Austrian wins right to wear kitchen tool as religious headgear

An Austrian won the right to be photographed for his driver’s license wearing a pasta strainer after a three-year struggle – on grounds of religious freedom. Niko Alm, a “pastafarian" who claims allegiance to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster which lampooned religion, said he could wear the tool since a psychologist declared him fit to drive. “Today I was able to get my new driving licence, and in it you can clearly see that I’m wearing a colander on my head to demonstrate my allegiance to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster ... My headwear has now been recognised by the Republic of Austria," Alm wrote in his blog, according to a report in the UK-based The Telegraph. A separate report on BBC said Alm first applied for the license three years ago after reading that headgear was allowed in official pictures only for confessional reasons. He said that the sieve was a requirement of his religion. On the other hand, Manfred Reinthaler, a police spokesman in Vienna, said that the licence was permitted simply because Alm's face was fully visible in the photo. "The photo was not approved on religious grounds. The only criterion for photos in driving licence applications is that the whole face must be visible," he said. Reinthaler added that the license "has been ready since October 2009 - it was not collected, that's all there is to it." The Telegraph report said that the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster was founded in 2005 to oppose pressure on the Kansas school board in the United States to teach the theory of intelligent design in biology class. The idea of intelligent design had been touted as an alternative to evolution as an explanation of life on Earth. — TJD, GMA News