Frankfurt University has been rocked by student protests over an academic conference on the Muslim practice of women wearing headscarves.

Students accused the university of promoting Islamophobia with the conference, which is scheduled to take place next month.

The protests come despite the fact the conference is set to feature Islamic theologians and women who support the wearing of headscarves as well as critics of the practice.

Students have targeted the conference with social media posts of young women holding up signs with slogans including “No room for racism” and “I’m not in the mood for hate speech”.

They have called for the dismissal of Prof Susanne Schröter, the head of the university’s Islamic research centre and the organiser of the conference.

But the university has refused to bow to the protests. Prof Birgitta Wolff, the president of the university, has defended the right to “freedom of scholarship and academic discourse” and accused the students of acting as a “self-appointed discourse police”.

The conference in fact has its origins in earlier protests at an exhibition on contemporary Islamic fashion at Frankfurt’s Museum of Applied Arts, which students accused of trivialising the Muslim tradition of hijab.

Prof Schröter organised the conference on ‘The Islamic headscarf: symbol of dignity or oppression' in response to those protests.