BERLIN, March 23 (UPI) -- A German judge has been removed from office for citing the Koran in turning down a woman's request for a quick divorce because of domestic violence.
Christa Datz-Winter, a judge in the western German city of Frankfurt, said the German-born Muslim woman had to wait a year to file her divorce, citing a verse from the Koran, and noting that it wasn't unusual in her husband's Moroccan cultural environment to beat his woman.
The decision had unleashed a storm of protest in Germany, with top juridical politicians criticizing that a German judge would put centuries-old Islamic teaching ahead of modern German law in deciding a case of domestic violence.
The woman's request for the judge to be removed from the case on the grounds of bias was granted on Wednesday, after significant media pressure.
"When the Koran is put above the German constitution, I can only say, 'Good night, Germany,'" Ronald Pofalla, general secretary of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives, told Germany's mass-selling daily Bild.
