-Württemberg ruled: If a naturalization applicant refuses to shake hands “for gender-specific reasons that cannot be reconciled with Article 3 Paragraphs 2 and 3 of the Basic Law”, “no classification in German living conditions is given".

This applies in particular if the refusal to shake hands between the sexes - as in this case - serves to “help the validity of a Salafist conviction on the relationship between men and women to have a social impact”.

The hearing was already in the summer. The judgment (AZ .: 12 S 629/19) was only recently announced to those involved. The plaintiff can appeal to the Federal Administrative Court.

The Lebanese justified his refusal to shake hands with the fact that he had promised his wife not to shake hands with any other woman. She is a Muslim of German nationality and of Syrian origin.

The court put it this way: The Lebanese perceives the opposite sex “per se as a menacing danger of sexual temptation or immoral behavior”. The fact that the naturalization applicant no longer shakes hands with men for reasons of equal treatment does not change the legal assessment. This is tactical behavior under the impression of the legal dispute.

The fact that hands are currently hardly shaken because of the corona pandemic does not play a role in the assessment. “Due to the long historical tradition of handshakes”, the judges did not believe that handshaking would be permanently abolished.

Source: Bild