Posted on 02/04/2007 7:36:45 PM PST by blam
Muslims to pay school's legal fight to uphold niqab ban
By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor
Last Updated: 1:19am GMT 05/02/2007
A Muslim group has offered to help fund a school's legal battle over its refusal to let a pupil wear the niqab in class.
Veiled woman: The niqab, which covers the whole face apart from the eyes
In an unprecedented move, the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford (Meco) has written to the head teacher to say it is prepared to contribute to a fighting fund.
Taj Hargey, Meco's chairman, said he was also willing to organise a campaign among Muslims nationally to resist "this largely Saudi-driven campaign to make the niqab a compulsory requirement for Muslim women".
Dr Hargey's offer comes as the school, which cannot be identified because of a court order, faces the prospect of an expensive legal fight without any backing.
Buckinghamshire county council, the local authority for the school, is unwilling to underwrite a challenge which it believes could cost as much as £500,000.
A court on Thursday is due to decide whether the school's decision not to allow the pupil, aged 12, to wear the veil should go to a full judicial review. The school, which already allows girls to wear head scarves called hijabs, drew the line at the niqab, which covers the whole face except the eyes.
It is insisting that the family accepts the uniform policy but the father has been given legal aid to fight a human rights case.
Last year the law lords ruled that a school in Luton, Beds, was justified in barring Shabina Begum from wearing a jilbab, a long loose gown, to classes but it took a long and expensive legal fight.
The judges made clear that their ruling applied only to the Luton case and it is unclear whether other courts will consider the judgment to have established case law.
If the court allows the case to proceed, the school may be forced to back down, potentially rendering any policy on uniform unenforceable at any school threatened with legal action.
The case is complicated because the girl's sisters were allowed to wear the niqab when a different head was in charge. A new policy has been introduced which the father is challenging. The girl has not been excluded, but has been out of school since early October.
In his letter to the school, Dr Hargey said the father's insistence on his daughter wearing the niqab was a "non-Islamic imposition upon your institution".
He added: "We are strongly committed to offering you our full and unequivocal support in banning face-masks at school. We trust that you will continue to resist any move to implement this kind of minority ethnic obsession, which has no foundation whatsoever in the transcendent sources of Islamic law."
Dr Hargey said that since the school's dress code already allowed the option for Muslim girls to wear the hijab, there was no need for full-face covering.
Paul Goodman, the Conservative MP for Wycombe, has pressed the county council to back the school. But although it says it supports the school's right to decide its own dress code, the council has not promised to fund a legal defence.
Mr Goodman said: "My own view is that we don't want veils in our schools. Veils are a sign of separation."
The school has sought to stay out of the wider cultural issues involved and has taken a stand for "educational and security reasons".
The Department for Education is said to be watching the case closely because of the potential for wider implications if the school has to back down or loses a human rights case.
OMG are Brits that crazy Don't answer that
They make me sick. Demand, demand, demand. Whine, whine, whine. That's all they do. Go back to the desert and heard camels and goats! I want my country back.
Go back to the desert and heard camels and goats!
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Absolutely - they are nothing but TROUBLE looking for any place they can to HAPPEN.
Wow, impressive.
LBT
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I think one has heard many camels and goats while in the desert.
The story inside the story is the incestuous relationship between the current corrupt manifestation of western law and islam. Without the law offices of such-and-such, the islamists would be milking goats and harvesting dates.
You're right. Why don't they get the message? Do we have to nuke them? LOL I hope so. ;o)
Proof that Arab/Muslims have no intentions of living peacefully in the West. They intend to keep pummeling us until we give into their every silly demand.
Read the article again. The muslim group is offering to help the school uphold the ban. Hence, the 'when pigs fly' picture above on the thread.
This says to me that what this probably comes down to is yet another example of conflict between Muslim sects. My understanding is that Saudi Wahhabism is aligned with the Sunnis, which of course Shia detest. This group is probably Shiite.
It's slightly more complicated than that. Wahabs are technically a sect within Sunni Islam. Lots of Sunni's hate them as much as they hate the Shia. Sadly, they're a sect funded by Saudi oil money, so they have lots of power right now.
Since all of islam is a cult, does it matter?
Yes.
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