Colander-wearing Austrian "Pastafarian" issued driver's licence

Jul 13, 2011, 11:15 GMT

Vienna - An Austrian man successfully insisted he should be allowed to wear a colander for his driver's licence photo because of religious reasons, Vienna police confirmed Wednesday.

Religious sceptic Niko Alm said he is a member of the US-based parody religion, Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whose adherents call themselves Pastafarians.

Alm said he was inspired to launch his initiative when he learned that it was possible to wear a religious head dress for document photos in Austria.

'I thought that this exception should also apply to me, and I simply took the noodle colander as a symbol for the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and wore it,' he told broadcaster ORF.

A police spokesman told the German Press Agency dpa that the traffic authority decided to issue the driver's licence several years after Alm's application, on the grounds that his face was fully visible, not because it considered the kitchen tool a religious head dress.

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster came into being in 2005 in the United States to protest the decision by Kansas state's education board to allow the teaching of intelligent design in public schools.

'By design, the only dogma allowed in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is the rejection of dogma,' it says on its website.