British court rules against Muslim attire

Britain's highest court ruled Wednesday that a secondary school was within its rights to bar a Muslim female student from wearing a jilbab, a loose, ankle-length gown, instead of the regular school uniform.

Overturning a lower court ruling in favor of the student, Shabina Begum, a five-judge panel in the House of Lords pointed out that the school, Denbigh High School in Luton, had taken great care to make its uniform acceptable to its students, 79 percent of whom are Muslim.

"The school was entitled to consider that the rules about uniform were necessary for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others," one of the judges, Lord Hoffmann, said in his written opinion.

The issue of what sort of religious dress, if any, is appropriate in state-run schools has become increasingly divisive in Europe, where the wishes of Muslim populations are often at odds with the rules set down by secular governments. In France, all conspicuous religious symbols including the hijab, the head scarf worn by many Muslim girls and women as well as Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses are banned from schools.

In 2005, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that a university in Turkey was within its rights to ban head scarves, saying that the ban was justified in avoiding giving preference to any one religion.

By such standards, the British policy is comparatively liberal. Girls at Denbigh, for instance, have a wide choice of uniform a skirt, pants, or the shalwar kameez, a flowing pants-and-tunic combination worn and considered acceptable by many Muslims. They can also wear head scarves. In addition, there are three nearby schools that allow students to wear the jilbab.

But Denbigh, a coeducational school that has 1,000 students, had argued that permitting Begum, now 17, to wear the jilbab could prove divisive, possibly leading to arguments among students about whether it represented a more devout adherence to Islam. In addition, the school said, the jilbab is too constricting and would pose safety risks.

Tahir Alam, the education spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, a lobby group, was quoted by the Bloomberg news service as saying that the safety argument was "an excuse."

In their unanimous ruling, the judges said that Denbigh had "taken immense pains to devise a uniform policy which respected Muslim beliefs," laying down rules that "were as far from being mindless as uniform rules could ever be" and that were apparently "acceptable to mainstream Muslim opinion."

Begum sued the school in 2002 after school officials insisted that she wear the required uniform, which, she told the BBC on Wednesday, she believes "did not satisfy Islamic clothing."

Represented by Cherie Booth, a human rights lawyer and the wife of Prime Minister Tony Blair, Begum argued that the school had denied her the right to practice her religion.

Speaking of the jilbab, which covers the entire body except for the hands and face, she told the BBC: "I feel that it is an obligation upon Muslim women to wear this, although there are other opinions."

Begum added that she was "saddened and disappointed" at the ruling.

"I still don't see why I was told to go home from school when I was just practicing my religion," she said.

As a result of Denbigh's uniform requirement, Begum spent two years out of school. She has now gone back, attending another local school where the jilbab is permitted.

A spokesman for the Department of Education said that it welcomed the ruling as reinforcement of its view that schools should be allowed to set their own uniform policies. "What an individual pupil should or should not wear in school is a matter for individual schools in consultation with parents," he said.

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